How did 70s rock music transition into 80s music?

You say a lot of things that make sense, but to me the rock music of the early and mid Seventies simply didn't have the drive and energy that is so crucial to the genre. The music became obsessively self-absorbed. It was more interested in virtuosity, grandiosity...or to put it less kindly, noodling, than in getting us to shake various parts of our body...including our fists. It was an absolute revelation for me to hear the bands that came out of New York in that period, such as The Ramones, The Talking Heads and Television. I was in seventh heaven the first time I heard the Sex Pistols.  I danced like a crazed loon around my tiny single apartment. I started haunting the Whiskey on the Sunset Strip to hear the bands that came out. After years of being strictly an acoustic guy, I bought a twangy Tele. Not a bloop-dee-doodle-do, ain't I cool Les Paul.

@bdp24  Were you sneaking a look at my LP shelf?

I’ve probably said this a half-dozen times before on various threads, but sometimes you just have to rely on your subjective impulse and ignore the intellectual folderol we so often use to bolster our arguments on art & music. When I worked in the movie biz reading & evaluating movie scripts and other literary material for possible filming, the head of the studio would sometimes phone me up and simply ask, "Is it good?"

By the same token, though, it can definitely be fun as heck to dutifully count the angels on the head of that pin.

mitchagain -- Thanks for bringing up Be Bop Deluxe. I might have mentioned all this in a long-ago thread, but I enjoyed the heck out of them. Bill Nelson remains one of my favorite guitar players. Virtuosity to spare but decidedly un-serious. Another of the fret-flyers that got me into shopping for an electric guitar. Saw the band at the Santa Monica Civic. As the concert wound down, Bill Nelson promised to play until we asked them to stop. I hate to say it, but in the middle of one more endless waddly-widdly guitar solo my feet decided to to wander back to my car.. One too many hot licks for this poor guy to take.

@simonmoon -- Hey, I was a regular at Moby's. Excellent selection and interesting stuff played on the store's hi-fi. I may be imagining things, too, but do I remember a very interesting if small selection of classical?

In the late Seventies and early Eighties, I did my best to find and listen to any band that didn't have hair down to their feet and that played endless blues solos. Short hair became as rebellious as long hair was just a few years before, and I truly reveled in the energy the short-haired bands wrought. My long-haired buddies thought I'd turned Republican when, to paraphrase David Crosby, I didn't "almost cut my hair." Then I saw a photo of the long-haired Ramones...uh, er, uh...