Last week we did the sixties, so I thought I'd follow up with the seventies. I'm not sure I know enough to continue with the decades thereafter, but anyway, here are mine for the '70s:

The Beach Boys
Santana
CSNY
Grateful Dead
Ramones

The Rolling Stones
Sex Pistols
Slade
The Who
T-Rex

The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, and The Who made it to both of my decades lists. The US has a slight edge over the UK again, I feel, maybe 51-49.

This one is much tougher for me then the 60's. And leaving out solo artists also made it more challenging for me. Dan Fogelberg, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne & Bruce Cockburn would all be on my list if solos were allowed.
I had a lot more difficulty keeping my UK list to 5 then I did with the US, so in the 70's the UK wins for me; though the actual top 5's are pretty close in quality.

My UK runner ups included The Faces, Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes & Led Zeppelin. My only US runner up was Fleetwood Mac.

UK
Wishbone Ash
David Bowie & The Spiders From Mars (if anyone calls this a solo, think MICK RONSON; the Spiders were a band)
Mott The Hoople
Deep Purple
Roxy Music

USA
CSNY
Grateful Dead
Alice Cooper (The Band)
The Tubes
Blue Oyster Cult

UK

Led Zeppelin
The Who
Yes
Black Sabbath
Pink Floyd

runners up: Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Traffic, David Bowie, Queen, Procol Harum, The Move/ELO, Moody Blues, Free, EL&P, Genesis

US

Alice Cooper
Grand Funk Railroad
Patti Smith Group
Aerosmith
Fleetwood Mac (mostly American at their height?)

runners up: Montrose, Allman Bros. Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Band, Chicago, Boston, Kansas, Eagles, Styx, Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band

Where would Robin Trower's 70's band fall?!

With such a list, it should really be just artists who began in the 70s not entered their 2nd decade IMO, but nonetheless, I'd go with:
US bands:
Chicago
Blue Oyster Cult
Van Halen
KISS
Kansas

UK bands:
Black Sabbath
Genesis
ELO
UFO
Jethro Tull

International Bands:
Thin Lizzy (Ireland)
Kraftwerk (Germany)
AC/DC (Australia)
Rush (Canada)
Golden Earring (Netherlands)

If that's the case, then Jethro Tull would be excluded as they started in the late '60's. I suggest that we consider those bands whose major period of artistic achievement, commercial success, or relevance occurred in the decade. So, even though Yes actually began in 1968, wouldn't they be considered quintessential 70's progressive rock? No one would consider them in a "best of" the 60's. Many of the acts submitted so far have their birth in the 60's.

Rules??? Huh????

That's actually not what I meant all-just poorly worded! I meant if say, the Stones were considered a "60's band" because their body of work was from 1964-69 in that decade they aren't thought of as a 70s band even though that was their best stuff IMO (the 70s era). I don't know anyone who considers the Stones a "70's band". That's what I meant and I hope that makes sense!
Yes ARE a 70's band, so of course we're talking about the same thing. I suppose what I really meant was that how could bands be considered both 60s and 70s artists (or even 80s and 90s) in the true definition of what this question was, that's all. For example, Radiohead are a 90s band, but their 00's output is already quite legendary and influential, but they're a 90s band not a 00's band.
As for the "Rules" comment, by no means was I trying to state rules-after all, this is for fun and it means absolutely nothing in life as do all pools including mine!
So, I apologize for my absymal wording!

My rules comment was in fun & meant as a joke (-:

I see what you mean. I was trying to think of way to assign a long-lived band to a decade. Many people would consider Yes or Genesis 80's acts because they were as successful in some manner as they were in the 70's. Of course, some people think that the acts run out of gas after 10 years.....

Allman Brothers
Band
Grateful Dead
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Ramones

(Although most of these bands began in the 1960s, their identities are more (or just as much) tied to the 1970s).

Clash
Jethro Tull
Led Zeppelin
Rolling Stones
Who

Okay, the rules are simple: Bands only, and they must have had the main part or a significant part of their work recorded in the '70s. The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, and The Who were all major, major players in 70's rock.

