What was the best decade for music?

[rousseau]

Poll, poll, poll.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Poll, poll, poll.

Roughly, for jazz, 1955-1965.

 

[DrJim]

1960s. Poll Closed. I win.

 

[Daioh]

Unicorns are real and all decades are equal

 

[Thomas II]

 

[gmbteach]

Sorry rosseau, My answer would be the 80's cos that is when I grew up listening to it. My parents would say the 60's, and my students would say now.

To get a true response, you may have to post several polls that target specific age groups and ask the same question.

 

[Davka]

There was a dramatic sea-change in the 1960s, driven by two shifts in music: First of all, the widespread popularization of stereophonic sound via FM radio caused record companies to take a whole lot of chances. There was a sense that this new medium was so radical, so different from anything that had come before, that it was impossible to know what would be popular. So the music industry just threw everything at the wall, to see what would stick. This resulted in a whole lot of bands being given recording contracts who would never have gotten a second look otherwise. Groups like Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant, King Crimson and the like were not only being signed to major labels, they were getting airplay with with 20-minute-space jams and incomprehensible sound experiments. Secondly, the Hippie movement included a willingness to listen to anything at all, as long as it was played by their fellow freaks.

The result was a lot of noise and chaos mixed in with an explosion of creativity which had not existed since Mozart's day. For a brief time, the profit motive took a back seat to experimentation. Once the music industry figured out that what people wanted in FM Stereo was pretty much the same thing they wanted in AM Mono (3-minute pop songs with a catchy hook), the experimentation ended and was replaced by the BeeGees and Donna Summer. We are unlikely to see such a wide-open field again, at least in the commercial music industry.

Right now there's a similar revolution going on, as the means of production and distribution has been placed in the hands of artists via the Interwebs. There are some amazingly talented people making music these days, and distributing their songs for free as advertisement for live concerts. Unfortunately, without the clout of the music industry (or what's left of it) behind them, most of these artists are faced with a far more limited audience. But today's new music makes me very happy as a musician. People are playing what they feel, instead of what the label tells them will sell. We're in the middle of another musical renaissance.

 

[Juma]

I think that was a great post Davka but for this bullshit:

an explosion of creativity which had not existed since Mozart's day.

 

[Davka]

I think that was a great post Davka but for this bullshit:

an explosion of creativity which had not existed since Mozart's day.

Hyperbole, perhaps - but can you think of an explosion in popular musical creativity that was anywhere near that large in the intervening years? Even during the 1920s, just as phonographs were becoming widespread, there wasn't a lot of creativity. I don't think all the ingredients were in place any time between the era of musical patronage and the 1960s.

 

[bilby]

Musicians experimented with new ideas in the 1960s, with fantastic results; and with new technologies in the 1970s, with results that were rather mixed. In the 1980s, they brought the two together in the shadow of the imminent annihilation of the world, and produced the best music ever; then in the 1990s, the cold war ended, and ever since then music has been dominated by people who had nothing much to complain about. As all the best music is inspired by pain, fear or oppression, nothing much worthwhile has been produced, at least in the English-speaking world, since the Berlin Wall came down. Every one of these decades produced a vast seething pile of utter dross, but the gems amongst the dross were a larger proportion in the 1960s, 70s and 80s than at any other time since the war*









*Franco-Prussian

 

[Underseer]

1890s. That was when ragtime was invented, the first blending of European melodic structures with African rhythms, and thus the foundation for all American popular music that followed (and every form of popular music based on American popular music).



No 1890s, no jazz, no rock n' roll, no R&B, no blues, no heavy metal, no hip hop, no punk, no bluegrass, no dubstep, no nuthin'.

 

[MrFrosty]

1980s fs

 

[Juma]

I think that was a great post Davka but for this bullshit:

Hyperbole, perhaps - but can you think of an explosion in popular musical creativity that was anywhere near that large in the intervening years? Even during the 1920s, just as phonographs were becoming widespread, there wasn't a lot of creativity. I don't think all the ingredients were in place any time between the era of musical patronage and the 1960s.

