>Radio stations played a great variety of really good new music. Please. The lack of variety in the public sphere is exactly what led to the "underground" music scenes. In the 70's the new unheard music was punk and the like. When I left for college in '79 it was an absolutely jaw-dropping, exciting experience to find an entire music store filled with this "alternative" music that no one played (outside of college st…
There really was a great variety of good music. Check the Top 100 lists through the decade. There was a lot of utter dreck as well. Even that might have been at least somewhat interesting.
Punk wasn't exactly evenly distributed. The only reason I knew about it then at all was from people writing about it, which made it appear to be an artifact of journalism.