The best/your favorite year in rock?

[porcy62]

Hard to say. If I look for in my LP collection I can find several important album for every year from 'Freewhelin' to 'London Calling', and in my cd collection there are big shots like Nirvana. For my musical life it was 1977, Talking Head and Clash to start my trip up and down the R'n R timeline.

Maybe in the history I would say 1966-1970.

[JSngry]

Tossup between '66 & '67 for me, but I finally went with '67 because of the Top 40 hits. More meat, less cereal. But it's a damn close call.

1967 was also the year that the album really began to be the main expressive outlet for most rock artists. It had been brewing & bubbling for a while (and some great singles bands like Creedence came afterwards), and 1966 was the prequake tremor , but after the massive impact of SGT. PEPPER, it was official.

But besides that - radio was still a singles medium in 1967, and the singles that year were great.

Check out these lists:

http://www.oldiesloon.com/il/wls89of67.htm

http://musicradio.computer.net/Top1967.html

http://www.popculturemadness.com/Music/Top55-Plus/1967.html

http://www.knuftcom.com/topsongs/countdown.php?year=1967

http://musiclab.co.jp/billboard/at/no1hc/top40hits_1967.html

Especially, check out that last one. Hell, even most of the crap was cool!

Edited April 10, 2005 by JSngry

[paul secor]

I guess one old timer had to log in.

1957 for me - I clearly remember being home sick with the flu in November, 1957. I saw Chuck Berry on tv doing "Rock and Roll Music" and then Jerry Lee doing "Great Balls of Fire", and I was hooked.

[Shawn]

Well, these choices didn't really contain any of my favorite years...so I would have to say...

1968-1975

[Tony Pusey]

I took 67, though 68 was almost as good- Quicksilvers Happy Trails anyone?

[BFrank]

I took 67, though 68 was almost as good- Quicksilvers Happy Trails anyone?

Great album!

Doesn't change my vote, though.

[A Lark Ascending]

1969-1972

Can't exactly remember the exact dates of releases but that period had the music that was the foundation of my musical taste - King Crimson, Soft Machine, Caravan, Neil Young, CSN&Y, Fairport, Nick Drake, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Traffic, Free, Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, Chicago and many, many more.

Lots of favourites before; some significant favourites in the 1974-6 period with only early REM and XTC making much impact beyond '76.

But there was something loose and folky about that 69-72 period that still draws me back.

[7/4]

:rsmile:

[JSngry]

There's probably a whole sociological study just waiting to be done on the differences between those who grew up with rock as a singles medium and those who grew up with rock as an album medium, to say nothing of those like myself who had it both ways.

Truthfully, as much as I dig the album thing, there's a certain "perfection" to a really great single that you can't duplicate any other way.

[BFrank]

Interesting point, Jim. It looks like we may have come full circle on that, actually. With all the downloading and so forth, people seem much more "tune" oriented than "album" oriented. They just load up their iPod/MP3 players, put them on "shuffle" (or a customized "playlist"), and listen to a set of previously unrelated songs.

Having discovered music in the mid-to-late 60's, I grew up with the rise of FM radio and album-oriented listening. I guess that's why I still prefer to listen that way. I always like to think that there is some method to the producer's/artist's madness when putting together a set of tunes.

[JohnJ]

Have to go with 1967 just for the Velvets amazing debut.

[Randy Twizzle]

The year Jimi played Monterey

[JSngry]

Interesting point, Jim. It looks like we may have come full circle on that, actually. With all the downloading and so forth, people seem much more "tune" oriented than "album" oriented. They just load up their iPod/MP3 players, put them on "shuffle" (or a customized "playlist"), and listen to a set of previously unrelated songs.

Having discovered music in the mid-to-late 60's, I grew up with the rise of FM radio and album-oriented listening. I guess that's why I still prefer to listen that way. I always like to think that there is some method to the producer's/artist's madness when putting together a set of tunes.

Yeah, it definitely seems like we've returned to pop as a primarily singles medium. People who criticize today's pop for it's vapidity are usually correct, but they're also missing the point of what the object of the game is - it's not to create a memorable album, it's to create a single that will stick in the ear and empty the wallet. Albums are besides the point (or should be!) for many of these acts. It's ear candy, pure and simple.

