Do you all agree when Prince said the 60s, 70s and 80s were the golden ages of music?

Oh my God, yes! Although only in my teens to 25 yrs old in the 80s, I can still remember sitting on a couch and thinking "The amount of real talent coming out of the woodwork is NOT normal". I didn't even think that deeply then, yet it was undeniable. Act after act could REALLY sing. No autotune or pitch correction. And the 70's? The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and on and on...
The 60's? So amazing as we see modern music forming more than ever. But the 90's and 2000's were commercial BS radio play to my ears. As a lover of rock, and hard rock, luckily the past 5 years has had some amazing gems mixed in with the trash! But yes ...60s, 70s, and 80s were the Golden years imo.

Well, Prince included a decade that includes himself, of course. Mick Jagger agrees with him, but the reason being that the period coincides with a window within which the landscape of recording technology and merchandising allowed artists to vastly profit from their work on a mass market scale. With the introduction of digitization, it’s no longer possible and artists today, like in the 30s, 40s, early 50s, etc must tour and perform live to generate most of their income. Except for the infinitely small few who break through with tens of millions of video views, YouTube doesn’t provide a sustainable income.

I see how this shift has affected my daughter who is a professional singer songwriter performer.

This window not coincidentally coincides with a certain generation. The one that includes those obsessed with audiophile quality…us here on audiogon.

I agree that it’s three decades but I’d move the needle: mid 50s to mid 80s. Some good stuff in the 50s.

Anyone who thinks Prince is overrated does not know what they are talking about. Prince is by no means a personal favorite of mine, but his genius is impossible to ignore. Lyrically, maybe meh, but the music is dense, textured, complex. And he played all the instruments himself, did his own engineering, etc. A formidable talent in any generation.

My father would argue that the Big Band era of the 30's & 40's was the "Golden Age" of music. We all (or most of us) prefer the music we grew up with thus there is no right answer.

I think there was great music in every era.I have alot Classical,Ja ,Rock and Soul...you can keep hip hop....

I've long felt that the best era for music was actually from around 1957 to 1967.
Buddy Holly, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Nat King Cole, Roy Orbison, Phil Spector, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Dylan, Donovan, the Who, the Velvet Underground, the Doors, Love, the Kinks, Hendrix, the Mamas and Papas, the Incredible String Band, the Byrds, the Hollies, the Moody Blues etc.

All within a period of 10 years or so!

I think it was the Beatles press officer Derek Taylor who once said that June 1st 1967, the release of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club, may well have the high water mark of not only popular music, but western civilization itself.

Perhaps a touch of hyperbole there, but you can see where he's coming from. I can imagine that it could have been a very expensive business trying to buy all the worthwhile vinyl back in '67.

For sure the 1970s (Led Zeppelin, Bowie, Springsteen, Sex Pistols, Joy Divison etc) and even the 1980s (the Smiths, the Pogues, U2 etc) certainly had their moments, but the emergence of first Disco and then Rap seemed to have changed forever the direction of the music industry.

I would say the late 50's, 60's and 70's .... stereo analog LP era.

I can not stand Prince by the way.

As a jazz fan, I would say the golden age was the 40s, 50s and 60s, sonically as well as musically.

Yes.

Somewhat agree....

  that 80’s pop synth tripe was horrible.

  
   Heavy metal is golden, I grew up during (as mentioned earlier)
the birth of metal, the heavier turn to thrash, death metal born in Tamps,  east coast,...overkill etc. west coast slayer, etc
the myriad of bands who made the 80s’ so special....
the imports, motorhead, onslaught, GBH, Venom,..The exploited, crossfire, Samson, Saxon, and the hundreds of other bands who swan the pond to make it big here.
the domestic megadeth, Hirax, forbidden, etc.....

 metal just about died when those Seattle morons hit the scene, with all those other northwest bands.. hair metal was dead, thrash was kept alive by a few select bands.


  I’m done, I’m tired.

 Metal is a gift from the Godz!

He was one heckuva guitar player. He played many instruments. And he’s absolutely right. Why? What era has as many actual hits?
And he’s referring to Motown too, for he grew up on Motown. And besides being surrounded by great songwriters Motown’s musical backbone was having music performed by jazz musicians. Rock can’t claim that. Only Motown can. The great James Jamerson was but one of these jazz musicians who created the music that became Motown. Barry Gordy was no fool. He knew where to find the best musicians for his recordings. The jazz night club. And that’s what Prince is referring to too. Real musicians performing on instruments at a high level. Know your stuff. As a non pro jazz pianist who began on trumpet, migrated to sax and bass, who eventually came to piano, I can relate.

