Best Era for Music

[Cheech]

If you say '00s, you're a dope.

 

[Czech]

The prompt is vague enough that I can say it with ease. Here in 2009, I have access to more plentiful and diverse new releases than ever before. Recordings of the past have been reissued, expanded, and remastered in superior media like compact disc or digital, which if you're willing to compromise your ethics, are available at cheap to nonexistent prices. For music that hasn't been commercially re-released, there are generous bloggers who make out-of-print vinyl treasures available to the music geeks who care enough to seek them out or take chances. Live jazz and classical concerts are plentiful and inexpensive: popular music has created a paradox wherein a night at the symphony is more affordable than a Kelly Clarkson concert. Radiohead. Idioteque. "Here I'm allowed everything all of the time." No better time to be a music fan than today.

 

[Cheech]

Interesting take on the question, Czech.

 

[Kinetic]

You compromise your ethics when you pay $20 for a new release at Wal-Mart. Fuck the RIAA. Friends don't let friends suckle at the corporate teat.

The best era is the rock and roll era. It ended the Vietnam war.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

The thing I'd point out with 2009 voting is the sheer diversity in being able to obtain music. You have the "illegal" method, the payment ITunes method (cheap), the retail store fresh CD smell, and online through Amazon, or other areas.

Besides the flabbergasting diversity in musical genres (Take your pick of the several ___-punk genres or seemingly billion metal genres), the artists themselves are able to upload through a myspace or garageband site and promote themselves. The E-Zines have died a little as a result, but the artists have tremendous independence and don't need to scramble for a big name record label to get their names out anymore (although it sometimes doesn't hurt).

One can also re-live live concert performances or see performances that they weren't old enough to witness on Youtube. Youtube alone can create hundreds of new fans for a band.

 

[pbone]

The 00's. Each decade was dominated by a peculiar style of music or had small flourishes of other music, like jazz in the 60s. I think this is the first decade completely without that, sans maybe rap, but, as Czech was saying, the digital age has allowed music and ideas to flow faster than in any time period, ever, without question. There's more music being made every day than there's ever been, more people getting noticed, bigger music scenes, more underground, and without doubt, every genre has received an overflow of new music, from Dream Pop to Baroque. Concurrently, the trend of accessibility in the digital age is going to get undeniably better. v0 or v2 at >320kbps is going to become the new standard, the transfer of music is going to be extremely streamlined (pending the destruction of the RIAA), and music as a whole will continue to benefit from the agreed-upon standard among the internet that music should be free and limitless.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I think most of you are saying the '00s to spite Cheech. But I do agree with all of you that there's probably no better time to be a music fan than now.

Though I'm not sure if that's what Cheech was asking. Best era of music itself if I must say so was probably about 1965 to 1975.

 

[pbone]

You are shit.

 

[Kinetic]

Hey! You can't talk to the American Brutus like that.

Everyone is kind of taking Czech's interpretation of this question and running with it. While this is obviously the best period for music availability, it'd be a real stretch to say that a greater volume of good music is being produced right now than at any other time.

 

[Cheech]

The reason people didn't understand what I was asking is because I didn't ask anything. Yesterday I was trying to out new topic creation as a test before people got here, but I got caught with my pants down and there are like 30 topics on the board that I started with just one sentence.

If I were to think it through a little more, I'd say my intention was to ask which decade produced the highest quality music. Each had their own quirks and style; I'd be tempted to say 70s. I'll try to elaborate later.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Yeah, with all due respect to Cheech, your question was pretty vague...you didn't even ask if it was the Best Decade or not, hence my 1965 to 1975 answer! But if it had to be a decade...I'd say it's a coinflip between the '60s and '70s. Depends on my mood.

 

[Cheech]

Kamala, read my first paragraph: this thread was never supposed to be here when registration opened up.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I know...I just have a bad habit of deliberately posting the exact same thing (in different words) what the people posted before me just said over the past few days. I did in the All Time Wrestling Roster Draft too! God, the board changes are bringing out the worst in me.

But to expound on my '60s Vs '70s debate...I think the '60s had less crappy music, even the innocuous pop stuff was better than any other decade's innocuous pop stuff but the '70s might have the edge in a more diverse amount of great music.

