Lately I've been totally hooked on Queensrÿche's "Operation: Mindcrime". I had some trouble getting into it when I first gave it a couple of spins but now, as usual, something clicked into place and I'm finding this to be one of the best efforts from 80s. I must say I'm not the biggest fan of the 80s as I find the trademark associated with it to be basically hair metal and poor disco music. I know, I know, I'm not being fair, there was a lot of great music in the 80s and I know that. It's just that generally I have a much better idea of the 70s, for instance, than I have about the 80s (David Bowie for instance made the truly awful "Let's Dance" in 1983 whereas he completely rocked the world with "Ziggy Stardust" in 1972).

I think people in general, myself included, tend to tag the different decades with different kinds of music. I mean, when you think of the 60s, it promptly makes you think of a certain band or style that somehow in your mind represents the entire decade. And the same goes for every other decade up to now. As far as I'm concerned, despite being born in the 80s and therefore having not been around before, the 60s make me think of The Beatles (surprise, surprise), the 70s of Led Zeppelin and generally of great rock and early metal, the 80s of the aforementioned hair metal and poor disco and the 90s of Seattle's Grunge and particularly Nirvana (and the birth of punk pop with Green Day and The Offspring). I won't go any further back considering that when the Beatles stole the show, they pretty much redefined music as we know it now so I'd say their appearance is something compared to BC and AD as far as music is concerned. But hey, that's just my take even if based on general opinion (again, I wasn't around). And it goes without saying that I just left out dozens of very influential bands (Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Metallica just to name a few and a bunch of alternative/indie stuff that seem to have marked the late 90s. AND, for my particular money, Opeth, perhaps the most underrated band of the 90s/00s if you don't count its own particular niche).

Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a music history thread and I'm far from being a good story teller, so... Getting back to the beginning of my post, I find Queenrsrÿche's "Operation: Mindcrime" to be really good and even more so if I try and transport myself back to the 80s. You see, getting to know these bands and albums, especially such ground-breaking stuff, right now in the middle of the 00s, I'm sure it hasn't got half the impact it had before, when it was actually released. Even though I'm really digging it right now, I'm sure I'm biased by bands that weren't even dreamed of then. This means that the comparison criteria would be much different than it is now, for obvious reasons and that pretty much explains why it influenced so many people (Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci of Dream Theater fame for instance). This also makes me give an awful lot of credit to Tool. Their music style is so unlike anything around these days that I
can't help myself from labeling them as truly ground-breaking. That's also why I believe they are today's Pink Floyd, if we take into account musical evolution as a whole. Tool is the stuff our kids will be discovering 20 years too late (but still on time, always on time) and feeling about it the same way I'm doing now for Queensrÿche, or that I did before for albums like Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall", Led Zeppelin's I, II, III and IV or Metallica's "Master of Puppets".