Tuesday Refugee Roundtable: The Greatest Musical Generation

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I was grilling out at our little beach rental this past week and had a conversation with my father in law about what music he listened to when he was growing up. We had a bit of a discussion there about what was the greatest musical period of time in the US (it was Fourth of July) and we both settled on the 70s.

It had it all: soul, funk, rock, yacht rock, new wave…and horn bands like my personal favorite, The Tower of Power:

Since I was a saxophonist, Lenny Pickett was my musical hero. The man could do amazing things on a tenor saxophone, from hitting impossibly high notes to circular breathing where he could play a long continuous series of notes without pausing for a breath. I loved the horn bands, from TOP to Chicago, Earth, Wind, and Fire, to Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

Beyond that you had a host of other great rock bands to choose from, and most of my early years of listening to LPs involved the sounds of the 70s.

So what say you? What was the greatest era of music of all time? Who were your most memorable and impactful artists from the era?

40 thoughts on “Tuesday Refugee Roundtable: The Greatest Musical Generation”

  1. mid 60’s to mid 80’s. That period had everything for every genre.

  2. I’d agree with your 70’s pick…you had a fantastic melting of r&b into rock which now most of us call classic rock with so many layers and genres…my personal favorite.

    The 60’s were interesting though because of the counterculture movement and the role music played in it. Not just the hippie Haight-Ashbury stuff, but even the civil rights movement…Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come as an example…or The Band’s Music From Big Pink in 1968

  3. I would say 70’s for me too. For me best band Boston. I know Tom Sholtz did all the music but did bring a band together to play it. Also, liked a lot of Motown.

  4. Yep, 70’s. I bet your college roommate had something to do with the tower of power experience.

    I will never get tired of Chicago, BST, Steely Dan, and throw Pat Metheny in as a bridge to the ‘80’s. “Smooth jazz went awfully wrong considering how it started.

    • James and I shared a mutual love of the band, but my uncle influenced me the most towards them. When I started playing in junior high he shared a horn band mix tape and TOP was the featured one…wore that cassette out. He was a bass player and lead singer for a horn band in Columbus named The Soul Proprietors. Great guy and very influential in my development as a musician.

  5. I love the early 70’s and classic rock/metal from that era, but I think it is hard to beat 90-95 for overall great music from several genres. Soundgarden, Garth Brooks, Chili Peppers, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, REM, Beck, Rage Against the Machine, Snoop, Pearl Jam, Madonna, Aerosmith, the Stones, Metallica, Johnny Cash, Travis Tritt, Alan Jackson….you name it, all had big albums with airplay.

    • oh, boy, I can see the blowback from the old heads coming your way… I appreciate you reppin us… The 70s is hard to beat… But give me that grunge sound all day.

    • Lol, I almost got my grill punched in last year before we went to see the Chili Peppers. I reminded my friend Blood Sugar Sex Magic has been around longer in time than the Beatles had been when we were in High School.

        • Saw the Peppers in Atlanta a few years back right after Frusciante came back and they played Sir Psycho Sexy. Crowd went wild.

      • I know I’m the old guy but no single band has even come close to the influence, creativity and cultural significance of Beatles from the 60’s until today. Their impact on the zeitgeist, fashion, television, cinema and every genre of music is unrivaled. The Beatles creativity and output is astounding. I know people like to say ‘so and so’ charted more singles or broke their sales records. When the Beatles were recording there was no such thing as the internet and distribution channels were painfully limited. Yet people found their way to record shops and bought the vinyl. The band literally could not perform in public because their shows caused riots and overwhelmed police and other public services. You may think you’ve seen something like it but you haven’t. You honestly have no idea unless you lived through it.

        Beyond that, there was much about the 70’s that sucked in terms of living life in general. But the music really was tremendous. Often, it was the only thing that got me through.

        • Can’t argue about the Beatles. Three guys who could write, play, and sing and a drummer who still influences the art.

  6. It’s the 80s for me. While I listened to CCR and Doobie Brothers and many others of that era with my dad when I was young, the advent of MTV and the next 6-8 years of music after that was the best. In my very humble opinion, 1984 and 1985 were the two greatest music years ever.

    Grunge was great when it first came out, but I got sick of it pretty quickly. I was at the Pearl Jam concert at Legion Field in ’92. That was amazing, but I’ll be honest. I went there to see Follow For Now, the opening band. I didn’t know any Pearl Jam songs before that night. After that, you couldn’t go anywhere on campus for nearly a year without hearing someone playing Ten.

    • FFN were awesome! Great live band that never really got their due. Saw them in a tiny club in Melbourne FL in the early 90’s. My ears are still ringing.

      • I wish I still had my huge floor speakers to listen to FFN and Prodigy. These little bluetooth speakers just can’t do them justice.

  7. I became a real music fan in the 80s, so that’s still my favorite era. I grew to love 60s and 70s rock during my time in Athens on the front porch of my frat house. I started listening to mostly country in the late 80s through the 90s.

    Therefore, I think the answer to this question is highly correlated to your era of coming of age – teen/young adult.