 

[Czech]

Whether the discussion was meant to exist or not, it does now, so we may as well have some fun with it.

Everyone is kind of taking Czech's interpretation of this question and running with it. While this is obviously the best period for music availability, it'd be a real stretch to say that a greater volume of good music is being produced right now than at any other time.

Oh, huge stretch. I can't claim to have heard everything ever, nobody can, but we forget all the shit that came before us. Not the actively bad, just all the stuff nobody remembered or cared about. We can acknowledge that the sheer volume of new releases today is exponentially larger than the volume of new releases in, say, the early '70s, but when we look back on those years, we only think about all the huge classics--your Floyd, Zeppelin, Neil Young, late-era Miles--without thinking about all the historical also-rans that have no relevance now, like Budgie or Bread. There's no objective way to deduce what the "best era for music" really is, is there? Would it involve formulas? I don't want to say "the Sixties" because then I sound like a crotchety boomer. "You kids don't know what good music is. WE CHANGED THE WORLD WITH OUR [mass-produced recordings of other people's] GUITARS."

I still like my original answer, despite the obvious flaws. "All the recordings are nice, but what about concerts? You can't see Zeppelin, man!" This is true. Though I've made a big stink before about how I don't want these guys (Zeppelin, et al) sullying their legacies by trying to perform in an enfeebled and shorthanded state and taken heat for it, getting "you wouldn't want to see Led fucking Zeppelin?", oh of course I would; what I wouldn't give to see them at the top of their game. Pink Floyd, too. I wish I could've seen Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club. Wish I could've seen the debut of The Rite of Spring so I could witness a ballet causing a riot. The only ballet I get to see is The Nutcracker and we're all pretty well-behaved for that. So of course, that's a huge disappointment, but what can I do but mope that my timing on this earth was poor? I suppose I could keep plugging away at that thing in my basement that if all goes as planned juuuust may become a time machine. Failing that, all I can do is amass the documents of those time periods and have them all at once, which isn't so bad.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

What's Czech's equivalent of an OrgLazm?

And I sort of like Bread :'(

 

[Beast]

I'm going to pick using the qualifications of "What era had the most music that I enjoy" and that would be the 60's. Now, if that means today is the best because I have access to innumerable amounts of music from that period (album cuts, unreleased session tracks) that I couldn't have before, fine. But that access has made me realize how awesome the sixties were and how lacking today is in comparison. The musicality in bands from back then is outstanding (especially the British ones) and it makes me yearn for a time machine. When I do come across a current day band/musician with that sensibility it excites me, but in most cases I'm struck by how similar everything sounds. I'm only 23 so it's not like I'm going off on a "In my day" thing either. It's just a case of personal taste.

 

[Star Ocean 2]

I have to say the early 1900's because of Claude Debussy and the other composers of that time. And that's not a pretentious classical music choice, I really love those bands of the 90's, but I've been listening to Debussy for a while now, and still can find new things in the music that I never noticed before. And you've got Alexander Scriabin, Charles Koechlin, Charles Ives...a lot of crazy music that was just out there.

 

[Sex Machine Gun]

1997 was perfect, for my personal taste. Maybe I'll stretch it to say 95-99 with 1997 still being the midpoint/peak, but once we rolled the odometer over to 2000, something was missing.

 

[Incandenza]

Yeah, the New Radicals never made a second album.

 

[Cerebus The Aardvark]

1992.

If I have to say why, well...

 

[mellow]

1992.

If I have to say why, well...

Because of the Soup Dragons.

 

[Cerebus The Aardvark]

1992.

If I have to say why, well...

Because of the Soup Dragons.

Obv.

 

[foleyfanforever88]

I'm by no means a music expert, and I usually only listen to what's popular, but my favorite music comes from the late 90s.

 

[naiwf]

Most of the music I own was released between '90 and '99. I would probably say that the '80s had better one hit wonders than any other decade I can remember in addition to its own superstars that everyone knows, but the '70s might have been the decade that influenced most of the artists I really liked. That's a convoluted answer, but I'd say the '70s because there's a lot of stuff I like from that time and they helped spawn most of the bands that I grew up on.

 

[samoarowe]

My favorite was 1992-2001, because that's when I was growing up. By 2002 I was too busy to notice or care anymore.

 

[KOAB]

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