The Sixties

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

"The Sixties" is a bit misleading. The early sixties were just an extension of the 50s, but the late 60s - some great songs, City were great too, skirts shot up to unimaginable heights, films showed breasts,......what's not to like? And airport travel was simpler!

I agree with your starting date, but I'd just add that, for me, as someone who was a bit young for the start of it all but lived the final period to the full, my “Sixties” have always been from approximately ’63 to ’74. I was at college from 71-74, in London, and I lived the life of Riley. The early seventies felt, to me at least, like an extension of the previous decade, albeit with an increasingly harder feel to them (miners' strike, Heath's riposte to that in the form of the three-day week, etc.). Then, some time in the mid-seventies, there was a mutation into an entirely different feel. There's nothing balmy about the late seventies.
I've also often noticed that the Americans' Sixties are not the same as ours. Not least because the decade was bedevilled by the very real — and bloody — civil rights struggle by black people, and the equally bloody war in South-East Asia, which just about anybody could be called up for. When you talk to people who were young then, you realise that the confrontation between the generations was sharp. It's not just Woodstock. It's Manson as well.

 

[Exeter Blue I am here]

How great would the Byrds have gone on to be had Gene Clark not left the band? Great single this.....

 

[Ban-jani]

Until the Beatles arrived, the best selling albums of the 60s were film soundtracks South Pacific and West Side Story. Even later, soundtrack to Sound of Music outsold every Beatles LP except Sgt. Pepper.
Swinging 60s.

Every decade in modern history has commercial/soft shite at the top of sales. A small majority of human beings have awful taste in music and that reflects in music sales. Not that I’ve anything against the Sound of Music, it’s just a general point.

The difference with the 60’s was the amount of genius around and how well it did perform in the charts, compared to genius in other decades.

There’s many positives to take away from every decade in my opinion, apart from the 2010’s, but the 60’s is the greatest in terms of music.

As another poster has mentioned, the era we’re really talking about is probably 1963-1973.

Any decade that has The Beatles wins... and that’s without the miles and miles of other greats around at the time.

 

[Dreadzone]

well we were warned.

Yeah, had a mild ‘epiphany’ when I first heard these songs!