What decade would you pick?

"People can be funny about their pasts, because every one of us grows up in a golden age of some sort, where the music's always better and the TV's always smarter, and our sports team was at its most brilliantly scintillating. Most of the time, they are right as well."

That is a quote from Dave Thompson's Classic Rock Manifesto: I Hate New Music. I haven't got much further than that quote yet (and that was found on page 7) but even if the book turns out to be a turkey, it's provided me with a starting point for a topic I've been meaning to write about for a while now.

The topic is - as you'll see from the title - what decade would you pick? And that means one decade only - and we are of course relating this to music rather than TV and sports teams. And yes, I say that knowing that pop-culture and trivia and nostalgia and anything else you might bundle up need to feed off each other. Music might mean something because of the films that came out in a particular year. Music might be linked to TV shows - but that's not always a good thing is it (cf: Rembrandts, The). 

So this discussion doesn't require you to go into a time-machine. We are talking about staying in the present but choosing only one decade of music to support. Can this even be done? Well - for the purposes of today's post it can be. It's not acceptable to state that you listen to too broad a range of music. We all do. You'll sound just like any other person that goes to the counter of a CD store with one album by Air Supply and one by Bill Withers and one by Zed and proudly proclaims, "my collection is quite eclectic".

But the idea for this topic didn't start with Dave Thompson and the I Hate New Music book. It started with a conversation I had when I was 13.

You see - I remember clearly, as a child obsessed with Santana and The Animals and Cream (and whatever else I picked up on, mostly from the soundtracks to China Beach, Tour of Duty and The Big Chill) making a comment to a friend along the lines of, imagine if you could live in any decade at all - I would live in the 1960s. It would be amazing.

Let's call the friend Aaron (because that's what I used to do). So Aaron says "you're only saying that, thinking you would live in America in the 1960s. Living in New Zealand in the 1960s would just be dumb."

And he is right. Not so much the part about it being dumb in NZ - as neither he nor I was there to say for sure. But he was definitely right about my logic. I was thinking of being in America, or London. And it was a quick comment, dashed off as we threw a few basketballs toward the hoop, some of them going in, with a tape of The Deep Purple Singles playing in the background.

Anyway, that informs this discussion.

But, given Dave Thompson's comment at the top of this post, let's look at it from the position of today. So, you have all the music you have experienced. You know that hip-hop came from 1970s disco and 1960s soul and funk. You know that heavy metal came from rock and that the blues had a baby and it was named rock'n'roll - and all of that, er, jazz.

You know all of that - so we are not going back in a DeLorean and duck-walking around with some Eddie Van Halen licks over a rockabilly beat. We are talking about picking one decade to focus on.

If you could pick one decade only to have music from, what decade would you pick? And why?

Of course a case can be made for almost any decade - that's the point. The point is which one would you pick?

You see, a lot of people who say they like sixties music - actually, mostly, like seventies music. And a lot of things that people now call awful 1980s music comes from the early 1990s. But you could not say the 1990s were terrible as some really interesting things happened. Or could you? Maybe you could?

Would you want to focus on the 1950s? It is, after all, a good decade for jazz and for blues. And the birth of rock'n'roll. Or is the 1960s still the one decade that rings out because of the cultural significance around it?

And if you are so familiar with pop and rock music of the past 50 years or thereabouts does that mean you would actually choose something pre-1950 so that you could learn about swing or the rhythm'n'blues that informed rock'n'roll?

I know what I would pick.

I would pick the 1940s. And I would do this because I am still learning about some amazing music from that decade. And it is a bridge between where jazz was dominant and blues was being appropriated, shifting into other forms. It was the birth of the crooner - you had a young Frank Sinatra working with Tommy Dorsey. But you also had Woody Guthrie performing his folk ballads.

My favourite female jazz singer - one of my favourite singers of all time, across all genres - Anita O'Day was getting going. She was working with Gene Krupa, an early drum hero for me. One of the first drummers I ever heard - as in noticed I was listening to drums.

And it was the decade that saw the start of so many amazing careers.

Of course we could say that about any decade. I could have picked the 1970s and raved about the bands that started then. Or the 1980s. Or the 1960s. But the 1940s was the starting point for a lot of music that has had a huge impact on me. I'm thinking of the starting points for people like Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis and B.B. King.

And then there was the work of Charlie Parker.

Another of my heroes from this decade is the great Louis Jordan. And, in a similar vein, a favourite (reasonably recent for me) discovery from the 1940s is Slim Gaillard.

I reckon I would get a lot from just listening to music from the 1940s. I don't think I would run out. So that's my choice.