Earl Palmer (New Orleans) and Jim Keltner (Tulsa) both come from Jazz backgrounds. Palmer is the drummer heard on Little Richard’s 1950’s Rock ’n’ Roll records, and on some of Phil Spector’s 1960’s procductions (along with Hal Blaine, also a Jazz guy originally). In the 1990’s I and a lot of other drummers went to Chadney’s in Burbank to listen to Earl play in his Jazz trio.

Keltner plays drums on a lot of Rock albums, including those by John Lennon, George Harrison, Ry Cooder, Bill Frisell (definitely a Jazz guitarist, but he dabbles in Americana), Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, The Traveling Wilbury’s, LOTS of others.

Zappa had lots of Jazz musicians in his band over the years, and Steely Dan did on their albums. Jeff Beck’s drummer Vinnie Colaiuta comes from Jazz, as did Toto’s Jeff Porcaro. Steve Smith of Journey too (he’s now back to playing that music). Guitarist Danny Gatton played Jazz AND Rockabilly. I could cite a hundred more examples. To say there are no Jazz players in Rock reveals ignorance, not superior taste or standards.

I would agree if he had left out the 80's.

@bdp24, I’m not suggesting there’s no rock guys who played jazz. But not all jazz players had equal talent. Jazz, like Motown, was black music. Jazz was created by blacks, The finest jazz players  were blacks. Bebop, the highest musical form of jazz, was created and played by nearly exclusively blacks. Yes, white musicians were most popular, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, because its mainly an all white population, but what they played was the dance music I.e. the soundtrack of the early 40’s.
Real talk. Jazz was created by blacks, and overtaken by whites after it was seen to be  a money maker because of the youth in the 40’s. And that’s why blacks in the mid 40’s created bebop. For in its time that’s the only way blacks could get a gig! We all know the racial dynamics that existed in the 40’s. Duke Ellington, Count Basie’s were doing a totally separate thing in the 30’s. You had to be a master of your instrument to play bebop.   
I’m sure there were a few white guys who could play some softer jazz. But clearly there are different levels of jazz talent. 

So far everyone agrees with Prince. Is a shame music just went downhill so badly in the 90s

"I'm not suggesting there's no Rock guys who played Jazz." True @coltrane1, you far more than suggested it:

"Motown's musical backbone was having music preformed by Jazz musicians. Rock can't claim that. Only Motown can."

By the way, James Jamerson, Jr. is my all-time favorite bassist. His playing on "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted" is absolutely thrilling! 

@bdp24, yes and Jamerson’s playing What’s going on while drunk and lying on his back is legendary. But Jamerson was a solid jazz player who played upright bass on a lot of Motown tunes. 
And what I meant was players of Motown actually used syncopated rhythms and jazz phrasing while playing on Motown music. That’s what made Motown music so different. You didn’t hear that type of phrasing on rock albums. I’m a jazz pianist, but there’s no confusion where the music of the jazz greats stands. I’m a huge fan of Dexter Gordon.

But check this out. Who was Prince? He was the son of jazz musicians. He could play everything. He gets my vote for one talented musician!

Seriously guys, what went wrong with music after the 80s? Music was everything to us in the 50s-80s and after that really. It just started to fall apart, many music genres went downhill then tol

Standard Boomer nonsense. @michaelsherry59 is nothing but a troll.

Standard Boomer nonsense. @michaelsherry59 is nothing but a troll.

Completely agreed.

@coltrane1: Give a listen to "Rag Mama Rag" by The Band. On this song pianist Richard Manuel takes Levon Helm’s place on the drumset, organist Garth Hudson moving over to piano. Hudson is very much a fan and student of Jazz (he loves the playing of Bill Evans. Who doesn’t? ;-), and on this song he displays his abilities in the "stride" style of piano playing, popularized by the likes of Fats Waller. And that's just one song on this "perfect" album.

When The Hawks (The Band’s name up until 1968) were playing the clubs in Toronto in the early-to-mid 1960’s, they were taking in shows of USA artists who were passing through town, artists such as Cannonball Adderley and Ray Charles. When The Band headlined a show at The Hollywood Bowl in 1970, they were given carte blanche to pick their opening act. They chose Miles Davis. I can’t think of another Rock band who would do that. Miles’ drummer Jack DeJohnette and Levon Helm became very close friends, and when DeJohnette himself headlined the 2017 Playboy Jazz Festival at The Hollywood Bowl, he included The Band’s "Up On Cripple Creek" in his set.

