Good Bands from the Late 60s - 70s?

[Abelard]

If you like Pink Floyd then you'd probably like some King Crimson. 21st century schizoid man is a pretty crazy song.

One musician I've been listening to a lot lately is Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie. Think early 70s groove rock. Hes a really solid drummer .. sort of reminds me of certain Led Zeppelin tracks.

[Jice Virago]

The reason that some people from our generation 'fondly remember' the 70s is because they weren't actually listening to music in the late 60s and 70s.

Because of my family, I was heavily into music from a very early age. There was a fuckton of shitty music in the 60s and 70s... Music videos had nothing to do with your percieved deluge of shitty music in the 80s. There was just as much (if not more) shit in the 70s as there was in the 80s.

Ten years from now, there's gonna be kids waxing nostalgic about the music in the 80s and 90s, before "rap and R&B dominated the charts". Like back in the 90s when groups like Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Soundgarden were topping the charts with real music.


For every single album from the late 60s and early 70s that you think is brilliant, I could probably name 2 or 3 albums from the late 70s and early 80s that I think are even more brilliant.

I disagree, for a number of reasons. First off, Video really changed the nature of how people were exposed to music and moved the focus off of musicianship to performance. There were no shortage of shitty songs in the 60s and 70s (hi2u Disco), but the introduction of music videos as a marketting tool really greased the wheels for "eye candy" performers to completely dominate things. The Kate Bushes of the world were not going to get discovered once everyone could flip on MTV and jack off to Bananarama. Prior to the music video age, some truely non-photogenic motherfuckers were getting exposure, if their music was worth anything. There is no fucking way anyone like Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, or Bette Midler would ever break out in the business since that shift in the industry. Winnow's "Which female pop tart would you rather jack off to?" thread in general is basically this entire issue in a microcosm. Ever since that time, if you ever see some ugly motherfucker up on stage and selling records, its usually because he/she is someone who got started before the age of video, like Springsteen, Tom Petty, et al.

Don't get me wrong. Music has, like all art forms, style vs substance issues dating all the way back into the 1600s. Its just that style pretty much got put permanently in the driver's seat in the 80s and most of the remaining innovation was drained out of the industry, as a side result. Really, the only newer bands I can even stand to listen to that are mainstream usually are ones that sound like older bands I liked (Radiohead, Wolfmother, Muse) or are so counterculture that they are unairable (Tool, Mindless Self Indulgence, Queen's of the Stone Age).

[Aabidano]

Video really changed the nature of how people were exposed to music and moved the focus off of musicianship to performance.

I'd agree with you as far as the '80s- early '90s go, you think it's still the case? MTV, and video in general seem to have gone by the wayside. The marketing engine is still going strong, not quite sure what the outlet is though. Whatever it is, I don't seem to be seeing it.

Thinking about it a bit I'd guess most of the violent rappers you hear about are mostly showboating for album sales (they can't all be quite that stupid), so perhaps it's still the case to some extent.