Fleetwood Mac can go on either the US or the UK list.

Choosing only 5 UK bands was much more difficult for me. I hadn't realized what the disparity was until I started thinking about it.

UK:
Steeleye Span
Fairport Convention
Strawbs
Led Zeppelin
King Crimson

US:
Mountain
Blue Oyster Cult
Parliament
Raspberries
Cheap Trick

I wanted to get Fleetwood Mac in there somewhere. If push came to shove, I would put them in UK as I slightly prefer the Kirwan/Welch Mac to the Buckingham/Nicks Mac, and I still think of them as British until Welch left.

I think of CSNY as a 60s band just because they were so closely tied into what most people think of as 60s culture (psychedelia, protest, drugs, free love), but most of their output was in the 70s and later.

I don't think "The 60s" as a phenomenon really started in 1960 and ended in 1970 though. More like Death of JFK (1963)-Resignation of Richard Nixon (1974) (though it's also easy to argue the 60s begin with the Beatles in 1964 on Ed Sullivan and end with the release of Let It Be in 1970).

Similarly "The 70s" as a set of characteristics (disco, mallaise, punk) would be more like Resignation of Richard Nixon (1974)-Inauguration of Ronald Reagan (1980). Obviously this kind of thing is very subjective and my choices for decade boundaries apply only to the US.

But for the purposes of something like this thread I think it's smarter to just use a calendar.

Yes, I've read this dateline opinion elsewhere and I agree with you from a wider sociological perspective, but I think from a music perspective you can say the '50s ended with the plane crash and Elvis joining the army, and by 1960 you had surf, teen idols, and pop. And I think you can draw a clear line between Let it be and the rise of singer songwriters in 1969-70. In the UK you had Merseybeat and Joe Meek by 1960, producing radically different sounds from what went before.

Yeah, I can see that. Bands like CSNY kind of crossover between the late 60s California groups and the singer-songwriters that they all became as solo artists while Jefferson Airplane and the Dead kept the hippy image.

I'm a "bit" biased toward on genre. Other than punk I really loathe the 70s.
US
Ramones
Blondie
New York Dolls
Television
the Dead Boys

UK:
Sex Pistols
Joy Division
The Damned
The Clash
The Buzzcocks

I find it hard to try to narrow anything down to this small of a number. It's so dependent on my mood on any given day that it's impossible to put it in text.

I would personally tend to split both decades in half musically:

60's Pt 1: USA Teen Pop (Pat Boone Bobby Darin), British Invasion (Beatles Stones DC5 Who Herman's Hermits), Motown (Supremes, Temptations), Surf (Beach Boys Jan & Dean)

60's Pt 2 Psych (Airplane, Dead), Hard Rock (Cream, Mountain, Iron Butterfly), Singer Songwriter (Byrds, Melanie CSN) More USA Teen Pop (Tommy James, Turtles)

70's Pt 1 Hard Rock (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin) (Glam Bowie, Mott, Alice, Roxy), Singer Songwriter (CSNY, Fogelberg, Joni, Jackson Browne), Prog (Yes, King Crimson, Wishbone Ash, ELP)

70's Pt 2 Disco (Donna Summer, Chic), Punk & New Wave (Blondie, Talking Heads, Devo) Arena Rock (Journey, Styx, Kansas)

The artists I used for examples were the first that came to mind & were not especially thought out.

US:
CSN&Y
Fleetwood Mac
Steely Dan
Chicago
America

UK:
Led Zeppelin
The Who
(Hmmmm...there must be somebody else...)

I would've put CSNY but they only put out one studio album and a live album in the 70s! CSN were no better with just one studio album as well. I just couldn't put them in due to the lack of material, yet they absolutely are one of the bands you think of when you think of the 70s-how did they do that? Probably with all the spinoffs and side projects remaining very visible in the decade despite a lack of output. Oh yeah, Neil didn't hurt any either!

I almost put CSN on my 60s list. Only one album and a show at Woodstock, but it was my favorite album by any combination of those guys and Woodstock was such a big deal. If I ever figure out my 70s list, they're definitely on it.