Decades…

Now this is truly a topic for thought. As a fan of modern music, I can really only take the last five decades of the twentieth century into account. The first five decades were pretty boring with a bunch of boring grandpas doing the Charleston to music that sounded like it was coming out of a tin can. Then there's this decade, but you truly need to have the whole decade behind you to look at it in retrospect. So here's my thoughts on the pop relevance of each decade.

The 50's - The decade that birthed rock 'n' roll, the bastard love child of previous popular musics of it's time. It's basically what happened when a bunch of country-western playing crackers heard some black bluesmen playing and said "We can do that." This decade produced such notables as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Sun Recording Artists (Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Weylan Jennings), and gave us the first pop radio sensation in "The Twist".

The 60's - A tumultuous decade that, much like the 20's Jazz Age, seemed to be shaped just as much by the music as it was the political climate. We start to see a return to older musics, in some cases hundreds of years, in the folk music movement. This fad introduces us to Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Of course leave us not forget the Beatles. Honestly I think they're incredibly overrated, but the court of public opinion says there the greatest creation that man has ever beheld, so I guess that's something. Then there's the Rolling Stones. While I don't think the Beatles should be canonized, I have to give them credit for branching out, and pioneering new sounds. The Rolling Stones pretty much stuck to one formula, but churned out great music using that one formula. It's a classic argument; which is better, dynamism or stasis?

On the West Coast of the United States you had the psychedelic scene which gave us Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, and the Mamas and the Papas.

There are also some R&B greats to come out of this era. The most important, without a doubt would be the founding of Motown Records. A hit machine, they churned out The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and the Jackson Five amongst others. Phil Spector perfects his "Wall of Sound" formula on countless girl groups. Ike and Tina Turner make their debut.

This decade gives us some great guitar heroes as well. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, all incredible guitarists who surfaced in the 60's.

The 70's - I have to say that I'm on board with Stone on this one, this is my personal favorite decade, but is it the best? The 70's was a strange decade for the country. We were for the most part jaded and hung over from the party that was the 60's. Hope of radical revolution just sort of extinguished. We lost the values but we kept the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. This decade was perhaps best known for the hard rock bands that dominated the airwaves. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Allman Brothers, David Bowie, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Lynard Skynard, Aerosmith, The Eagles... I could go on all day. The 70's also saw the birth of Heavy Metal with Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest, Van Halen, Motorhead... the pioneers of this outrageous genre all started here.

There's also Disco, which while shitty, did lay out the rudiments of Hip Hop, and was an interesting experiment. Disco's dark mirror image would have to be Punk. If Disco was a shitty music that laid the groundwork for great music, then Punk was an equally short-lived music form that was interesting but laid the groundwork for a lot of crap that would follow it. Seriously, while the Sex Pistols are great, I'd rather chop off my own ding dong than listen to Blink-182.

The 80's - Honestly Mikey... The 80's had a lot of good stuff? I'll give you Hip Hop, Prince and Michael Jackson... But other than that this decade was pretty much just background music for gay dudes to snort coke off of each others cocks to, hollow music for hollow people. Even great artists from previous decades did their worst work in the 80's. There were a lot of pretty cool rock acts in the Metal scene... Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Motley Crue just to name a few, but 90% of the Metal produced in the 80's was terrible as well.

The 90's - The 90's kinda makes me giggle these days. As a knee-jerk response to the "me decade", everyone felt it was really important to take up a cause, and be an activist for something. But no one stopped to think that these causes were just as shallow as the decade they were trying to escape from. Honestly, which cause are you more likely to take up and protest for, The spotted owl not having a place to nest, or not having your ass shipped off against your will to some third world hell-hole and shot by native people who don't want you there?

This decade was a bunch of whiners with nothing to whine about, and it was reflected in the music. Who amongst us can forget Eddie Vedder scrawling "pro choice" on his arm in Sharpie marker during Pearl Jam Unplugged. Way to stand up for a Supreme Court decision that has no chance of being overturned without decades of red tape, that's sticking it to the Man. Or how about Kurt Kobain who's rock star lifestyle was so bad that he had to complain about it on songs like "Serve the Servants" and eventually made him blow his head off. Most people call the music in the early part of the 90's "The Grunge Movement". I prefer to call it Complaint Rock. These songs were just dark and depressing for the sake of being dark and depressing, all under the pretentious air of being socially responsible and politically correct. Gag me.

Now Hip Hop on the other hand went in the exact opposite direction. With the rise to popularity of West Coast Rap, most notably Death Row Records stable of artists (Tupac, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, et al.), artists were rapping about themselves, and what they could gain at any costs. While I don't condone that world view, I can respect the fact that they knew who they were, and they were honest about it.

The industrial music scene had some interesting moments as well. Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, while these guys were a bunch of nihilists, at least they weren't pretending to care about something.

The decade closed in a surge of Nu Metal, and Rap/Rock that I feel is best typified by the actions of the fans of this music at Woodstock '99: a bunch of drunken fratboy cave men beating each other up and lighting shit on fire.

The Nineties can best be summed up by a line from what I feel is the ultimate '90's movie: Fight Club. "We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives." That's a good summation of the '90's in my opinion.

I went into this rant thinking I was gonna declare the 70's the greatest decade for music ever, but as I was writing this and looking at each decade, I changed my mind. I gotta go with the 60's. I think it had the most going on socially and politically, which led to the most going musically. The 50's were "meh..". The 70's were fun. The 80's were lame. The 90's just make me mad now that I stop to think about it. Make mine the 60's.