I'm afraid I have to agree with the questioner, but purely in musical terms.I think I lived through a golden age of song in the 50's 60's and 70's.I don't think it's anywhere like as interesting now. How do young songwriters compete with the greats of that time? they can't. They can only repeat...like Oasis and others. It's been done.The same is true of painting. There are still artists who paint like the Impressionists, but the excitement of art at that time cannot be regained, if you want to see Impressionism you go to Monet et al. I think we all have times we'd like to re-visit. I'd love to go to Paris in the 1890's for Cafe Concert, to the Olympia Theatre in the late 50's to see Jacques Brel, to Lubbock 1956 to see the Crickets,to Toronto in the 70's to see Stan Rogers, but it's all history now as is the folk scene in the 1960's/70's. I still remember vividly appearing at the Cambridge folk festival with two young Americans called Prine and Goodman. Now I'd like to go back to that weekend!
There have always been golden ages in the arts followed by fallow periods. Maybe this isn't a golden age of song, maybe a lot of marking time is taking place, maybe music will never reflect a time like it did then ever again..who knows. But if you were lucky enough to have been born at the right time you could have been in New Orleans, Paris, Barcelona,Liverpool, etc when something new was bursting through, something not seen or heard before, something bloody exciting! it could happen tomorrow anywhere in the world. Sometime, somewhere, someone's going to be lucky. A lot of us were.
My son manages the web site for one of the BBC television's best pop progs and gets to go to the show.
Only last week we were talking about contemporary music. he has his favourites and goes to see them in concert, but when I asked him what period he would like to be able to do the job in if he had the choice he said "The Sixties, no question."
Who am I to disagree.