EVERY generation thinks that the music of their youth was/is the "best". They are emotionally attached to it; It's the soundtrack of their lives.

Personally, I think that the best decade for music, literature, and art in America (and the West in general), was the 1920's: the "Jazz" age, "Roaring Twenties", etc. Motion pictures were coming into their own as an art, blues musicians that were born in the 1800's were cutting records and Louis Armstrong was creating the first and only true American art form: Jazz.

Airplanes were a new thing, as was the radio, and automobiles were common.

Fortunatly, unlike previous generations that passed, we can experience quite a bit of the nineteen twenties' sounds and visions. There are even some good examples of recorded music and speech, films and photos, prior to the 1920's. Even today, 78 RPM records by Caruso are easy to find i n thrift shops and yard sales - and not expensive, either.

I'm not saying that culture began and started in the 20's, but it certainly was a revloutionary decade scientifically, culturally, and in other ways. The popularity of the automobile alone was responsible for a sexual revolution, in the 20's, that the 1960's usually gets all the credit (or blame) for.

I used to have a picture of my maternal grandmother (1901-1997), as a teenager, circa 1918, sitting on a motorcycle complete with the correct biker clothing of the times. Unfortunatly, this priceless photo is lost.