07-03-2016, 07:09 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-03-2016, 07:23 AM by Eric the Green.)
I'm not quite through with 1969 yet, but it's time to mention the genre that we now call classic rock, and which began as progressive rock and soon was then known in the radio biz as album-oriented rock (AOR). You had to go to FM radio or buy the album to hear it. 1969-1971 for sure, and maybe a few years after 1971, was the early peak of this genre, with such albums as Tommy/Who's Next/Quadrophenia, the Led Zeppelin albums, Let it Bleed, The Moody Blues series of albums, Disreali Gears, Crosby, Stills & Nash & Neil Young, early Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead at their best, and many more. Meanwhile mainstream, top 40 or Billboard top 100 pop music was already declining from its mid-sixties peak, often dominated in the 1970s by bubble gum and later by disco, although there were some good pop and rock hits there too. But from my point of view, there wasn't much difference in mainstream pop between the 1970s and 1980s, and New Wave was even a bit of a relief from the disco era, with many different interesting styles old and new throughout the late 2T and into the early 3T. Meanwhile in album-oriented rock you had some of the best music ever in the early 70s era, and it's a great treat to be able to use this technology to bring it together in one place, even for an extremely small audience as here. At least I can enjoy the confluence.
After this peak came the era of the somewhat overproduced classic art rock of Electric Light Orchestra, Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, Yes and Genesis, Between, and so on; and then the relative mediocrity of Kiss, Queen, Rush, Aerosmith, and so on, and from there, AOR often devolved to levels even well below mainstream pop: heavy metal (like Ratt/Poison), grunge and hard-core punk. But AOR and pop in general was still a vast field that included fine groups like R.E.M. and Heart; and in the 3T, electronica, techno, new age and ambient, which was far superior to the more well-known heavy hard-core rock styles. Perhaps you can say that, to some extent, the original empetus for all that followed it was this peak of AOR and classic rock in the early 70s.
After this peak came the era of the somewhat overproduced classic art rock of Electric Light Orchestra, Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, Yes and Genesis, Between, and so on; and then the relative mediocrity of Kiss, Queen, Rush, Aerosmith, and so on, and from there, AOR often devolved to levels even well below mainstream pop: heavy metal (like Ratt/Poison), grunge and hard-core punk. But AOR and pop in general was still a vast field that included fine groups like R.E.M. and Heart; and in the 3T, electronica, techno, new age and ambient, which was far superior to the more well-known heavy hard-core rock styles. Perhaps you can say that, to some extent, the original empetus for all that followed it was this peak of AOR and classic rock in the early 70s.