If you lived through the 60's and 70's, you experienced the pioneers and creators of most of the best in music.
Today, speaker cabinets are the great improvement as are PA systems but the guitars are not better and still cannot be emulated for tone and the amps created everything still being attempted and strived for. Power and headroom is an improvement but the modern PA negates the need somewhat.
We were politically quite dumb, but that allowed happines and freedom of thaught to flourish, especially in music, melody, harmony and the growth of the bass guitar as a major contributor to sound, rather than just a background thumpy noise that seemed pleasing to the ear. Interestingly, also mostly unrecognizable as a sound source by the listening public. People seemed to have trouble picking out the bass untll the 70's.
There has been a trickle of talent, good riffs and catchy lines since, but nothing as overwhelming as the use of melody and harmony that came before.
For musical freedom, meaning we play and control all of what we create, the 60's and 70's peaks all. The record companies searched for a band with "that" sound rather than the control they assumed post that period.
Because I owned a pub, it amazed me how many young people played my generation of songs on the jukebox. When asked, they mostly responded that they grew up with their parents playing those songs so they knew them and liked them.
My father once asked why we listened to screaming rubbish like Zeppelin and the Who, I insilently told him that my music will be on the radio all my life where his music was already dead and gone.
It appears I was was prophetic. Today, 60's and 70's instruments bring the highest prices. Old Marshall's bring top dollar and are still being aped by technology. PA technology continues to create suitability for small watt tube amps to flourish in professional circles.
What is not equal, is the volume of and focus on singing, melody and harmony that actually created the mass record/song buying public. Records used to be bought for Christmas and birthdays only prior to Rock and Roll.
The Beatles, Kinks, Who, Animals et al, sang a song with the instruments accentualting the music through support of that melody.
Today's market by comparison, plays a song and puts a basic melody on top. Not the same. We are all doomed to our era in time. That's usual and normal, to be expected. My time is still proving popular as 120-140 bands a night locally attest on our circuit. A cover band that only plays recent decades doesn't work as much by comparison.