Also listen to The Band’s live album Rock Of Ages, recorded at The Academy Of Music in NYC. For those shows they hired Allen Toussaint to write horn charts for their songs, and to hire the players to perform them. The horns provide a real New Orleans (Toussaint’s hometown) feel, very cool.

Another Rock ’n’ Roll band with a heavy Jazz influence is NRBQ. Pianist Terry Adams is particularly fond of Thelonious Monk and Sun Ra. Terry himself plays with wild abandon live, pounding out wild runs on his electric piano and clavichord. If NRBQ ever comes to your area, don’t miss their show! One of the greatest live bands I’ve ever seen and heard. Most fun too.

"I think it was the Beatles press officer Derek Taylor who once said that June 1st 1967, the release of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club, may well have the high water mark of not only popular music, but western civilization itself."

Absurdly O.T.T. statement but what else would you expect, coming from a P. R. guy? 

S. Pepper's has got to be one of the most overrated albums in history, in terms of the quality of the actual songs.  

I couldn't agree more @stuartk. The album's cultural significance is one thing, it's music quite another. Reminds me of how Atlantic Records' President Ahmet Ertegun characterized Cream's Disraeli Gears album when he heard the tapes: "Psychedelic horsesh*t".

Rubber Soul is a much better album, as is Revolver and the s/t white album. As are The Band's first (1968) and second (1969) albums, but you already know that. ;-)

Sgt. Peppers is in fact an excellent album and may be the most consequential album of the sixties if not for decades thereafter. But for me, the American version of Rubber Soul was the album that did not have one bad note. My personal favorite.

Adding my 2 cents on the topic (which is about what it’s worth), there are studies that show that the music people listen to in adolescence has the strongest pull for them. So it makes sense for us to see these kind of opinions.
I sometimes joke with people there hasn’t been a decent piece of music composed in the last 80 years! ( mostly for their reaction).

But I think the technology of auto tune/midi editing/protools has to be brought into any discussion of the evolution of music.

You literally need no vocal ability or training to sing anymore. The craft of musicianship is no longer required to make “music.” No timing is needed either as you can just snap a performance to the midi grid, or take that one bar performed well and just copied and pasted into the rest of the composition.  Perhaps we’re in an era of a new form of art/poetry. It takes the form of musical expression, but it certainly bears little resemblance to the Coltrane I’m currently listening to.
Back in its heyday, I was no fan of disco. I liked dance for sure, funk, a lot of the stuff Talking heads was doing, etc. Today I can appreciate the disco era as it had real musicianship behind it (the session players often having a jazz background).

There are studies that show children growing up listening to complex music have better math and language skills. Of course it could be due to better educated parents exposing kids to more complex music, so who knows.
But I really feel that different minds crave repetitive music or familiar vs. more complex or perhaps unfamiliar music. As I age I definitely can’t listen to much in 4/4 time for long. I crave complexity and challenge, be it some unfamiliar classical or opera while driving, some new avant- gardi-ish jazz (I recently discovered Ben Goldberg) or unearthed Zappa shows.

At Grateful Dead shows, I noticed a similarity to what I hear in Temple. The same songs people hear and sing to over and over again. It’s comforting, it’s a ritual, and I get it.
The human brain developed to rely on echolalia, as a way of learning language, but that same process gets musical patterns stuck in our reverberatory memory. Ever had that crap ad jingle stuck in your head? Well I feel all music works the same way for most. You hear something a bunch of times and it just sticks. Combine that with biological development and peer pressure/preference, and boom, we have our musical tastes formed.
This is probably not the case for many reading this forum. We are the oddballs of society that place a massive premium on making music the focus, not just a narration for our activities. I believe the audiophile brain has its reward system more wired into the auditory center than most, hence our musical appetite will tend to be broader than most.
Finally I like to point out one of favorite newer artists (though not so new anymore) doing exemplary work in the pop arena. Regina Spektor. She grew up listening to classical and jazz in Russia and that’s why her pop music (or at least her early stuff) was so good. What kind of music might one make growing up listening to the likes of a Kanye, the latest corporate rocker or pop songs with the complexity of a nursery rhyme meant for young children?
As far as Prince, I had seen him live a few times and am partial to his album Sign of the Times, which I consider to be a cohesive artistic statement.

