Favorite music decade?

[ZAPPER]

Though not born in this era. I choose the 30's-40's during the Big Band Era. Dorsey, Miller, Basie, etc... These guys can really play a instrument, sounds were rich and inovative. Unfortuneatly, this era seems to bring the romantic side of War. (I and II).
I believe Brian Stetzer and Colin James tried to revive this style of music. It only lasted a few years. -garman

I can go along with that too. I think that the thing is that, talent is talent, and it will shine through.

[edDV]

I voted 60's but in reality "the 60's" began with the Beatles in '64 and ended somewhere around '73-75.

It was totally over by the time "disco" hit the world.


PS: I need to revise the start date back to '62 with Bob Dylan's first LP release but he wasn't getting up to full speed until '64.

[HatchetMan]

Because I listen to pretty much everything...

Mid to late 50's for rock - Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. Late 80's, early 90's for rap - Ice T, Eazy-E, NWA, etc. Metal starting in '70 with Black Sabbath and continuing up to present day including Danzig and Cradle of Filth. It think pop was best in the 80's w/ Depeche Mode, Erasure, New Order, and too many others to list

[freebird73717]

I like 70's alot and some early 80's stuff.

"wont ya fly high freebird yeah!"

[gadgetguy]

This is a double edged sword. The 70s is my favorite and my least favorite at the same time. Some of the best hard-rock came from that era, but it also had disco, (what an embarassment).

[Delerious]

I voted 70's. Late 60's to early 70's. i listen mainly to psychedelic, progressive, spacerock. I also like a lot of the rock bands from that time frame - Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Jethro Tull, Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, Hendrix, Ten Years After, The Who, Cream, The Yardbirds, etc., etc., etc.

J

[johns0]

hell even at 25 i asked some guy who was 25 if he knew "Montrose" and he was like who ??

Montrose with Sammy Hagar?We all know that fact!

[ashtones]

Probably the 80's. But not Madona and Huey Lewis 80's, more like anything from Camper van Beethoven to U2. 90's were good too or at least the early 90's. There are only a few bands playing currently that I can stomach. Radiohead, Muse, some Coldplay and The Foo Fighters.

[burnman99]

Would have to go 70's then 80's. Grew up with the great Singer/Songwriter period ala Jim Croce in the 70's and listened to a lot of Bighair stuff in the 80's Also like a lot of classical and some other stuff. As far as I'm concerned, good music is good music.

Later!

Roger

[budz]

For me the 80's had the best mix of music.

I grew up in the 80's. Yup, I agree with MOVIEGEEK that the 80's had the best mix of music. Also that is the era where MTV started! I also like music from the late 70's, specifically from '79. The Cars, Blondie, The Police, Duran Duran, INXS, Pat Benatar, Van Halen, Toto, Devo, Bow Wow Wow, Aldo Nova, Icicle Works, Till Tuesday and Gary Numan, who could remember his one hit wonder called, "CAR". There are many more from the 80's that I like. My vote is for the 80's but I do like music from the 70's as well.

[Soopafresh]

Couldn't stand the music in the 80s, except for The Replacements. The radio played "Karma Chameleon" and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" ad nauseum. Oh, and don't forget "Gonna Dress You Up in Mylar" (sic).

Okay, I liked "Safety Dance" and "In a Big Country".

[budz]

Couldn't stand the music in the 80s, except for The Replacements. The radio played "Karma Chameleon" and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" ad nauseum. Oh, and don't forget "Gonna Dress You Up in Mylar" (sic).

Okay, I liked "Safety Dance" and "In a Big Country".

Hey! I forgot about that song "In a Big Country"! It was by the group called, "BIG COUNTRY". That lead singer committed suicide here in Honolulu at some airport hotel/motel years ago!

[whitejremiah]

im personally a fan of the 90's music.....heck even up till 2000 was good...i still listen to some (not much though) new music im partial to the early 90's rap stuff such as NWA, Westside connection, ect (even though those groups all had the same people in them, changing one or two here and there) I also like the good ol run DMC...that type of stuff, REAL rap music a lot that comes out these days is just kinda blah....ripoffs of ripoffs of ripoffs of GOOD music.

