Dead and Gone: The Rock Stars of Yesteryear

August 20, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

Some of my favorite artists are dead now, and some of them are just gone. What do we do when one of our favorite artists die. When they die at twenty-nine-years-old, it’s a time for mourning, and a time to think of what they could’ve been. When they’ve already been, and they haven’t been relevant for over forty years, and we learn that they had grandchildren, and in some cases great-grandchildren, it feels a little odd to mourn their passing. They gave us some great music, and perhaps the greatest homage is to simply listen to what they did and appreciate it for what it was way back then. It’s also weird to go back to their catalog and realize they haven’t come out with new music in thirty years. When we listen to them often enough, or they manage to keep their name out there is various ways, it can seem like they were putting out music as far back as a couple years ago.

Before dying, or finally leaving the stage after their fourth or fifth reunion tour, some of them braved “the age thing” and put out a new album. We went to their concert, because we loved them so much at one time, and we knew they were going to play their new songs, because they wanted to sell their last gasp album, but we wanted to hear their classics … until we heard them, and saw them sing that song we loved so much forty years ago. The reason that song was so compelling is that it was fun, obviously immature, and a rock-your-buns off classic. After the euphoria of hearing our favorite song from them died out, we realized that the man onstage is a seventy-year-old trying to recapture what made them “special” in their twenties.

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Dating back to an era so long ago that I now feel so old writing about it, I played the song Toys in the Attic in my car so often that my girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter could sing the refrain. She probably had a vocabulary of less than 300 words, but she knew those lyrics from that song. I also named my first dog Tyler. Seeing as how this was between their creative peak, the Toys in the Attic and Rocks era, and their Permanent Vacation commercial peak, I might have been one of the few who had Aerosmith in his tape deck nonstop. Now that they’re done as artists, we can look back and think they should’ve been so much more. Would their creative output have doubled if they decided not to experiment with drugs? That’s impossible to know and probably unfair. Even if they stayed clean throughout, they probably would’ve experienced creative highs and lows, and how many relatively clean artists came out with five straight top-to-bottom incredible albums? I can think of two. There was a time when I thought Aerosmith might be one of them, the elite of the elite. They weren’t, but I still think they could’ve been so much better if they didn’t fall prey to chasing the dragon. Yet, that was the nature of the beast, back then.

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Was there a rock artist who did more with less than John Michael “Ozzy” Osborne? We all know the icon that Ozzy became, the charismatic frontman who could put on some theatrical shows, but when we strip those elements away, we have a relatively untalented man who ruled rock music for over 50 years. He didn’t have great vocal range. Even his most ardent fans would admit that while Ozzy could sing, and he had one of the most distinctive voices in rock, his vocal range was extremely limited. His appearance, though suited for the role of a “Prince of Darkness”, was not what anyone would call pin-up material. According to his primary lyric writer early on in his solo career, Bob Daisley, Ozzy Osborne came up with melodies, but he didn’t write lyrics. Even with all that, I had friends and family who were diehard fans, and they said, “There’s Ozzy, and then there’s everyone else.”

There was no one quite like Ozzy Osbourne before he became “Ozzy!” He basically created this character, embellished it, and built it into something that no one will ever try to do again.

He was a one-of-a-kind, charismatic showman who could dwarf just about anyone who stood on stage with him, but if we strip away the legendary aura that surrounds him, we have a giant in the industry who wasn’t very talented.

