Jump to content


Please note: You can easily log in to MPN using your Facebook account!

If You Could Have Music from Only One Decade...Which One?


Recommended Posts



  • Replies 33
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Do you mean to play or listen to?

 

You know, I've thought about this a lot, and never could come up with an answer (whether it's play or listen to).

 

To be confined to a great era in music would be like eating steak for dinner 7 nights a week 52 weeks a year. I could eat different cuts of steak, sirloin, strip, etc., but no pork, fowl, fish or anything else.

 

I guess what I'm saying is although the question interests me, I don't think I could choose.

 

For 'listen to' I could pick a genre, what is called "classical" but from the Romantic era to the contemporary. But that's more than a decade and as predominantly a sax player, I wouldn't get to play much.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton

Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com

Style and Fake disks for Band-in-a-Box

The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com >^. .^< >^. .^<

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd choose the 60's because Roger Miller, The Band, Procol Harum, Brenda Lee and last but certainly not least - Motown.

 

But I would miss the best eras of the Rolling Stones and Joni Mitchell, to say nothing of Leonard Cohen.

 

Of course, If I don't say the 2020's then I am not considering my own musical efforts, which plod along at a frustratingly slow rate but continue to bring me joy.

 

And we are will probably be excluding the eras where Music was not recorded and in general, people were stinkier.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 70s tick a lot of boxes for me. Best decade for:

 

Prog Rock

Jazz-rock/fusion

Funk

 

Certainly good for:

Classic Rock

Some jazz (although that is well-covered from the late 50's-now in varying degrees)

 

Surely I'm biased by my age, but I think my statements still ring true.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm of the same mindset as Random Guy. Rather than keep it in a strictly one numerical decade (and cheating in a couple of extra years) I would go from 65 to 75. That's when Soul, R&B and Funk hit it's glory years before the onset of the musical Anti-Christ that was Disco.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I"m gonna guess that most people would answer the decade in which they 'came of age'. For me that"s the 60"s ... the popularization of rock music, surf music, blue note jazz, psychedelic rock. Music was still mostly in the hands of the artists and not producers.

 

I can"t, of course, separate it from the Calif surf scene, the hippie movement, the Viet Nam war, going to college and free sex and drugs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah if each decade has to run from 00 to 09, that's problematic.

 

For my formative hooked-on-radio years, it would be '64-'73.

 

But if I wanted to maximize jazz, then I'd say '44-'53 'cause I'd get some Big Band, Bop, and Cool across the stretch.

 

But if forced to one decade, starting with the 00....I'd say 1900-1909. I'd get some late Romantics through early Moderns. Incredible period of time, all the arts just frothing and bubbling and exploding all over the place.

 

nat

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Picking dates that end in 0? 70s, definitely.

 

However, a real close runner up for me if I get to off-set would be something like 1984-1994. There are probably more 70s bands that I love, but I think that most of my favorite albums come from that mid-80s through early-90s period.

 

And I was born in 1980, so there's a lot of connection to the music that I was discovering in those middle school years. Interestingly, most of my favorites are not from "young people's music" of that era, but tend to be later mature albums from artists who had been around for a decade or more (thanks to my parents' musical tastes).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1970s. The end of Hendrix just barely comes in under the wire. Some really brilliant acoustic jazz was still being made while electric instruments were being integrated. The classic periods of Billy Joel, Elton John, Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, and Stevie Wonder. The rise of George Duke & Earth Wind and Fire. The swampiness of the Leon Russell/Mad Dogs & Englishmen. The beginnings of hip-hop, new wave and the arrival of reggae in North America.

My Site

Nord Electro 5D, Novation Launchkey 61, Logic Pro X, Mainstage 3, lots of plugins, fingers, pencil, paper.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guess I'd just have to say, "And just WHO says I can't have any other music, and what are thry gonna do about it to stop me?"

1940s swing dancing, 1950s doo wop, 1960s prog, 1980s dance music, the whole baroque era, since 1990s contemporary gospel, and a bit of others. Not gonna pick just one.

Sheesh. Next thing you know, someone is gonna want me to choose just one ice cream flavor.

Howard Grand|Hamm SK1-73|Kurz PC2|PC2X|PC3|PC3X|PC361; QSC K10's

HP DAW|Epi Les Paul & LP 5-str bass|iPad mini2

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd also have to go with the 70's because it's "my era" but what might make it interesting is that there is certainly a whole lot of other stuff put out during that time that I would never have listened to. I'm sure just the stuff I hadn't listened to or wasn't aware of from that era would be more material than I'd ever have time for.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guess I'd just have to say, "And just WHO says I can't have any other music, and what are thry gonna do about it to stop me?"

1940s swing dancing, 1950s doo wop, 1960s prog, 1980s dance music, the whole baroque era, since 1990s contemporary gospel, and a bit of others. Not gonna pick just one.

Sheesh. Next thing you know, someone is gonna want me to choose just one ice cream flavor.

 

 

French Vanilla. You will eat it and you will like it!!!! :laugh:

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm of the same mindset as Random Guy. Rather than keep it in a strictly one numerical decade (and cheating in a couple of extra years) I would go from 65 to 75. That's when Soul, R&B and Funk hit it's glory years before the onset of the musical Anti-Christ that was Disco.

 

 

YES !!

Professional musician = great source of poverty.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If we can choose any ten-year period, then I'm going to do something similar as Random Guy, but I'll go something like, I don't know, 1967-1977. This is long before I started playing music, when I was a little kid, but it was a really vibrant, creative time in music, so I'm guessing that I would have liked that quite a bit.

 

If we are going by the decades as the other sort of thought, I guess I might do either 1970s.

 

But my second choice is probably the 1980s, believe it or not. I felt like there was an enormous variety of music in the 1980s and that you could play a lot of weird stuff and have a lot of fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fun question. I will answer based on the technical definition of a decade (3rd digit of year has to stay the same).

I pick the 1970s.

My top "must have" albums from the 1970s: Who's Next, Songs In the Key of Life, Heavy Weather, Aja, The Stranger, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Chicago II, Led Zep IV, London Calling, Moondance, Dark Side of the Moon.

 

There are many other albums where I really love some of the songs but I left them out here because I don't enjoy them as much 'start to end'.

 

The 1970s includes an incredible variety, with some of the best hard rock ever made in its first few years, and then punk and disco at the end. And it's easy to forget that "Damn the Torpedoes" was released in 1979.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fun question. I will answer based on the technical definition of a decade (3rd digit of year has to stay the same).

 

Sometimes we ask the wrong question. Sometimes we ask the right question, but not in the way that gets us the answer that we want.

 

So if "decade" in the question means what it means in the dictionary, then the answer should follow the definition. Yeah, there will probably be a few years withing the decade where you hate every song that came your way, but also a few years where you loved the music. You might have to explain yourself if someone points out a universally hated song that came out in that decade.

 

If the real question was "What's your favorite ten-year period for music?" then anything goes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
After much thought and self-flagellation, I'd like to change my answer from '66 - '75 to '65 - '74.

 

I simply couldn't leave out Help! and Rubber Soul. And apart from A Night at the Opera, '75 wasn't that great.

There is Physical Graffiti to consider as well... but I'm definitely in the "mid-to-late-60s to early-to-mid-70s camp" myself. Too much of my favorite music is split over that period, and while probably more of my favorite records are technically from the 70s, a lot of my big, top-of-the-list favorites would be missing if it were just that decade, including the first two records of both Zeppelin and the Band. Plus a certain reasonably well-known English four-piece...

 

So I too must agree, starting my favorite decade with Rubber Soul is a necessity, even if it means '75 gets edged out.

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...