Rock Music: 1951-1976 vs. 1977-2003

You've got an interesting point. Contemporary artists are popular today. Only time will tell if they have lasting power. Meanwhile we sort of know who amongst the earlier artists have staying power. That's not to say many of them will a hundred years from now. But you and I don't care what happens a hundred years from now. It's what we enjoy today and tomorrow that's important. For me that's Wagner. He's got staying power ! Why ? Because his works are performed and the performers have the license to interpret his works so each production is different. We're not quite so flexible with Beatles of FZ or Christine Agulara numbers. Yet.

If we assume Rock Music as a musical genre then early examples of the genre are generally simpler and more accessible than later ones. Early adopters also needed to be more creative to push the envelope of the genre. Similarly with Jazz, Regae, Punk, Opera, Minimalist, ... whatever. Now my age dictates that I'm not very accepting of new genres, like rap, hip-hop, european dance music. And with our penchant for revisionist history it's always nice to revist the newly minted rosey past. On much better media in high-tech hometheater systems. But then again our penchant for revisionist history dictates that analog is the way to go !

As an aside I think the fact that we have the music on static media that does not wear out performed by the original artists has slowed down development of music because there's less incentive to cover well written songs to develop and morph them into newer genres. Unless the artists performance was terrible in the first place, but ...