As a young man, Ozzy met a gifted lyricist named Terence Michael Joseph “Geezer” Butler, and they invited a guitarist named Tommy Iommi to join them in a band they eventually called Black Sabbath. Tommy ended up writing the music for the band, and Geezer Butler wrote 95% of the lyrics for the Black Sabbath songs. Ozzy did, according to those who’ve worked with him, have a gift for creating melodies for the songs that others wrote, and some say these melodies were often one of the reasons the songs and albums proved so successful. He’d often hum to the music, and his writers would write accordingly. So, John Michael “Ozzy” Osborne didn’t have dynamic vocal range, he couldn’t write lyrics, and wasn’t very good looking, but he ended up playing a prominent role in music that sold over 100 million albums. He was inducted in the U.S. and UK Hall of Fame, and he was honored with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the Birmingham Walk of Stars. No one will deny that Ozzy was charismatic and a great showman, but he and his wife Sharon’s greatest talents may have involved spotting talented individuals and collaborating with them. To this day, I look at the man, listen to him talk, and consider his oeuvre, and I still cannot believe that he succeeded to the degree he did.

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One of Ozzy Osbourne’s writers, Ian Fraser Kilmister, AKA Lemmy, would go onto form his own bands, Hawkwind and Motorhead. Lemmy Kilmister was another shouldn’t have been. As he proved with Ozzy, Lemmy could write lyrics. Other than that, he may have been further removed from pin-up boy than Ozzy. Those of us who try to figure out what women find an attractive man are often incorrect, but my guess is that few women would ever find Lemmy Kilmister an attractive man.

The music of Motorhead had harmonies, but they would never be confused with the pleasing harmonies of The Beatles or an Air Supply. When we hear him sing, we imagine that that’s probably what zombies would sound like, if they existed. This is probably the sound that vocal cords, damaged by death, might sound like. If the listener prefers the pleasing sounds of a David Bowie or Thom Yorke harmoniously developing a relationship with the music, they probably wouldn’t understand how others could prefer Lemmy.

He has the type of voice, similar in some ways to Tom Waits, though Waits found a way to make his gravel, growl, and guttural vocals harmonious and beautiful. We could also compare Lemmy’s gargling motor oil vocals with Captain Beefheart’s fragmented expressive vocal stylings, but Lemmy was more about brutish attitude and utter defiance than artistic technique.

“What is that?” is our reaction to hearing Lemmy sing for the first time. We might even consider it so bad as to be a joke, but Lemmy carved out an ever-expanding fanbase that put him in a relatively successful level that I doubt anyone would’ve predicted at the nascent of his career. He was also not a great interview for the softhearted types who favor artists that say wonderful and nice things.

There were no A&R guys in Lemmy’s camp early on in his career, and he had to almost do it all himself. I’m sure he had some undocumented assistance throughout his career, but by almost all accounts, Lemmy had to do it all himself. He was a self-made man. He expressed his disappointment in this regard when his career was eventually commemorated, and company men lined his audience. Lemmy did the opposite of thanking them for being there. “Where were you guys?” he asked them. We have to have some sympathy for those A&R guys though, because how could they sell this man to the public? If Lemmy wasn’t the most original and unique musical artists you’ve ever heard/seen, then you know far more about this world than I do. If Lemmy wasn’t an original, he gave new meaning to the Oscar Wilde quote, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”

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Billy Joel was Billy Joel for those of us who were young in the 70s and 80s. He was so ubiquitous that we never really considered him a man who just happened to be an artist. We’ve all heard about how many records the man sold, and we just kind of yawned. Every time he cranked out another song, we all heard too often on the radio, it was but another Billy Joel song that we loved, but it left you with a “What do you want me to do with this?” response. When we’re there, in the moment, we don’t recognize how hard it is to keep creating great songs. We all thought it was just something Billy Joel did. Some men wash dishes for a living, others prepare taxes for others, and Billy Joel writes songs that stick in your head like peanut butter.

Seeing these songs chronicled in the And So it Goes documentary on Billy Joel, as opposed to hearing it in yet another greatest hits compilation, gave us a new perspective on this man. We watched it with a “I forgot about that song” and “That’s right, he wrote that one too” reaction that struck me as if I never considered that he wrote all of those songs. Billy Joel was so prolific for about twenty-two years, at a near album a year pace, that he defined a generation.

