The 1970's truly sucked.

Uh, yeah....what have we been doing in Iraq and Afganistan for the past 10 plus years?

A lot of theories have been advanced to explain the decline in homicide rates, but the bottom line is clear: You are much safer today than you were when Dirty Harry was watching the streets.

It's chart music we're discussing, not two acts that have one thing in common...a high opinion of their own abilities! Pink Floyd relied chiefly on a pyrotechnic stage act..much like ELO, always an ominous sign for the audience! It usually means they can look forward to a deficiency in the music department..and that applies to Floyd! They managed to stop arguing long enough to produce ONE album that most people can name; 'Dark Side Of The Moon.' I'll concede it's a good album..but lightning didn't strike twice, did it? 'The Wall' was a prime example of their usual fare, absolute rubbish wrapped up as some kind of masterpiece! Led Zeppelin? Just a heavy rock band with a very good man on vocals..nothing more, they had an over inflated opinion of their own abilities in my opinion, and whilst their albums are adequate, i tired of seeing each live number stretched out to 10 or 15 minutes when i saw them. A very poor live act for me..VERY poor! You mentioned the Who too, didn't you? I'm a HUGE fan of the band in general, and Keith Moon in particular.He was (and is) the finest drummer who ever drew breath! However, the Who did NOT do most of their best work in the 1970's! Far from it! (& yes..i've not forgotten 'Tommy')
Pete had said everything he had to say by 1971, their peak years were 66 & 67, and the high points of the Who live consists of material from that period. 'Wont get fooled again' & 'The Seeker' are the only two decent examples of their 70's work. Like Floyd and MANY others..they fell into the 'concept album' trap instead of simply writing stand alone numbers, either for an LP or as a single. I'm a Who fan..i saw them 4 times up until they lost Keith Moon in Sept 1978, without him they just weren't the same for me!
I cannot argue with the commercial success of Zep & Floyd, but if you buy one album by each of them, you need not buy any more..if you've heard one you've heard them all.
They wrote to a formula, which is why, unlike Sabbath & Purple, their work is now sounding so dated.
Hard rock? Give me Sabbath, Purple and AC/DC any day!

The 1970's, for me, were a mixed bag. I was a teenager during the 1960's, graduating from high school in 1969, and I was kept on a fairly tight leash all through my teen years, but somehow I managed to do a lot of things that most teenagers back then did, despite my lack of the kind of social life that I so badly wanted but didn't have. I believe that the 1960's was a beautiful time to grow up and be a teenager, nonetheless. The late-1960's and the 1970's is when a decline started, and the crime rate in this country overall began to escalate. Many bad things happened, but there was a lot of good, also. There was much less consciousness of ethnicity and religion and people were somewhat more laid back. I had a good time from the mid to late 1970's, when I was in college, I met many cool people, and partied quite a bit, and went to a number of rock concerts as well, things I never had the opportunity to do as a teenager. I was also studying to be a craftsperson, and enjoying myself, as well.

I still remember, however, the riots that erupted when mandatory school busing took the city of Boston by storm, especially in the white working-class neighborhoods, which rivaled the eruptions over mandatory school busing that occurred in many of the Southern areas, such as Alabama, Mississippi, and a number of other places. Blacks couldn't walk freely in many of the white neigborhoods in Boston, and many whites were afraid to walk through many of Boston's black neighborhoods as well. There was much rock-throwing, there were physical confrontations, and racial epitats ringing while kids were being bused from one neighborhood to another; blacks into white neighborhoods and whites into black neighborhoods (although most of the rock-throwing, assaults and epitat-slinging took place in the white neighborhoods, where it was directed at the black students, especially in the more tribal neighborhoods of Southie (South Boston) and Charlestown, and to a lesser degree, the North End and East Boston, as well as in Roxbury, with black youths stoning white students being bused into the Roxbury schools.

The riots that erupted in the wake of mandatory school busing here in Boston were such that the city and its people were left psychologically scarred, especially because there were a number of really horrific incidents during that period; A black lawyer was beaten by young whites, and one tried to swing an American flag at him, but he leaned away from the flat just in time, all when he was on his way to a meeting in Boston's City Hall. A young white man was also bludgeoned and stoned to death by a bunch of young black men while driving through Roxbury roughly a week afterwards, there were beatings, shootings and even stabbings, as well, not to mention many other nasty incidents. It was a mess, and it's taken Boston quite awhile to recover somewhat from all of this.

I think that there were many excesses during the mid to late 1960's and early to mid 1970's, so during the late 1970's and the 1980's, the United States on the whole, began swinging back to Conservativism, especially with the election of Ronald Reagan, resulting in the political correctness of today.

The 1960's were great for movies and music, but in the the 1970's, a decline in both of those mediums began, although there were still some good music and movies to be had back then.

The Kent State and the Jackson University killings that occurred back in 1970, however, were also rather horrific, and it sort of helped set the tone for that particular decade, in general.