[oldfart13]

Sirius and other satellite radio channels have spoiled me in the last several years...now I can listen to whatever I want whenever I want, be that big band era, classic rock, 50s Golden Oldies, etc. I'm going to be getting this in my car soon so I can get rid of the local yokel stations forever...

[Nelson37]

Having grown up in a music store, I can listen to almost anything, provided they at least know how to play their instruments.

Mid-60's to mid 70's would probably be my favorite era.

I think MTV damaged music considerably by making bands something you Look At rather than Listen To.

Recently caught myself telling my teenage daughter that what she was listening to was "just noise". Now where have I heard that before?

Read an interesting reprint years ago, some civic leader was complaining about a new music style, told how it was destroying the fabric of our society, causing youth to be rebellious and disrespectful, was the work of the Devil, and on and on.

He was talking about the Waltz.

[dipstick]

Loved the late 60s early 70s with Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Deep Purple, ect.

Loved the 80's with U2, AC-DC, Rush, Yes, Bruce Springsteen, ect.

Loved the 90s with REM, Pearl Jam, Tonic, Creed, ect.

[starwarrior29]

Loved the 80's the best, hair bands and all. Still listen to music from that time period regularly.

[mysts]

It's the 70's for me. Groups like "Little River Band", "Chicago",, but lets not forgt the "Beatles".

[zleepy]

All decades had fantastic music and I love them all.

I have pop, jazz, classical CDs of every decade.
Berlin, Bebop, Ornet, Coltrane, Johnny Mathis, 60's-70's acid rock, disco, punk, new wave, New Order, Fish (Marillion), Goa Trance, Tiesto, etc etc

From Corelli, Shostakovitch, Grofe, etc etc

Ethnic music like salsa, flamenco, rap, hip-hop, regae, pansori (Korean folk), etc etc.

Live in the global internet age.

LATM DJ Lorn's mixes (free from his 256-mp3 site), Vgood thru out.

[MeDiCo_BrUjO]

Each decade had its own share of great music, but the 80's will rule forever.

Today's music is mostly garbage.

[laspis59]

My favorite years are 1977-1994.77-80 for the first wave of punk.80-89 for the great electronic sounds of Erasure,Depeche Mode and indie like The Smiths.Duran Duran,HouseMartins ect...
89-94 for the early Rave\Jungle scene.
The stuff in the charts today though I pretty much hate,apart from small selection of bands such as The Killers,Coldplay and The Strokes. 8)

[etcallhome]

I almost chose the present because I'm old enough to remember, or at least be familiar with, rock music (I'm assuming that we are concerned with rock since it is the only novel musical genre to develop in this time frame) since its inception in the early 50's. I can understand how a contemporary band or performer is influenced by previous artists and understand how they have developed to become what they are at the present. As it is, I chose the 70's because rock music had pretty much become in this decade what it ultimately was going to be (various genres and so forth) with a culmination in punk groups like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. There are even vestiges of hip hop and rap in 60's and 70's music. Also, so many seminal artists, like Led Zeppelin and each of the Beatles, bridged the 60's and 70's and are still vital influences today on various sounds.

[TheFamilyMan]

The 70's....that was when I was in jr. high and highschool. Loved the major prog bands: Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Led Zep, etc. Lots of great bands and music also happened in the late 70's, when prog sort of died. I also have a classical collection that is larger than my rock collection, my favorites are the early to mid 20th century composers: Bartok, Rachmoninoff, Ravel, Gerswin, Copland, Stravinsky, etc.

It seems to me that music lovers imprint on the music that they liked in their youth. My wife's grandfather always has us play his Guy Lambardo LP's when he comes to visit. All music is enjoyable (to someone), regardless of the time or means it is created. It's one of the most subjective experiences there is.

[CBC]

Interesting topic/responses!

