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Originally Posted by sarramkrop
What strikes me as a bit odd, and this is in no way a criticism of the records people put on their own lists at all, is that for all the continuous debate on this forum as to what constitutes noise, where it originates from, who are the forefathers etc, a record like 'metal machine music' is more prominent view than, say, your pierre henry's, stockhausen's, or any other true experimentator that made music in those decades. Just a simple observation, nothing polemical.
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I put Metal Machine Music as #1 on my list for a couple reasons. One, it personally was pretty much the first experimental noise album I ever personally listened to, for whatever cultural or historical reasons. And two, it was directly influential on my favorite band, Sonic Youth, and my favorite album, Bad Moon Rising. Listening to them, I reverse engineered to their influences and found that record that demonstrated that a rock musician could be every bit as experimental as a Stockhausen, though of course it pointed me towards looking into the non-rock world avant garde as well. So in my part the '70s list is every bit as much a Sonic Youth fan's list as the '80s or '90s lists were.
I considered trying to put a list together like Nefeli's, which I agree is probably the list of very most interesting music from the decade overall. But I would have been lying to pretend those were really my favorite albums from the decade, because while I may go listen to them now and love them, I mostly haven't yet. When I was searching for reminders of what to put on my list through Google and Rate Your Music, I came across Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and put it on my list at one point. But the fact is, as much as I might agree it is incredibly important in terms of taking music as a whole to a new place, I can't pretend to have listened to it as much as Big Star's third album or Live at the Witch Trials. I don't think those albums are necessarily "better" than Reich or Stockhausen's output in the '70s, I just have spent way more time with the rock records.
That said, in the '70s themselves, I was mostly, as a child, listening to AM radio, and owned a couple ELO, Bee Gees, and Little River Band albums. It would be very entertaining to put together a list of what I really was listening to in those days, and just trying to imagine brings Casey Kasem's voice into my head! At the start of the '80s in my early teens the list would be dominated by Led Zeppelin, who I still appreciate as decent musicians with three good first albums, but hardly the best of the decade. And, yes, Yes...