Billy Joel was also trapped in the 70s and 80s when we could say there were so many great artists coming out with new music nearly every year. Even in that vein, Billy Joel was one of the few pillars of commercial dominance. He is the fourth bestselling solo artist in U.S. history, his Greatest Hits I and II still ranks as one of the bestselling albums of all time, and he’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The market was so stratified back then that we were all satisfied; the pop fans, rock fans, punk rockers, new wavers, etc., all had their favorite artists. It was such a prolific era that we can only appreciate in hindsight. I loved it at the time, but it also felt like it was just that way, and it always would be. At the risk of sounding like an old man, I think it’s just different now.

Even after watching And So It Goes, I still wouldn’t put Billy Joel in my personal pantheon of greatest musical artists of all time, but the magnitude of his discography, as displayed in And So it Goes, makes a compelling argument that he was one of the best of his generation, and if you told me you thought that before I saw this documentary, I probably would’ve scoffed at you. My biggest takeaway from this documentary was that this 70s/80s era was just packed with so many great artists coming up with song after song and album after album that we thought this was just the way things would be forever. It hasn’t worked out that way, but what an incredible time it was to be a kid listening to all of that incredible music for the first time. Those artists seemed like machines, but documentaries like this one, and others, remind us that real humans did this, and that we should cherish them for what did for us back then.

Mike Patton: Maestro del Differente

May 16, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

You want to get weird? I’m not talking about the weird music our aunts and uncles might chuckle at or say, “Hey, that’s kinda neat-o.” I’m talking about a strain so close to normal that they might be a little concerned about our mental health when they hear it. “If you think that’s quality music, then I’m probably going to have to edit my perception of you.” I’m talking about a definition of different carved out in a band called Mr. Bungle, then chiseled into with Fantômas, and ultimately destroyed and reconstructed in a project called Moonchild. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, let me introduce you to the outlandish innovations of a bizarre brainchild named Mike Patton. “Isn’t he a one-hit wonder?” a friend of mine asked, decades after Mike Patton became Mike Patton. “Isn’t he the “It’s it what is it?” guy?” I was so stunned that I couldn’t think up an appropriate term for cluelessness. Then, VH1 went ahead and confirmed his uninformed characterization, by listing the band Patton fronted, Faith No More as one of their one-hit wonders of the 80s. I knew most didn’t follow the career of Mike Patton as much as I had, but I was stunned to learn how even those with purported knowledge in the industry could dismiss him in such a manner. I had to adjust my idealistic vision of the world to reconcile it with the reality that if Billboard is your primary resource, Mike Patton and Faith No More were one-hit wonders. To those of us who live in the outer layer, seeking the sometimes freakishly different, “It’s it what is it?” or the single Epic, was only the beginning. Mike Patton discovered he had a talent at a young age, he could mimic bird calls. He found that he could also perform some odd vocal exercises on a flexi disc that his parents gave him. The idea that he could do that probably didn’t separate him much from the four-to-five billion on the planet at the time, and I only include that note to suggest that Mike Patton probably didn’t even know how talented he was at the time either. Yet, the young Mike Patton knew he loved music. He loved it so much that he and his buddies in school, including Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn, decided to form a band they called Mr. Bungle. They were all around fifteen at the time, and anyone who listens to their early self-produced demos, Bowel of Chiley (1987) and The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny(1986) can hear how young and inexperienced they were. These demos were a chaotic blend of metal, funk, and juvenile humor. It’s so chaotic that it’s as difficult to categorize as it is to listen to, but suffice it to say whatever general definition we might have of traditional music, the music found on those demos is likely the opposite. While devoting himself to Mr. Bungle, and studying English literature at Humboldt State University, Patton worked at a local record store, immersing himself in everything from punk to classical. He obviously kept himself busy during this period, and we can only guess that he was probably as surprised as anyone else when, in 1988, a man named Jim Martin invited Patton to audition for the role of lead singer in Martin’s band Faith No More, after seeing Patton perform in a local gig as the lead singer of Mr. Bungle. Patton won the job after displaying his raw energy and his vocal range for the band. If this were one of those always disappointing biodocs, the moviemakers would depict Martin and the other members of Faith No More as being blown away by Patton’s audition, and they would say something like, “This is obviously the man to lead us into the 90s.” I understand that these movies are often constrained by formulas and time constraints, and they often take shortcuts just to get a point across. I was all prepared to dispel that movie trope by writing that while the members of the band, their management, and the execs thought his audition was great, they heard the demos, and they didn’t think his talent would translate to Faith No More’s furthered success. It turns out, they were so blown away by the talent he displayed in that audition that they did consider him the man to lead them into the 90s. After hearing Mr. Bungle’s early demos, firsthand, all I can say is that must’ve been one hell of an audition.

