66 - 71
For what Martin Mull called The Big Folk Music Scare of the Sixties.
Geez. . . I guess 1976-1981.
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Kansas’ Leftoverture, the first 4 Tom Petty albums, Queen’s A Night at the Opera (released in November’75, but played heavily throughout '76), Heart’s Dreamboat Annie, Hotel California, Bat Out of Hell, Frampton Comes Alive!, The Wall, the first 4 David Lee Roth-era Van Halen albums, the first 3 Dire Straits albums, the first 4 ‘The Cars’ albums, the first 2 Boston albums, 4 Bob Seger studio albums and Live Bullet. . .
and I’ve hardly scratched the surface.
1998-2003.
Rasputina’s How We Quit The Forest. Type O Negative’s World Coming Down. Tori Amos’ From the Choir Girl Hotel. Anything Pearl Jam did. Depeche Mode’s Ultra.
These were albums that probably defined me more than anything, almost all released during that 5 year time period. I had never really thought of that before…
I’m all over the place, I couldn’t possibly choose one five year period. Maybe I’ve lived too long, ha ha. Nonetheless, for all intents and purposes the music stopped for me in the late 80’s. There are songs I’ve liked here and there after that, but I’m not real enthused about them as I was back in high school days.
Homer was wrong by two decades. I’m basically of the same age and musical tastes as Mahaloth. I’d swap out Pearl Jam for Smashing Pumpkins, throw in My Bloody Valentine, Catherine Wheel, and Belly. The rise of Bush signaled the end of new bands being interesting to me.
1979-83 (Five years, damnit!)
Pink Floyd: The Wall
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Damn the Torpedoes
Peter Gabriel III
The Police: Synchronicity
Fleetwood Mac: Tusk
Kate Bush: Never For Ever
David Bowie: Scary Monsters
Devo: Freedom of Choice
Roxy Music: Avalon
Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense
Elton John: Too Low for Zero
Michael Jackson: Thriller
“Weird Al” Yankovic in 3D
Toto IV
Midnight Oil: 10…1
My tastes are much broader than that, but this was the time period when I was most excited by the popular music of the period. It’s the centre to which all my musical interests can be traced back.
1977-1982: The end of Disco, the beginning of New Wave.
Yes, I still like both genres.
It’s a little vague for me, the only thing I can say for sure is that it HAS to include the year 1999 as three of my top five favorite albums were released that year. I really think that the underground metal and rock scene really started to come into it’s own in the mid to late 90s, and it finally seemed to start gaining a lot of momentum with some major breakthroughs in technology, notably Napster and other related internet music technologies along with high quality and intexpensive digital mastering technologies. What this meant was that a lot of bands that had previously had poor quality recordings and limited distribution because of monetary constraints suddenly had access to inexpensive recording and virtually unlimited distribution via the internet. Notably, Napster really came on strong in the latter part of 1999 and into 2000.
I think this whole thing not only helped get some bands vastly increase their exposure, but that very exposure heavily influenced all the bands that were arriving on the scene at the time. Even a lot of established bands seemed to have been influenced by the sudden huge influx of new material.
So, I guess I’d describe a roughly 5-year period of late '99 to around '04 or '05 as being the definitive period for me.
I just remembered that Stop Making Sense and In 3D are from '84, so instead I submit…
Men at Work: Business as Usual
Van Halen: 1984