@emailists  +1, Agree with everything with exception of my mind can crave both the familiar and repetitive, and the complex and new within a singular listening session. In fact I suspect every listening session meanders in this way.
Nostalgia likely correlates greatly with favored music, new experiences allied to adolescence creates powerful emotional responses that stick with us for life. I retained strong attachment to music of my adolescence for many years, still, always open minded to new forms of music my entire life. Finally, there came a point when I intellectually analyzed this attachment to music of my youth, ever since then I've been less nostalgic about that music. Funny, but now I hear music from that time with new ears/mind, listening to the music rather than the memory.

'Rubber Soul is a much better album, as is Revolver and the s/t white album. As are The Band's first (1968) and second (1969) albums, but you already know that. ;-)"

YES!  

"But I really feel that different minds crave repetitive music or familiar vs. more complex or perhaps unfamiliar music"

Yes. . . 

"We are the oddballs of society that place a massive premium on making music the focus, not just a narration for our activities. I believe the audiophile brain has its reward system more wired into the auditory center than most, hence our musical appetite will tend to be broader than most.".

Richard Thompson dubbed the US a "culture-free zone". 

I really wish the moderators would simply remove any and all political references, here. 

What you mean is you wish they would remove everything you disagree with. Isn't that the way censorship always works? Somebody gets to decide what everyone else gets to think. Only reason you would suggest that is out of the arrogance that what they will decide we are okay to think is what you already think. In other words you want to be the one to decide. Only you won't come out and say it. So you pretend to believe in your moderated utopia. 

There's a reason that word literally means "no-where", you know?

Okay fellas, I listened to the band’s 1968 and 1969 LPG’s on YouTube. Being a Motown and jazz guy I wasn’t inspired by any of their tunes. And why were they playing previously published hit tunes by other rock artists? I didn’t find any reference to “jazz” artistic accomplishments. Simply classic rock. But hey, everyone’s got a different sense of what defines great music, and great musicians. At least give me some Carol King, who began as a songwriter of countless hits in New York. All simply my opinion.

Yes @coltrane1, The Band are too subtle for some listeners. They were for me, it taking me a year of listening to finally "get" Music From Big Pink. Perhaps you need to listen to them some more, or perhaps you, like some musicians I know, will never get them. No pejorative implications intended.

As for "previously published hit tunes", what the heck are ya talkin' bout? The s/t brown album contains 100% Band member composed songs. So does Music From Big Pink, with the exception of

1- "Tears Of Rage", co-written by Band pianist/singer Richard Manuel and Bob Dylan. Dylan rarely writes with anyone else, a sign of the respect he had for Manuel's songwriting talent.

2- "I Shall Be Released', written by Bob Dylan during the year (1967) he and The Band (then still known as The Hawks) spent recording publishing demos in the basement of Big Pink. They contributed to the development of the song, so imo have some right to consider it part of their original repertoire.

3- "Long Black Veil", recorded by Country & Western artist Left Frizzell (hardly a "Rock artist") long before The Band did. They included the song on MFBP for an artistic reason, the explaining of which would take up too much time and space.

So, of the 23 songs included in their first two albums, none was a "previously published hit tune by other Rock artists". I mean, unless you consider Lefty Frizzell a Rock artist, and "Long Black Veil" a "hit tune". 

Millercarbon, 

Thomas More may have coined the word from the Greek “ou-topics”, but he meant it as a pun, since the Greek “eu-topos” means “a pleasant place”. So I think you are not entirely on solid ground. 

"What you mean is you wish they would remove everything you disagree with."

No, what he means is that this is a forum for audio related comments/ questions - NOT politics.

@unreceiveddogma  Yes, I believe he's thinking, incorrectly, of Samuel Butler's "Erewhon".

No I do not agree. There's been loads of great rock and pop music produced in every decade. You might not LIKE all of it, but that's a different story; one person's 'great' is another person's 'crap'. It's all good as long as you enjoy it.  

There's some really good blues out there right now.  Recent artists I'm spinning include Joe Bonamassa (one of the best live performances I've seen,  Fox Theatre, Atlanta, 2020), Beth Hart, Samantha Fish, Albert Cummings, Walter Trout, even Poppa Chuby... yes, the blues are alive and well in 2021.

Oh, BTW if you ever find yourself in Cleveland (can't imagine why...R/R hall of fame, totally worth it)

Prince, is that Michael Jackson’s sons name!??.