When he first “discovered” Patton, I imagine Martin returned to his FNM bandmates and said, “I found the guy!” and he handed them the demos. As musicians themselves, I imagine they heard Patton’s talent, but they couldn’t reconcile it with Faith No More’s sound and image, until he auditioned for them. Again, that must’ve been one hell of an audition to blow them away like that. When Patton joined FNM, the music for The Real Thing (1989) was 80-90% written, primarily by keyboardist Roddy Bottum, guitarist Jim Martin, bassist Billy Gould, and drummer Mike Bordin, but Patton wrote all of the lyrics for the original tracks on what happened to be Faith No More’s third album, often crafting those lyrics quickly to fit pre-existing music. Patton contributed vocal melodies and arrangements, that ended up shaping the songs’ final sound. Patton’s contributions transformed the album, and some suggest his input proved instrumental in this album’s eventual success. As popular as FNM’s The Real Thing proved, there’s evidence to suggest that at least some of Patton’s motivations for joining this Epic band was to expand and amplify his beloved Bungle’s reach. If we stop right here, we all have to thank Jim Martin for taking a chance on this nineteen-to-twenty-year-old singer, because at the time, Mr. Bungle was nothing more than a local act in Eureka, California. They had a couple of almost unlistenable self-produced demos to their name, but how many starving artists had that in late-80s California? How many of those same starving artists dreamed of Billboard Top 100 hits, stardom, and vast amounts of money to follow? Anyone who says this is what motivated Mike Patton doesn’t know his ethos or his outlook, yet he was quite proud of what he and his Bungle bros created, and he wanted us all to hear it. In a 1992 Kerrang! interview, Patton admitted he initially viewed Faith No More as a “means to an end,” hoping their success would open doors for Mr. Bungle. As evidence of that, Patton wore a Mr. Bungle T-shirt in the video for Epic, and he handed a Bungle demo to Faith No More’s label, which led to Warner Bros signing Mr. Bungle to a deal in 1989. Again, those of us who heard those demos, in their raw form, would have a tough time believing Warner Brothers would’ve signed Mr. Bungle if Patton didn’t have some standing as the frontman for Faith No More.

