But in retrospect, the average person who lived through those years could pretty easily pick 10 albums, maybe just by Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, that were superior to pretty much anything in the 80's.   Coming up with a "Top 10 albums of the 1980's" is challenging, a similar lost for the 1990's would crap out after 4 or 5 albums, and the zip's . . . forget it.

But, when you lived through it, it was common wisdom that good music stopped being made after about 1973.

JV wrote:

As far as pure songwriting goes, I see a pretty clear downward slope from Cole Porter on

Rec!

Had no idea there was another Cole Porter fan.  Lennon and McCartney were a step down in terms of songwriting, but brought tremendous energy to music.  Stevie Wonder had a few tremendous albums, mostly in the early 70's.  Antonio Carlos Jobim is in a class by himself.  Those four are separate unconquered peaks of songwriting, in my estimation.

JV wrote:

Yes, and I've always shared that common wisdom, although in recent years I've lightened up a bit.  My sweeping generalization of the moment is that later bands had some awesome musicians, but either the songwriting or presentation undercut them.  I'm thinking mainly of R.E.M.: Bill Berry and Mike Mills are phenomenal players (and Buck's not bad either), but I always seem to be trying to figure out Stipe's words, body language, or t-shirt.  The Cure suffered IMO from Robert Smith's goth schtick.  Both of these guys may have been more poetic lyricists than, say, Townshend, and their bands are good.  But watch any of The Who's live performances and your eyes and ears are riveted on the music; Daltrey could be naked and humping groupies on stage and that wouldn't change a thing.

As far as pure songwriting goes, I see a pretty clear downward slope from Cole Porter on, and a huge drop-off after the early '70s.  Melody became secondary to attitude and now is completely irrelevant.  Springsteen's career is a microcosm of this: His first LP was melodic and ambitious, with Bruce's persona not much of a factor.  His second kicked it up a notch on all fronts and remains my favorite.  Then the handlers took over and steered him toward more bombast, less variety.  Made scads of money but didn't do much for me.

Your and Max's '80s were a lot different than mine. I don't know how anyone goes about a top 10 albums list without putting Appetite for Destruction at the very top. As inveitable as that band's demise was and even now that Axl has become a punchline, that album is a 70-minute maelstrom of angst and still the most unique and original effort in the history of hard rock, and maybe across any genre.
I'll leave REM and the Cure alone because I'm such a gracious guy, but Bruce's first two albums were too disorganized for me. I liked Born to Run, Darkness and The River, hated everything about Born in the USA, liked some of Tunnel of Love, and then it pretty much ended for me after that.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (7/31/2011 3:13 pm)

Max wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

APRTW wrote:

For those of us who didnt live it and there for didnt spend it stoned it was always easy to see that the 70s sucked.

Unless you were a big Anson Williams fan and absolutely had to tune into Happy Days every week, there's not much the '70s will be remembered for other than gas lines and bad fashion. Really bad fashion.

That's not true at all.  Almost everything that counts by Pink Floyd and Led Zep rate.  Virtually everything from the progressive rock era: King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, ELP, Gentle Giant, etc.  Most everything worthwhile by Fleetwood Mac.  There are probably 100 albums from the 70's that I would consider adding to my collection.  Scratch that, I probably have 200, of which I would buy about 100 of them again if need be.

I was mostly being facetious, but the first half of the '70s also included those horrible bubble gum songs like Seasons in the Sun and The Night Chicago Died, and the second half was corrupted by disco.
Fleetwood Mac died the day Peter Green left the band, and progressive rock was just a horrible, horrible genre. I'd rather listen to cats fuck than a 35-minute version of Peter Gabriel warbling some unintelligable nonsense while he's dressed up as a daisy or a sunflower.

http://admonkey.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/gabriel_flower.jpg

"Yes, I realize you are a headbanger, Artie.  Your list of 80's albums would probably be topped by GnR and "Back in Black"."

