I consider the 70's more intriguing than the 60's in some ways from a socio-music point of view. 1972, for instance, saw both Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick and Yes's Close To The Edge shooting straight to the top of the Billboard 200 for a time that year. And by that point Emerson, Lake and Palmer were well on their way to superstardom also: they'd be selling out arenas left and right until the end of the decade despite how pretentious, lengthy and overblown many of their works are.

Anyway, I think the former of the two albums mentioned (Thick As A Brick) is of particular curiosity because it's basically a 44 minute suite that got cut in half because of the vinyl format, and yet it was both a critical and commercial smash hit: were people's attention spans really that much better in my parent's generation than today?

Although I'm pointing out the obvious here, music like that isn't marketed to as wide a range of demographics as it used to be, if at all. It's a curious phenomenon that seems to be unique to that decade.

It's weird how these ''creatively stagnant" decades have so much more musical diversity than the 60s.

You take that back. You take that back right now.

+1, it's about accessing it. You have the choice out there to listen to what you want. No one is making you listen to anything you might find crap.

But no one wore tye-dye and ****ed in public parks, how can that be possible?

You've never seen a Phish fan? :laughing:

I'm not calling them creatively stagnant, just in comparison to the 60s they were creatively stagnant. Also, my point wasn't so much that the 60s had so much more diversity than other decades, it's just that the growth of musical diversity happened in such a comparatively short amount of time. It saw some of the best moments in jazz, various genres of rock, popular folk music, and the beginnings of other genres such as the minimalist movement, proto-punk, etc. For example, compared to the 60s, I would call the 80s culturally stagnant. Of course, this is in comparison. I wouldn't really call any decade culturally stagnant in it's own regard.

Yeah, we can definitely agree on this.

I agree with most of your points. Maybe we disagree just because most of what I listen to is from the 60s/70s. I still firmly believe that certain decades see a greater output of better quality music than other decades. I mean, proof that creatively stagnant (comparatively) eras exist in the first place is the Dark Ages. I don't see how this can't be applied to music as well.

unfortunately I have.

That aside, Phish fans absolutely think the 60's were better. And I'll roll the dice on them believing the Dead are better than Phish.

The notion of Dark Ages has long been debunked. That there was a period of 'darkness' after the glorious Classical antiquity is a Renaissance construction. We call that period Middle Ages now and although the term points out to the connection of Renaissance to Classical world, it doesn't imply that the period was creatively stagnant. We now know that Renaissance owes a lot to the Middle Ages almost as much as to Classical Antiquity.

The way I see it, there are periods that see creative explosions in the short span of time (I agree with that), but what comes after that is not creatively stagnant. On the contrary, those periods usually present further development of new ideas, more linear development and most importantly, more focused. Creative explosions carry some chaos with them, what comes afterwards is crystallizing and fulfilling of potentials. When it comes to music, I see another creative explosion, beside 60s, that also lasted for a short time - punk/new wave/post-punk period. In the light of what I said above, I see the 80s as a further development and fulfillment of those new ideas, so definitely not stagnant.

Some of them, yeah. Most of the phans I've encountered at shows have been way more into the contemporary jam scene, a la Bisco, STS9, String Cheese Incident, RAQ, Tea Leaf Green, etc.

And also - Phish fans HATE Dead comparisions; Phish is nothing like Grateful Dead.