For me the late 60s- early 70s was a time when new ideas seemed to flow
the most in musical sounds & ideas. Rock, prog,& jazz all began to expand
in many different directions. Record companies were much more lenient in letting the artists produce their albums to *their* liking, not so much to a pre-determined demographic or some rigid sales goal. The DJs on the radio got to choose what music they wanted to play. People smoked pot & dropped some "L", & people got along pretty well at live shows.
Then came the musician "burnout" of the late 70s, disco, cocaine,cyrstal meth, heroin (seeing a pattern here?). Record companies became greedier, & needed to "push the product" more to cover the costs of their coke habits.
Punk happened, which added a much needed jolt into the vein of popular music (albeit at the expense of actual musical talent in many cases)
MTV ushered in the 80s with pictures to go with the toons, which REALLY changed how we absorbed music. It was an exciting time again for a while, until the new stuff coming out was more about "the look" instead of "the sound". For me watching the old 80s-era vids now is a bit sad.
In the 90s some things improved (the talent), some things sucked (the record companies) We got Nirvana, Aimee Mann, Pearl Jam, the whole grunge thing, NIN, etc. 2000s brought us old faces & new young bucks, and the music industry started sueing it's loyal customers.
I've found music from all eras that I love, but for me the 60-70s was a "magic time"

[cujo9999]

i'd have to say i'm more a fan of the 70's music and then the 60's and then the others progressively less. i'm more a fan of stuff on the fringes rather than the mainstream although my favorite bands are the stones & led zeppelin (you NEED to see their DVD).
i like a lot of the garage bands of the mid to late 60's, many which came out of the detroit area such as the stooges, mc5, amboy dukes. alice cooper also came out of that area.
i also love the glam rock bands of the early 70's, most of whom came from england but never really caught on here in the states such as slade and the sweet. one of the really great ones did come from the new york area, the new york dolls. great band. probably set the stage for the arrival of punk a few years later but never got their due.

[kisrum]

I don't think music calibrates well to decades. I work from the unsubstantiatable notion that popular music runs in approximately 7 year cycles with slight overlap at each end. My opinions are colored by the fact that I have limited appreciation of soul music and my country music collection includes exactly two artists, Hank Snow and Johnny Cash, and not much of them.

57-63, Pre-Beatles - mostly great, although the pre-Beatles 60's were a little grim with Buddy Holly dead, Elvis in the Army, the Everly Brothers in the Marines(!), Jerry Lee Lewis married to his cousin and goin country, Chuck Berry in prison for taking a white girl across state lines. Roy Orbison did his best work in this era, though. Dale Hawkins "Suzie Q" from 62 shows that rock was not entirely dead. kisrum born in 60. Being the youngest of four I was immersed in teenage popular music way early

64-71 - British pop and British blues invasion - great for reasons that I was too young to understand. Remember watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan with my almost teenaged sister. Her first LP was Herman's Hermits greatest hits, so not everything from this era was great. The four original Velvet Underground LP's, Love's "Forever Changes", the Beatles, the Doors, Dylan, on and on and on, are still in frequent rotation in my mind at least, although I didn't really listen to them until the mid seventies. Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On" closes this era in high style.

71-77 - Post-British invasion, post-Vietnam, navel-gazing country folk, bloated blues-rock - This era sucks, but is hidden somewhat by the emergence in the US of FM rock radio which attracted its early audience by playing so much music from 64-71. Clapton got boring, Dylan got boring, the Eagles were boring (exception - "Desperado"), Fleetwood Mac helped us all sleep through the decade. The Rolling Stones tried to get funky. Some other notable exceptions to the general decline, "Who's Next", the Allman Brothers, early middle-age Willie Nelson, Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. I admired PInk Floyd more than I liked them. Disco was an annoyance but an avoidable one. Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles and Peter Frampton and Styx and Kansas and Supertramp and Steve Miller Band and ELO could NOT be avoided. Songs were long, radio playlists were short, and major bands would wait 2-3 years to produce new LPs of boring stuff. Did I mention it was boring?

One could do worse than explore the soul music from this same era, separate from disco. O'Jays, Al Green, etc, however, I just don't have the time or money.

