[Off-topic] Dirk:
I've seen a few of those live, (as well as being a White Lion fan who were mentioned before). Queued for Skid Row tickets and missed out by inches! :( I don't listen to any of those any more though, with the exception of The Cult, who are still one of my favourite bands and therefore don't belong on your list. :D

Got to say i'm pleasantly surprised by the general tone of the answers in this thread. Given the average age of the XDA demographic, i was expecting more mentions of modern tripe and less of the quality older stuff!

For myself, i would say all but the last decade has had something relevant to my interests. The 50's had the early roots of Rock And Roll. Bill Haley and The Comets or Chuck Berry, for example. If the 50's were the Big Bang then the 60's were the Inflation that followed. Music blew up big time! Too many bands to name but acts like the Rolling Stones and The Doors helped to propel Rock music into the next decade.

The 70's welcomed in musicians who weren't afraid to do something different. Bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin built upon the legacy that the 60's left and created new sounds that launched whole new genres. The Prog Rock/Hard Rock/Metal that came later are probably rooted in the work that came out of this decade.

The 80's spawned a revolution in pop. Some of it good, some of it bloody awful. (Enough said!) Rock also went in different directions with off-shoots like Glam that again were really just an evolution of the 70's glam bands like the great T-Rex for example. Heavier rock came to the forefront in the 80's too and Metal was born. The foundations may have been laid in the previous decade with bands like Deep Purple, but the metal of the 80's was a different beast. Every act seemed to try outdoing the other by playing louder, faster while being ever less melodious. The greats of the era stood head and shoulders above the rest though. Enduring Metal bands like Metallica set a standard that kept mainstream Metal from going off the rails and kept it firmly at the forefront. Mainstream Rock too lived on through the 80's, with such greats as Dire Straits, who were a great counterbalance for the ever increasing amount of electronica that persisted throughout the decade.

Sadly, the 90's was the decade of club anthems and a multitude of different electronic styles. For those of us born in the 70's and earlier the 90's was a decade to avoid the radio. The airwaves were saturated with dance music! There was a thriving Indy scene though with bands like The Charletons, Echobelly, Carter USM, and many others. The Madchester sound was going strong too with the Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets and Happy Mondays that provided some solace for those of us sick of enduring a thousand versions of the same crap techno beat.

Grunge was also born. Seattle became the birthplace of a new revolution in Rock music. God bless America! Finally there was a new sound and it rocked. The Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana led the vanguard for a whole wave of new and interesting bands and a sound that permeates through rock music, even today.

Since the turn of the century, music seems to have become an amalgamation of everything that came before. Pop seems to have inherited the worst aspects of all it's forebearers creating a generic, homogenised cacophony of auto-tuned and manufactured 'artists'. Rock has largely survived though with upbeat, uptempo and generally harmonious sounding bands that, whilst being inoffensive, are often unoriginal and far from revolutionary!

A common thread throughout the decades is that every once in a while a great artist, or collection of artists, will create something truly great. Often they will stick around long enough to influence the course of music. Sometimes they will revolutionize it! Many times they will disappear without a trace leaving nothing but a memory and a promise of what might have been.

And that's my take on it!

TL;DR?

Rock rulez!

Everything else sux!

Problem..?

:D