I was born in 1958.  That is an impressive list that the OP compiled.  Music was very important to me and I definitely felt a few years later as if popular music had lost itself, and I drifted into Classical

Ignore the relativists- the list is correct, if incomplete. I’m not a boomer- history will confirm 1971 as the peak year in cultural history, warts and all!

PS 1973 comes close- I buy albums from then blind and am usually amazed at their great sound and energy.

@tony1954

Yes, my bad, should have seen those, not sure how I missed them!

@moonwatcher 

But I think my interest in jazz (from all eras) is a reflection that rock is dead. 

I was led to Jazz by "jazzy" Rock and by the fact that I grew bored with Rock's melodic and harmonic limitations. The liner noted in one of the many reissues of "Kind of Blue" mentioned that the Allman Bros.were avid fans of modal Jazz. Listening to them and the Dead seemed to ease the way for me into Jazz. 

I don't tend to think of Rock as "dead" anymore than I regard Jazz as "dead". As long as there are recordings in these genres I enjoy, that's "alive" enough for me. I don't see where Rock could've gone. Punk attempted to drag it away from corporate slickness and Steely Dan probably took it as far in a Jazz direction as possible without it crossing over into Fusion. 

@stuartk good points, especially about the "melodic and harmonic limitations". From around 1956 to 1976 we had 20 years of experimentation and creativity on display within those parameters. That’s 20 years of music. Today, much is simply derivative of stuff that has already been done. (The same can be said for much of TV programs and movies). Maybe we are just old and "been there, done that" so we look upon new tunes that are more of the same old, same old, "three chords and the truth" as not being up to snuff.

I love jam bands. Been seeing them since the Grateful Dead, but even there, it is becoming formulaic. You know when a up and coming popular jam band like Goose resorts to doing a version of a Justin Timberlake song we have come full circle.

Fortunately for all of us, there’s plenty of old and new music to be discovered. A few years ago, I "discovered" electronica and ambient music, when my experience was mostly limited to Kraftwerk, ELP, and maybe John Cage. Then we have all the great jazz records that you could spend a lifetime examining and loving.

What will music become going forward? No one really knows. Hopefully it will be more than just the soundtracks to video games.

But this body of work is out there, waiting for future generations to discover and love.  I believe some of them will stand the test of time just as classical compositions have after hundreds of years. If something is "good" I think it always will be.