I graduated in 1977, a very transitional year, musically.
I am fascinated with my children's musical tastes more than mine, though; the younger one (12, he's the guitar player) is more of a hard rocker and 1970s oriented, his first favorite band was AC/DC, and Hendrix and Bob Marley are his touchstones. But the older one (16) knows his 1970s music, too, and his listening ranges from that all the way to new age rap and hip hop, so in a way he has an ever broader spectrum. I try to tell them both how lucky they are. The range of years they have to listen to, if you translated that back to the late 1970s, when I was in school, we'd have had to listened to everything from punk and new wave back to guys in knickers singing through megaphones. I never listened to anything pre-British Invasion back then, which at that time had only happened 15 years prior, or from the perspective of today, about the time Oasis was really getting big.
They have so much more to listen to and appreciate, plus they can talk easily to their dad and mom about popular music. My contemporaries and I could do neither.