This isn’t to suggest that Mike Patton didn’t devote himself to Faith No More, as he devoted an overwhelming amount of his time and energy to the band during their recording and touring of The Real Thing and Angel Dust (1992). He wrote the lyrics and melodies for both albums, toured extensively (over 200 shows for The Real Thing alone), and handled media duties. Mr. Bungle, meanwhile, was more of a side project during this period. Their self-titled debut (1991) was recorded in gaps between Faith No More’s schedule, with Patton contributing vocals, lyrics, and some production alongside bandmates Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn. In 1995, Mike Patton basically proved that a man could toggle between two bands and produce two great albums for each outfit. He played a pivotal role in both Faith No More’s King for a Day and Mr. Bungle’s Disco Volante. Patton wasn’t the first to play in two bands at once, by any means, but it wasn’t commonly done in this era. He stated that his daily routine consisted of recording King for a Day at Bearsville Studios, during the day, then driving down to record Disco Volante late into the night and repeating the same process the next day. “It was insane,” he told the Alternative Press in a 1996 interview. He admitted he barely slept while juggling both bands’ demands. Patton never claimed to be a trailblazer in this regard, but he’s acknowledged the strain. In a 2001 Kerrang! interview, he called 1995 “a blur,” saying Mr. Bungle was his “heart” while Faith No More paid the bills. If you haven’t heard him interviewed, this is Mike Patton. He is a humble man who often downplays moments the rest of us consider groundbreaking. King for a Day was another great FNM album, not as good as Angel Dust, but better than The Real Thing, in my humble estimation. Disco Volante was, and is, an incredible album that any serious artist would consider a career achievement, better than the self-titled disc but not as great as California. Most Bungle fans disagree on the latter. After spreading himself so thin in 1995, Patton went and got bored after Faith No More’s 1998 breakup, which the band “officially” stated was due to the fact that Faith No More had run its course creatively. Anyone who thinks that Patton would devote himself entirely to Mr. Bungle at this point just isn’t following along. He gets so bored that he ventures out and creates other artistic enterprises that take that definition of weird out to “Here, there be Dragons” locations on the map. He takes it to the ‘if you think Faith No More was outlandish in places, you should check out Mr. Bungle, and if you think Mr. Bungle stretches the boundaries of genre, you should check out a band he created called Fantômas.’ Fantômas became Patton’s new passion project while devoting an overwhelming amount of his time to what I consider the Mr. Bungle masterpiece 1999’s California. We write all of this, and we don’t even get to Patton’s role as the lead vocalist in the five albums of Tomahawk, and then there’s his varying roles in the bands Peeping Tom, Dead Cross, Lovage, and the killer role he played in one of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s albums. He has two proper solo albums, two works with Kaada, various film scores, and over 60 collaborative efforts, various ensembles, and guest appearances on other artists’ albums, including John Zorn and Björk. The overall brilliant catalog this “one-hit wonder” has amassed can be so overwhelming to the uninitiated that they may not even know where to start. 1989’s The Real Thing might, in fact, be the place to start, but I am so far past that starting point that I can’t even see it any more. That’s the problem with true fans of artists, they’ve listened to the artist for so long that they don’t know where to tell you where to start. Those who like Mike Patton, but don’t have an unusual, almost concerning adoration of him, tell me that Faith No More’s Angel Dust is probably the best starting point, as they say it’s probably the best, most mainstream album he took part in. If that’s the case, I would add Mr. Bungle’s California, Tomahawk Mit Gas, and Patton’s work with the X-Ecutioners as the second class of the Mike Patton beginner’s course. If you make it past that point, and you might not, I would submit Tomahawk’s Anonymous, Fantômas’s Suspended Animation, and Disco Volante as great second-level albums. A trend in Patton’s music I’ve noted, is the 2^nd album trend. The first albums are great, but they seem to set a template from which to explore the dynamic further, and Patton and his various