I've been listening a lot lately to music from the late sixties -- Cream, Blind Faith, Derek & the Dominoes, and especially Fairport Convention. But that's probably no surprise, because my favorite musical period (at least for rock music) seems to be 1968 to 1974 -- encompassing for example the first seven Yes albums, Mellow Candle's Swaddling Songs, Fairport Convention's first four releases, much of Renaissance's output, early Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, my favorite Joni Mitchell albums (Ladies of the Canyon and Blue), John Barleycorn and The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (recorded in '74), George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, early Van Morrison, late Beatles, Joe Cocker's first two albums, many of my favorite Bob Marley tunes (such as "High Tide or Low Tide", "I'm Hurting Inside", "Concrete Jungle", "Get Up Stand Up", and "No Woman No Cry"), the self-titled first albums by Aztec Two-Step and Jonathan Edwards, and the like. That's not to say I don't like music that wasn't recorded between '68 and '74 -- I love Hot Rize's fine bluegrass releases from the '80s, Hot Rize frontman Tim O'Brien's Traveler, Tim's sister Mollie's three solo albums, early Dylan, Mark Knopfler tunes from Dire Straits and his solo releases Golden Heart and Sailing to Philadelphia, the first album by Rickie Lee Jones, Aretha Franklin's First Twelve Sides and I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You, Greg Brown's Covenant, Dougie MacLean's Craigie Dhu, Breakfast in the Field by Michael Hedges, Going for the One by Yes, some middle-period Rush from the late '70s and early '80s, Eric Clapton's Me and Mr. Johnson, Girl Next Door by Fatwall Jack, Professor Longhair's Rock'n'Roll Gumbo, and more. But the sweet spot for me seems to be all that plaintive, experimental, psychedelic, and progressive music released in the late '60s and early '70s.