I's like to clarify a few things. Those that choose mid 60's- mid 70's made their choice for good reason and I would mostly agree but all the decades have had their good and the bad.
The 50's through to the Beatle invasion, I love that old RnR, Elvis, Holly, Lewis and the Sha na na type vocal groups.
60's Then came the Brit invasion, good bubble gum at its best, I wanna hold your hand... catchy but give me a break, Hermans Hermits, The Monkeys, The Association, all hold memorys for me from my adolescent age but no worse by comparision to all the pop that makes people say the 00's suck. The 60'also brought around the flower power music, Mamas and Popas and so much commercially aimed pop. Motown R&B love alot of that too but it was highly formulated just like what people bitch about today.
67-73/74 Jimi couldnt have come soon enough but even he released his fair amount of crap. The Who... same deal, The Guess Who, James Gang, Grand Funk, Zep, Purple, Cream, ect. broke doors open bringing harder edged rock to mainstream following the lead of Jimi and The Stones. However at the same time there was still some wanky assed pop bands releasing catchy songs for the domestics to love... again no different than today.
early 70's- sure guys like me had Zep, Heep, Purple, Tull, Floyd, Rush and Sabbath (who get way too much credit for "single handedly" creating a genre... which is TOTAL bullshit)
Whats I think is wrong for drawing the line at mid 70's. True this is when even the hard rock bands went lame or broke up, Zep mellowed, Uriah Heep and Alice Cooper got retarded, even Deep Purple lost it. Journey was totally commercialized wimpy hard rock subsititute. Disco took over, some talentless disfunctional punks got credit for some genre that at least called it for what it was. However at the same time Ted Nugent, AC/DC, ZZ Top, Van Halen, Rush were sticking to the old guns and pounding out some hard edged ass kicking rock, The Cars, The Police, Dire Straits and others came around offering up their own new twist. THe appeal of fusion spred to a larger audience and for those of us who liked a bit more to our music along with Rush we got Kansas, Dixie Dregs to aviod the disco that plagued the radio.
The 80's, what the hell is wrong with the 80's ? Heavy Metal took many new directions and gained popularity, the newer sound of metal edged hard rock like VanHalen, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Whitesnake and all the sunset strip sounding bands gave us something to rock about. There was the more domestic oriented Duran Duran, U2 and such right along side of this new Hip Hop stuff, so again I ask what has changed ?
THe 90's came in with Grunge which had its moments but some of us wondered where the rockin music went. At the same time Progressive metal was setting good roots taking over where Tull, Kansas and others left off.
00's - Im not sure when boy bands and dance choreographed chick music took off but was it really any different than the bubblegum of the 60's, disco of the 70's and digital, keyboard laden, weird spiked hair of the 80's ? Many of these rocking bands today that take the heat are nothing different for the times than what Deep Purple, VanHalen, Nugent, Scorpions, Ratt, Motley, AC/DC, Leppard and such were during their days rockin the charts. I simply dont see what all the whinning is about. Same as I enjoyed the music of these old rock bands I mentioned, I enjoy the music of Three Doors Down, Nickleback, Shinedown, Disturbed... whatever. They all have their good songs and thier shit just like days of old.
But yeah, the years from 67/68 to 78 were very important years for ME in the development of styles of music I would always follow through the rest of my life but that is NOT when the good stuff stopped coming, I hear new songs on the radio regularly that I find merit in. Nor was that time without its share of total crap.