crews seem to peak with the ideas germinating around in their heads concerning what more can be done with this band. He helps build on the base idea of that first album, and they usually create something of a creative peak with those second albums. Don’t get me wrong, I love the third albums, as in King for a Day, Suspended Animation and Anonymous, and as I wrote I think California is better than Disco Volante, but the second album peak seems to be a standard for most of Patton’s ventures. (Most true Bungle fans would say Disco Volante is superior to California.) I imagine those with some authority in the conventional music world might begrudgingly admit that they once considered Mike Patton one of the most talented singers in rock music. They probably all acknowledged that he possessed one of the most versatile and dynamic voices in modern music, characterized by an extraordinary vocal range, stylistic adaptability, and emotive depth. His voice spans six octaves, reportedly from E1 to E7, though some sources conservatively estimate around five octaves (approximately C2 to C7). This range allows him to seamlessly shift from guttural growls and primal screams to operatic falsettos and silky crooning, often within a single song. The experts who admitted all that might also add, “At some point, it didn’t matter how talented he was, because he wasted that incredible voice on music so abrasive that he basically alienated so many of us. In 1995, we all loved the underappreciated King for a Day, but when he hit us with Disco Volante, we shook our heads trying to figure out what he was doing. Most of us dismissed the initial Bungle album a one-off side project, then he doubled down with an even weirder album, and he topped it all off with an album we considered career suicide with the vocal experiments on Adult Themes for Voice (1996). That led us to dismiss him, because we realized he had no interest in becoming a marketable talent.” If you’ve read the writings of mainstream rock critics for as long as I have, you know that they have a difficult time understanding why someone would pick up a pencil and musical instrument and not try to do everything they could to sound like Springsteen, Dylan, or Joey Ramone. They don’t understand why someone would use vocal effects, as opposed to writing meaningful and important social commentary to help us reshape our world. We could excuse this with the idea that musical tastes are relative, but their blanket dismissal of anything different led me to start reading periodicals like Alternative Press and Decibel, who recognized what artists like Patton were trying to do. They praised Patton for his risk-taking, and they hailed his fearless innovation. As for the “marketable talent” comments we’ve heard, some fans and critics note that while he abandoned whatever mainstream potential awaited him, Mike Patton did develop a substantial cult following with each progression into the weird, strange, and just plain different. The next question any gifted artist must ask themselves soon after they discover they have a talent for something is what do I do with this? Patton, and Faith No More, could’ve followed up 1989’s The Real Thing with some version of The Real Thing Part Deux, and they could’ve gone onto develop a template, or a formula, in the ZZ Top, AC/DC vein. The mainstream music critics often eat up commodification of a brand as a cash grab. Mike Patton, and all of the musicians he chose to surround himself with in his numerous ventures, could’ve made a whole lot of money, enjoyed all the trappings of fame as rock stars. We can saw all we want about artistic integrity and all that, but it can’t be easy to turn away from the prospect of making truckloads of money. Contrary to what detractors say, money and fame can bring a us whole lot of happiness … if we love what we’re doing. If Mike Patton, and all of the musicians he chose to surround himself with in his numerous ventures, followed the formula of “building trust” with listeners, they would’ve been so bored and unsatisfied artistically. Patton obviously chose to use whatever gifts and talent he had to confound us and obliterate our boundaries in his pursuit of his version of artistic purity, and he chose projects and players who shared his philosophy. If the young Patton had a career path, or a place he “wanted to be in twenty years,” he obviously grew so bored with the “current” direction of his career so many times that he needed to do something decidedly different and out of his comfort zone so often that I don’t think he has any comfort zones left to destroy.