What do you know about that? Just because there are not a lot of recordings from that time?

 

[gmbteach]

1980s fs

WOOHOO!! Someone who agrees with me.

 

[Underseer]

1980s fs

WOOHOO!! Someone who agrees with me.

My answer was close to yours. Only two numbers were reversed.

 

[Davka]

Hyperbole, perhaps - but can you think of an explosion in popular musical creativity that was anywhere near that large in the intervening years? Even during the 1920s, just as phonographs were becoming widespread, there wasn't a lot of creativity. I don't think all the ingredients were in place any time between the era of musical patronage and the 1960s.

What do you know about that? Just because there are not a lot of recordings from that time?

Sure there are. They're called "scores," which was the primary means of recording music prior to the invention of the phonograph. For most of the history of music, there has been little appetite for the new and different, aka creative. In fact, many attempts at creativity were dismissed and reviled. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring famously caused riots and scandal, for example.

 

[rousseau]

As time goes by I like the 80's more and more, too, much more so than the 60's and 70's.

I also like the rise of hip-hop in the 90's, and the incredibly varied, post-modern music post 00's. I'd assume most people on this forum haven't really experienced the *real* music post 00's, as it's all underground.

 

[Juma]

For most of the history of music, there has been little appetite for the new and different, aka creative. .

Now you are really deep in bull fecaes.

The history of music is constantly filled with creativity and radically new stuff.

 

[dx713]

Current era.
Technology enabling music production at minimal costs and exchange of ideas on a scale never seen before.
We just lack the filter of time to see the great things being produced.

I've discussed with musicians who were active during the famed 70s. Crappy shows with antic amplifiers and inexistent monitors, music found and exchanged via worn out casettes copied from late night radio, said radios filed with talentless imitations.
Once past the great acts we remember today because time has filtered the crap out for us, it pretty much sucked. Not to mention the lack of easy transportation to go see the shows.

There are demo tapes from the era so bad that even the most desperate garage band 10 years ago wouldn't have dared ppt them on their MySpace.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Current era.
Technology enabling music production at minimal costs and exchange of ideas on a scale never seen before.
We just lack the filter of time to see the great things being produced.

I've discussed with musicians who were active during the famed 70s. Crappy shows with antic amplifiers and inexistent monitors, music found and exchanged via worn out casettes copied from late night radio, said radios filed with talentless imitations.
Once past the great acts we remember today because time has filtered the crap out for us, it pretty much sucked. Not to mention the lack of easy transportation to go see the shows.

There are demo tapes from the era so bad that even the most desperate garage band 10 years ago wouldn't have dared ppt them on their MySpace.

There's truth to this, but the biggest change IMO is work related for musicians.

Coming of age in the late 70s, there were many musicians who made a decent living from gigs alone. Some bands were in residence at a gig for years at a time, five or six nights a week. Band leaders were local celebrities.

Even schedules like that were a decline from earlier. The live music scene has been disappearing since the advent of recording. In the thirties, bands of 20 members could make money. By WWII, big bands were out, all of the classic jazz bands were small eg quintets. Now there are only a fraction of the venues that there used to be, and the pay hasn't changed.

That change in work has affected the quality IMO. There's a great deal to be said for grinding out a show night after night, responses vary greatly and bands can get unbelievably tight and responsive. There's also the issue of having to learn certain tunes or beats to please people, granted there's always schlock, but you get in the habit of noticing what gets a response and what doesn't.

American music, which has changed the planet, developed the way it did for two reasons: one the confluence of African rhythms with European instruments, notation, and harmony, and two music was entertainment. But it has less opportunity or room to ferment, and in that sense music is worse off.

OTOH, the technology today is vastly superior. I take my iPad to a gig, and so have access to dozens of books, as well as any charts I create myself and I can search them all in a second. One little keyboard costing less than $700 is as good as an entire rack of gear. And I'm not even touching recording technology.

OK I'm off my soapbox....