I do think, though, that the producers of singles "back in the day" put as much thought, effort, and consideration into the crafting of a single as today's producers/artists do into an album. That's why so many of those "golden oldies" still shine - they're perfectly crafted miniatures. Plus, if you've had the "pleasure" of buying any singles-era rock/pop albums, you'll see that the albums, more often than not, consisted of the single(s) and a bunch of auxillary filler. The singles were generally well-crafted songs and productions, and the filler, uh.... wasn't.

It's funny how stuff like this comes full circle. 20th century American opular music was always based on individual songs, from the days of sheet music to the advent of 78s, on into the era of 45s. Rock (as well as Country) was very late in adopting albums as a serious medium relative to other musics, probably because the mindset of the artists and the industry both was still in "song" mode - you sold the song, pure and simple. The album thing is something else entirely, even when there's hit singles involved. Different mindset, different set of creative skills, etc. Relative to the "big picture", the album era might well be percieved as an abberation rather than the norm. Now, with the concept of "music on the go", the i-Pod has become many peoples' personal jukebox, and we're right back to the 78 era, only in digital form.

And the beat goes on...

[chris olivarez]

1969 was the year for me.After the tragedy that was 1968 I was a sorely in need of a lift and the music provided it-the first Santana,John Mayall's "Turning Point",Colosseum,Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation are just a few that come to mind and Miles Davis was just around the corner for me.

[BFrank]

Maybe the "album" IS an aberration. I hadn't thought of that. Still......I like to listen to music in the order that it was released. I usually don't care for "best of's" or collections (not that there's anything WRONG with them. ).

FWIW, I just recently picked up the remastered version of Mayall's "Turning Point". I has been a favorite of mine since it came out. Now with the extra tracks.....even better.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Sure, one can think of the high point in creativity as an aberration - see this quote from Bill Bruford (who applies that exact term not to the album but to rock in general):

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After a brief aberration in the late 60’s and 70’s, rock music has reverted to type, namely in that it is the preserve of the song writer, record producer, and record company, and is an area generally hostile to the ideas of a free thinking instrumentalist. That is probably as it should be, but it means the purveyors of the marginal fringe ideas that fuelled rock in the aberrant post-Beatles era, the people who brought Indian music, classical music, psychedelia, jazz, minimalism, and the like, in short all the things that made rock interesting, have been booted out, back to where they came from, branded as the meddlers they indeed were. I went back to jazz. There, the relationship is between performer and audience, as indeed it is in small intelligent rock, rather than performer and record company, as it is in the mass market. Waiting for someone at the "label", who neither knows anything about nor cares for music, to give you permission to play, is of course, insufferable.

-----------

Is it possible to create "singles" (and albums and pop/rock music) that are sophisticated and creative? Absolutely. In theory. But, as I've written at length elsewhere, it ain't happening. The progress that was made in the late 1960s and 1970s has not been maintained, let alone furthered.

Mike

[chris olivarez]

Sad but true Mike.

[Brandon Burke]

1967.

[danasgoodstuff]

I picked '66 since, as someone who was around then albiet quite young, it was the last time that had a sense of endlessly expanding possibility to me. Maybe it's 'cause I was just listening to Nuggets, but to me there were a lot of possibilities that were never fully explored. And no, I'm not much of a fan of later things inspired by that period, you really can't go back. At the time, I probably thought like everyone else that '67 was even better, a further expasion into new realms, but in retrospect it seems like the begining of the new orthadoxy, one I didn't care for, something I remember thinking by '68 however inchoately. Of course things don't come in neat bundles clearly demarkated by calender year, but... And while it may seem strange to pick a year often seen as transitional between more more easily identifiable 'styles' (I think style fixated criticism is a huge mistake), for me the transitoriness of this period is part of the glory of POP, which I use here in the broad sense that includes rock, R&B, C&W, etc. Or maybe it's just that when you're at the North Pole, all directions are south...