It was the Best of Times … In Entertainment

February 25, 2024August 13, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” –Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities

It’s the human condition to believe we live in the best of times and the worst. Psychologists have terms for various strains of bias that inform our opinions, and Dickens’ famous line encompasses them all. I’m biased, you’re biased, and the whole damned system is biased, but this particular article focuses most on what could be called a recency bias. Our recency bias causes us to believe that recent events are weightier, more relevant, and the only era to consider. The recency bias in this article comes with one asterisk, we welcome anyone to challenge the totality of the information within.

A qualifier such as that one satisfies most, but there are always some, who interrupt your little presentation with, “Yeah, but aren’t you biased?” and they say it with one of those grins that suggest they caught you with the accusation that you might be biased. To which I say, “Well, you caught me, but I did say that at the very beginning. Check the minutes of your transcript of our little conversation in this bistro.” So, rather than try to qualify every single nugget of what I’m about to write, go ahead and place a parenthetical “back to top” at the beginning, or the end, of each statement if that’s what you need to do to assure yourself that I admit to having a mean case of recency bias.

If you’re going to challenge my recency bias, however, I ask you to name an era of entertainment that matches the total output from the 1970’s to the 1990’s. We’re talking top-notch, quantity of quality, from the era of your argument to mine. Everyone has their opinion, of course, and some say that some of the artists were overhyped by the marketing teams spending huge dollars to see to it that their artist made it to the A-List. This happened frequently during this thirty-year chunk of time, as the individual eras therein were chock full of money to be spent in all avenues of entertainment, but with the advantage of hindsight, we can weed through the A-List to ferret out the true artists from the pretenders. Even after doing this, the A-List from this thirty-year era is still daunting.

We all go through this thirty-year era and parse out which was better than the other, but taken together as a whole, I believe the total number of quality-to-great movies, the sheer breadth of music, and comedy from the era between 1970 and 1999, will not only go down as the greatest era of entertainment in the United States, but most future eras won’t even try to compete. They’ll just go retro, and try to buy the catalogs of the artists from the era, from whomever owns it “now”, to pursue ways to use it and re-use it, market it, and merchandise it in the future. Some might include the 1960’s in some of those entertainment venues, and others will include the 2000 to 2010 era, but after watching, reading, and listening to just about everything from those eras, everything in the 60’s now seems to prelude be this thirty-year peak, in retrospect, and just about everything that followed seemed to be trailing off.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course, as there are always going to be exceptions to every rule. There will always be a couple great movies in any given year, a few great albums here and there, and future comedians who deliver exceptional material. If you lived through this era though, you knew to expect that an exceptional artist would deliver something exceptional in any given month. It was, at times, tough to keep up. While reading this, I’m sure you thought of some exceptions, you think your favorite music artists from the 60s was exceptional, and others thought of their favorite movie from the 00s, and you probably think I’m leaving some critical artists off this list. The point is we could asterisk every era with exceptions, but the general point remains.

The 1990’s were the first era in which I had any real disposable income of my own, and I almost went broke numerous times, trying to rent every movie that had ever been made, listen to every album of music ever created, and I stayed up late to listen to every comedian the late-night talk shows invited on. The reader might consider it a bold statement to say I knew everything vital and important to come from this thirty-year peak, or they might consider it a little sad that I devoted so much of my free time and disposable income to this pursuit, but few who know me would challenge my knowledge of the mostly inconsequential information from the field of entertainment that occurred during this era.

The 1970-1999 era was the best of times for those who wanted free time, disposable income, and free space of the mind to consider artistic endeavors. Depending on their political orientation, some politically biased writers might consider specific eras, in this thirty-year chunk of time, the worst of times, depending on the party in power at the time. In my humble opinion, as one who lived it, lived through it, and now looks back with a wistful eye at the glorious times we all had, that’s a big ball of nonsense. It’s a feeble attempt to rewrite history through a politically biased lens, and I write that asking the reader to consider that when one goes down the list of parties in power, over the course of this thirty-year chunk of time, it’s mostly even.

Unless you consider The Cold War with Russia an actual war, the 70’s were the first era that was largely free of war. The Vietnam War ended in 1975, and that was preceded by the Korean War, and WWII. Except for a few skirmishes here and there, the era between 1975 and 2001 was largely free of war. Except for a few moments here and there, America experienced such a great era of stability and prosperity for thirty years that we had so much free time that we didn’t know what to do with ourselves, so we invented scandals, controversies, and fears of the future for mostly entertainment purposes. We also had massive amounts of disposable income and free space of the mind to focus on artistic endeavors. As much as we hate to admit it now, in a historical perspective, we lived and still live, in the best of times.

There were so many factions and fractions in movies, music, TV, and books for the average consumer to consider, and yet we all agreed on most topics. A walk through the A-List contributors in the early 70’s, in music and the movies, is so daunting that I won’t even try to list them. The list in the 80’s and 90’s not only continued this legacy, but these eras may have topped the 70’s by sheer volume. Before we move on, think about that A-List for just a second. How many different, varied, and talented artists littered that A-List compendium. We usually try to shorten that list a little, just for sake of conversation, but the A-List of that era is so long that we feel a need to limit entrants just so we can have a decent conversation on that topic just to avoid putting our listeners to sleep. Think about the great directors, and how many movies they released during this thirty-year chunk of time. Think about all of the various musicians, and all of their various templates. We could devote this entire article to the Billboard Top 100, the Top of the Pops, or any of the other publications and venues that tried to top one another with the A-list artists they featured. Now, think of the magazines, both mass market and more niche ones, that tried to cover the A-Lists of music, the movies, books, and entertainment in general.

