I hate to be the one to break it to you. But this music is not experimental or groundbreaking. Many people would classify it as pop. But in any event, I am speaking of five hundred years of musical history, of which whatever happened in that ten year period may or may not be of any consequence in the big picture. I like a lot of those bands. But I am still no going to compare it to Bach or Beethoven, or American composers like Copland and Ives, or Gershwin and Richard Rodgers. I am sorry, I'm just not, and maybe that is part of the problem that MFB speaks about.
I'm sorry Ken, I'm not buying it.
They certainly thought they were being experimental, at least with in the context of Rock-N-Roll. Much like those in free jazz thinks it's experimental, but they still confine it to umbrella of jazz.
And really, in terms of the last 500 years, you could argue
1) All music with a drum set is pop because it's a recent popular invention.
Or
2) All music with a drum set is clearly experimental because it's a recent invention that human kind is still experimenting just what a human can do with it. And that the fact it might become obsolete in favor of computers shows just how much of an experiment it is.
Of course,
both arguments are rubbish and not worth a hill of beans.
But you can't sit here and argue one can't determine what is crap pop music based on criteria A, B, and C, but then turn around and say you CAN determine what is or is not experimental music based on similar criteria. Sorry, that is getting into hypocritical territory.
I could easily say, well, in the context of the last 3000 years of music, Beethoveen is just a pop artist too. In the context of the last 50,000 years of sound, anything human made is just pop. In terms of the last 20 million years, human kind is just natures version of pop art. It's just silly and non-sense if you draw out far enough.
In the end, it's all relative.