78-83 College Radio finds its feet, Disco dead, country-rock dying, blues rock dying, punks re-introducing great pop melodies behind wall of noise, and getting rid of those interminable guitar solos - A great era, here we find Springsteen at his best with "The River", Neil Young's "Rust Never Sleeps", The Clash "London Calling", Lou Reed's "The Blue Mask", and the first-world emergence of reggae and punk. College was cheap, pot was cheap, even Kansas State University was chuckin' to Jah music. Things got a little slim in the early 80's but the Pretenders were still around, David Bowie re-ascendant, Big Country, my one Pink Floyd (cassette!) "The Final Cut". Guilty favorite - Flock of Seagulls "Wishing".

84-92 - New wave, hair bands, power ballads - mostly sucks, but I was married, broke, in grad school, and having babies so music sort of slid off my priority list. If you tell me Guns-n-Roses was great, I'll take your word for it. I've gone back and bought most of the Replacements and some of the Pixies and REM from this era and now have warmer feelings about it, although these all seem to be 90s bands, stuck in the 80s. I lump U2 in with Pink Floyd, in that I admire them more than enjoy them. Nirvana slips in early in '91 beginning a great mini-era.

91 - 98. American punk, y'all-ternative, hard rap that wasn't so obsessed with ho's and bling-bling (more about drug dealin' and killin') - A very good era. This gets wobbly because I turned 35 (a deadly age, artswise, and life gets complicated) and I haven't enjoyed much of anything new since about '96. My problem, not music's, probably.

Houston had a great AM rap station in 92-93 and I was able to develop an appreciation for bleeped Scarface, Ice Cube, Pete Rock and CL Smooth, but something happened and rap got repetitive and boring by about '95. The Muffs made three great CDs. Everclear's "Sparkle and Fade", Neil Young's "Mirror Ball", some Pearl Jam, and some Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt/Wilco/Golden Smog are about all I have to show for this era, but it was generally a good time to be listening to the radio.

and beyond... I swore I'd never become a curmudgeon, but I have. Broadcast radio is just godawful. Was stunned by how good Avril Lavigne was on Letterman recently, but there seems to be endless pressure to turn this kind of talent into a marketable image, and she seems to be going along with it. All the white male singers sound like sleepy Eddie Vedders.

At least you won't see me at any Eagles/Moody Blues/Rod Stewart/Sting/Phil Collins alimony payment shows shaking my sagging ass during PBS fundraising drives.

Like my hair stylist says, "thanks for asking"!

[bazooka]

I voted for the 80's

[dwill123]

Late 60's thru the 70's - the best hands down:

Jimi Hendrex
Janis
Pink Floyd
Genesis
Frank Zappa
Greatful Dead
Allman Bros.
Santana
Sly & the Family Stone
Joe Walsh
Bob Marley & the Wailers
Mahavishnu Orchestra
Return to Forever
Yes

Come on you can't touch that

[louv68]

Late 60's thru the 70's - the best hands down:

Jimi Hendrex
Janis
Pink Floyd
Genesis
Frank Zappa
Greatful Dead
Allman Bros.
Santana
Sly & the Family Stone
Joe Walsh
Bob Marley & the Wailers
Mahavishnu Orchestra
Return to Forever
Yes

Come on you can't touch that

I completely agree with dwill123,

The Mid Sixties thru the 70's is definitely the best period in rock music. Not even close to compare any other decades. I definitely like stuff from all these decades, but the "best" stuff is from that point in time. I would assume that the majority of people on this site have to be in their teens thru mid twenties from the poll results thus far. Give the 60's - 70's a chance. If you are not familiar with this music; you will be pleasantly surprised how good it is.

PS Don't forget to add The Beatles, The Who, Foreigner, Bad Company, The Rolling Stones, Ted Nugent, ELO, UFO, Wishbone Ash, Black Sabbath, The Eagles,....etc, etc.

[Sillyname]

I voted Present Day. I don't listen to the radio, so by "Present Day", I mean local and independent label music. You guys cry about how crappy music has gotten but you've let the radio spoon feed you all your life, anyway. Radio stations are for people who have no opinion of their own about music. Sure it gives everybody something in common to talk about but it doesn't prove you actually "like" music.