    • I’m with you EE. Where you were in your life at different ages. Hell, I liked songs from the 60’s – 2000’s. However as a teen in the mid 70’s I’d have to go with 70’s, 80 and some 90’s. It’s hard to beat the 70’s though. You had a wide Varity with Zeppelin, Chicago, Boston, Frampton, Styx, REO. You could chill with the women and be smooth listening to Bread, Poco, ambrosia. You had your Southern Rock with Allman Brothers, Skynyrd, Bad Company, 38 Special and one of my favorites – Marshall Tucker Band. Funk Rock with, Sly, Rick James, Ohio Players, Earth-Wind-Fire, Mother’s Finest. Even the country music was good then, Willie, Waylon, The Possum, Conway Twitty and Hank Jr. No, I’d definitely have to go with the 70’s.

      • I’m with you on everything you said except the country. I just never could get into that kind of music.

  8. Having grown up in the 60’s high school and college, I still think the 70’s were the bomb. Soul music was great and all but 70’s equals hard rock.

  9. Mid 60s to mid 80s. Great variety, and musicians. Late 80s pop went downhill. Grunge, alternative. Bristol soud revived the 90s and pretty much anything on the radio declined in the 00s. Good music is being recorded but the record people and radios don’t want you to know about it.

    Stations like 99x revive an era but play only a fraction of what made the error great. They’re overplaying band like classic rock stations overplayed Led Zep and AC/DC. If you stream 97.1 HD2 the River hasn’t had commercials and does a far better job with the 90s, more 1 hit wonders. After listening to interviews with producers and bands, stations went from independant businesses with the DJ more free to play what they liked to central control. Will Pendarvis survived the mergers, and he always annoyed me. Love to hear more on that.

  10. 60’s to 70’s. Rules were being broken, FM radio upended the AM standard, experimentation was welcomed and given a chance to grow, and as a result, we got some incredible music that really didn’t exist before.

    All music is derivative, but I think the 60’s-70’s gave more room for wild creativity.

  11. I don’t think one decade is necessarily better than others but do think certain longer-term periods are. And for popular music, I pick the mid-60s to the mid-80s. The mid- to late 60s saw a great deal of creative experimentation and a new foundation for popular music. The 70s saw refinements and an increasing number of sub-genres. The 80s saw increasing reliance on what had come out of the previous two decades but much of that output avoided being derivative and was unique in its own right.

    There was some good popular music before 1965 and there’s been some good music since 1985 but not as much as there was during that time.

  12. I would say seventies and now. There is more great music being made now than at any point in my life. And the internet makes it very accessible. The thing is a lot of people don’t know it because they don’t look. There is more good country music being made now than there has been in forty years. But people swear there isn’t because all they listen to is terrestrial radio. You play a Sturgill Simpson, Cody Jinks, Tyler Childers etc etc etc song for them and they won’t listen to it because it’s not sanctioned by Nashville. Leading horses to water and all that.

    It’s like Derek saying Driveby Truckers are a hippie band. What the fuck? Clearly has never heard them. Tons of great music being made now.

    If you like horns etc give Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears a listen. Start with the songs Sugarfoot and Scandalous.

  13. I hate grunge so much and I’m forty seven. Whiney ass music made by dudes who thought they were way cooler than they were. Todd Snider’s Post Seattle Grunge Rock Blues captures that scene and time period in all of its preposterosity, cringe worthiness, and silliness. Country from that era mostly sucked too. Garth Brooks seemed like he was trying to destroy it. Arena country like him and the ones aping him brought us Luke Bryan and bro country. No thanks. Nineties music is horrible to me.

  14. Well our founder would certainly have said the 60’s with his penchant for folk rock. Quiet Riot’s “Metal Health” was the kind of primal scream energy I needed to cleanse my soul of that and the ABBA-Doobie 70’s radio play noise. Give me hard and loud from Nugent, Zeppelin, AC/DC Aerosmith, Hair Metal and now bro country or let me listen and mourn the loss of SRV and pray someone like him can reappear.

    Before you discount my taste understand I appreciate all genres of music from time to time but I use music mostly to pump up my mood. Speaking of which…is Munson’s greatest calls not a musical genre all of its own?

  15. I have to say the 60’s set the stage for the great music y’all like so much. That decade brought the British Invasion with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, etc., as well as the Wall of Sound and Motown-the Temptations, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Otis Redding, Marvin Gay, Wilson Pickett, and, of course, The Godfather of Soul, James Brown. And the greatest American group EVER-the Beach Boys! This was the foundation, the best decade! Steppenwolf and Ike and Tina Turner (with the Iketts) played at the UGA Coliseum.

  16. Just give me the 70’s and 80’s music with the lead guitar and good singing harmony.

    Usually in the sing along in Sandford most all fans know the songs word for word, even the students. Then last year they played some music to sing along with and the only people that knew it were the students. Usually, most fans are involved until this music that no one knew. Fans were standing around stoic.

  18. The correct answer is the 80s, and I will die on that hill.

    I dig me some 70s tunes, and I like your rationale, however, that rationale better applies to the 80s — which are, forever and always, the greatest musical decade of all time. The 80s truly did have everything:

    New wave
    Funk
    Disco
    Pop
    Hair bands
    Death metal
    Electronic
    Punk
    Goth
    Rock
    College rock
    Country
    Rap

    I’m probably forgetting some, but you can pick any of the above and I can find you multiple examples from the 80s that trump anything from any other decade.

    Hell, just the soundtracks from the 80s alone are enough to claim victory in this debate. 80s music was so good that they produced multiple trash movies purely for the soundtrack (Purple Rain, anyone?)

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