As one who wasn’t exclusively ensnared by A-list celebrities, and rock stars, I often found myself enjoying the entertainment put out by those others might call the B-List artists, C-Lists, and D-lists, and in that endeavor, I found an exciting new release almost weekly. As I wrote, I almost went broke numerous times trying to keep up, stay hip, and know every reference point, joke, and conversation topic people were having. Some call these conversations “water cooler” conversations, the coffee shop, or the break area. Whatever the case was, I was one of those who had to know, and there were so many movies, so much music, and so many great books and comedians to know about, for someone who had to know, that no past era compares when it comes to pure output and I dare say no future era will even try to compete. If you love music, movies, books, and comedy it was the greatest era in human existence to be alive.

My nephews, some thirty years my junior, insist that the 80s were greatest musical era ever created, and they don’t even bother trying to defend “their” era. They have no allegiance to it in anyway. They state that the 80s were the greatest era of music as if it’s not only a fact, but a fait accompli that’s not even worth arguing. They don’t list one particular artist as the game-changing artist, as many of us will, but they do try to compile a list of influential artists that I considered quite daunting, and they insist no other era can compete. Even though I had nothing to do with the music in this era in anyway, I took some pride looking back and hearing an outsider consider this era I lived through the greatest era ever. Due probably to my age, more than anything else, I’m more of a 90s guy, and being a 90s guy, I always considered the 80s a silly era of music, until my nephews put their spin on it. I also write all of this with the asterisk pointed to the notion that proponents of any era between the 60s and the 00s have valid arguments for “their” era.

My rhetorical question, sent out to the ether, is will future inhabitants in the United States be having arguments over the specific eras of this thirty-year chunk of time for the next 60 to 70 years? Will there be a “rock revival” in 2050 that puts the 80s music to shame? Will there be a return-to-roots revival in the movie industry that puts the sheer output of the movies from the 70s in the dustbin? Some argue that with the proliferation of streaming services and the various outlets on the internet, Americans will never collectively agree on great artistic outputs ever again. They argue that there’s just so much to choose from that it inhibits the idea of a Michael Jackson, a Star Wars, or even a more recent release like the book The Da Vinci Code from ever rocking our world in quite the same manner. These arguments discount the genius effect, of course, as every era has their own geniuses. The question I have, and it seeks to be as objective as possible for someone obviously imbued with a whole bunch of biases, is will those future geniuses ever be able to take future generations to the point that they can finally put 1970 to 1999 to rest, or will 2070 America still be arguing the relative merits of Michael Jackson vs. Madonna; Spielberg vs. Lucas vs. Coppola; Seinfeld vs. Leno; and Chevy Chase vs. Steve Martin vs. Bill Murray?

One of the primary reasons there might never be an era that tops these eras is the topic no common fan wants to talk about but they are know: money. There was so much money to be had in movies and music that the executives and their boardrooms didn’t mind pouring money into their marketing department, because they knew they’d get it back. They didn’t always get it back, of course, but how many guys with nothing but a guitar strapped to their back receive the kind of funding and support they may have made twenty years ago? How many “good looking waiters who can act” is a movie studio going to bank on if a majority of the money they see is from the comparatively flat streaming services? The amount of money that man may have made for himself and those who supported his rise, just isn’t there anymore, not like it was between 1970 and 1999.

There will always be exceptions to the rule, as I wrote, and there will always be exceptional exceptions, but the sheer output from so many different, varied artists, from so many different corners of the country, that occurred in those thirty years, will probably never be matched in my humble opinion, an opinion obviously derived from a recency bias.