Headbanger became such a perjorative term I never really embraced it, or the look. I enjoyed listening to people with a lot of energy play guitars at loud volume. One of my favorite bands of the '70s was J. Geils, and they wouldn't be classified as heavy metal.
AC/DC ended for me with Bon Scott. Or it ceased to be one of my favorite bands anyway. The Brian Johnson era is basically like listening to the same unfunny joke over and over.
One of the good things about working in a record warehouse for a number of years was I was able to get tickets to just about every concert in the area. I don't know much about the Cure, but I saw them once in the late '80s and was entertained. The guitar player is very good, but there was too much synthesizer for me. I also saw REM about the same time. They did that little shenanigan where they opted to play songs from the album they were promoting at the time rather than their hits, which a lot of bands tended to do, but I've been never seen an audience warned not to shout "Do South Central Rain!!" in the middle of one of Stipe's melancholy turns like I was that evening.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (8/01/2011 8:07 am)

"J. Geils was a Boston band, disqualified."

They were great, before that "Centerfold" garbage. In the '70s, they used to do a week-long run at the old Cape Cod Coliseum, which was like the world's largest juke joint. My buddy's mom had a cottage in Yarmouth, so close you could walk to the venue, and we'd spend the entire weekend there. Good times.

"At the end of the day, AC/DC had a very good power pop songwriter and two very sub-par singers."

You're not giving Bon Scott nearly enough credit. He was a much more sophisticated lyricist than Johnson.

"You Shook Me is a great song, when sung by someone who can sing."

Celine Dion does a version. It's less than great.

"They were friends with Cheap Trick, and IMO opinion, if we set marketing image aside, Cheap Trick was the better of the two, not the least because Robin Zander could sing."

I like Cheap Trick, but I think of them as closer to Steve Perry's version of Journey than I do as an AC/DC peer. Not necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Argiung the merits of Cheap Trick is a bit like arguing the merits of the Pet Shop Boys: the merits are there but any guy who argues for them will sound gay.  But "In Color" and "Heaven Tonight" are great power pop albums.  Not at all like Journey, Kansas, Styx, etc.

"the merits are there but any guy who argues for them will sound gay."

Anyone who argues that shows ignorance. Two great hard rock albums. They didn't go gay until "The Flame." (pun intended)

artie_fufkin wrote:

subtle sexual connotation.

Now how did the radio programmers get that from this?!?

You've got to get it up (give it up)
You've got to get it up (give it up)
You've got to give it to me . . .

Last edited by Max (8/01/2011 6:32 pm)

I'd like to thank all of you for confirming my decision not to program the 70s channel into my car's Sirius XM station presets.  In 20 posts, you've managed to list one band from the 70s that I would actually consider listening to if I was flipping channels--Led Zeppelin--and even then, I can only listen to a Zeppelin song about once every 3 months.

I would rather go outside, strip to my skivvies and lay exposed to the sun and heat for the next 8 hours on Ballpark Village softball field than listen to a Pink Floyd song.  Come to think of it, 8 hours is about how long it takes to listen to a Pink Floyd song.  Meh.

Max, your argument about being able to list your Top 10 albums from the various decades means little in an era when people generally don't buy albums.  That's like saying the 60s produced the best music because its the only decade in which you can list your Top 10 8-track tapes.

Like beauty, quality music is in the eye/ear of the beholder.  The fact that I don't like what you like doesn't make the music I listen to superior any more than the reverse.  There is plenty of quality music being produced today, and plenty of crap being produced today.  The same was true in the 80s, 70s, 60s and so on.  If there's one difference (and admittedly, it's somewhat significant), it's that there is a lot more crappy music being made by "attractive" people.

"There's also the novelty of listening to weather and traffic from far flung locations ... "Today's forecast for Las Vegas is 100 degrees and sunny. Tomorrow it cools off to 97, before a warm front moves through that will keep temperatures at 105 for the weekend ...""

You sure that was the Las Vegas weather.  Sounds pretty much like St. Louis the last 3 weeks.

"I guess that would feel better then 105 but still hot."

Yeah, but if you were in Vegas it would be a dry heat.   (happy)

I always thought that was the stupidest phrase.  "Dry heat."  Like it somehow makes it less hot.  I had an uncle that lived in Vegas for several years.  I visited him a couple of times while on summer break when I was in high school.  Believe me, when it's 110-115, it's freakin' hot and there's isn't any part of you thankful that it's a "dry heat."