Now, what is your choice? One decade? Would you pick the decade you were born? The one we're in now? The one we've just come out of? Or one long, long ago way back before electricity and verse/chorus/verse...and what informs the decision? Is it because the music of your favourite artist started - or peaked - in that decade? Or was there a dominant genre? Or, as suggested a few hundred words back, maybe you want to go into unchartered (and uncharted) waters (for you); back to a time and place where you will be learning about a whole heap of old (new) music.

What decade would you pick?

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Dandy   #1   08:52 am Mar 19 2010

70's without a doubt. Glam, punk, bublegum pop, metal, disco, rock it's all there. What a decade of music...

james   #2   08:55 am Mar 19 2010

The 80s. Im mostly into metal, this was the decade where metal was at its best and actually was mainstream music at the time. Then Grunge came and killed it slowly in the early 90s, and then whatever it was that arose from the ashes of grunge was just terrible. Most Metal from the late 90s and early 2000's was just terrible. Of course there are exceptions to the rules, but what really rulz is 80s metal!

erin   #3   09:01 am Mar 19 2010

Haha my music collection is all over the place and while most of it seems to be from the 1990's, I'm gonna go with the 1980's purely for the reason that the album which defined my taste in music was released during 1987-the year i was born. That's destiny right there.

Noshow   #4   09:08 am Mar 19 2010

The 40's?!

Of course you would Simon, of course you would.

It'd be far too easy to pick one of the populist decades wouldn't it....

Jack Prichard   #5   09:12 am Mar 19 2010

It's personal so I would go with the 80's.

The personal reasonal reason is the this is about the decade I actually started going into record shops and handing over my own money to buy Prince, Shade and Chicago House compliations on cassett.

If I wanted to defend the purely personal with a big picture defense then I would say this was the last decade of the Rock Star! From the 90's on music either became blatantly manufactured, start with the Spice Girls and finish with Idol; about as accessable as astrophysics, see Kraftwelk and the like; or a search to recapture the lost innocence of a by gone age, AC/DC come on down.

In the 80's you could still pretend musicians made it by themselves, people still thought the Number One was relevant to their lives and working a record store made you cool.

Like Simon says, its a personal choice. If you think I'm full of it blame him, he asked.

No off the rose coloured specs with mirrors to see the past and back to work.

Jack

McP   #6   09:12 am Mar 19 2010

70's by a long shot. Rock music in particular peaked in the 70's. Things were too tame in the 60's, got out of hand in the 80's, then were turned to mush in the 90's.

paul   #7   09:14 am Mar 19 2010

80's. They had it all - great metal, great rock, some great musicals.

Basically "the day the music died" for me is the day Auto Tune was used on a modern music track (Cher I'm looking at you).

Danny   #8   09:19 am Mar 19 2010

I was tossing up between two decades. The 60's because i love the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, etc etc, and the 70's because i love Led Zeppelin, Sex Pistols, Queen etc. I love the 60's for the songs, and the 70's for the musicianship. Of course that is very much over simplifying it, and there were great musicians in the 60's, and great songs in the 70's, but that is my generalisation. I would go for the 60's for the simple reason that I get all the great songs from The Beatles, The Hollies, The Kinks, The Who, Rolling Stones, and all the other 60's bands who came up with some wonderful tunes. But....and this is what clinched it, I also get Hendrix, Cream, The first few Led Zeppelin albums, early Stevie Wonder, some great Motown songs, as well as the Who and Hollies during the late 60's era of Psychedlia and heavier rock. So there you go...i choose the 60's, even though it means missing out on Queen, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Rage Against The Machine, Sex Pistols, and Wings. Oh....and I was just joking about Wings!

Graham   #9   09:19 am Mar 19 2010

I'd probably go for the seventies - it's like a golden age for the LP album with brilliant people like Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, David Bowie, Big Star, Van Morrison, Yes, Genesis, and Marvin Gaye cranking out a lot of seminal 33 1/3s. Countering that, a lot of the one hit wonders from the seventies are pretty awful.

I'm pretty ignorant about music before the mid-sixties, but I kind of imagine that there was less volume of good music than there is now; just less records being made in general.

Bevan M   #10   09:19 am Mar 19 2010

I would say the 60s for the garage rock, soul and psychedelia. But this really only happened in the second half of the decade.

So, I will say the 70s for soul, glam rock, funk and disco. I don't think punk or progressive rock have aged well, so would avoid those.

It must have been amazing to be around when Bowie was doing all his glam rock like Diamon Dogs, then suddenly switched to be influenced by Philly Soul with Young Americans.

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