If you want to understand the music in the 70’s just know the fact that “Imagine” never made it to number one on the charts. It did make number 2. What epic song kept mutherfucking “IMAGINE” by John Fucking Lennon out of number 1?
Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves by Cher
:smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:
OH man, story songs, shudder. People liked that shit! Is it any wonder that I turned to big band jazz when "You Light up My Life stayed at number one for ten hellish weeks???
But movies were pretty good and we didn’t have not PG-13 nonsense so I got to see boobies in PG films when I was still a wee lad. Unfortunately the “summer blockbuster” was born in the 70’s and this forever changed the movie industry. My bike had a banana seat and the back wheel was practically perfectly smooth. G.I Joe was 12 inches tall! My older brother’s girlfriends didn’t wear bras.
I would love to see the return of the tube top.
There were only paper bags at the grocery store and we’d often load up all our returnable Coke bottles in cases to drop off on our way in. A kid could still buy glue for making model airplanes and if you were lucky for Christmas you got a bananna seat to put on your Schwinn. I remember Krates, 8 and 10 speeds like the Varsity and Continental becoming hugely popular, replacing heavy old 3 speeds.
I still remember shots of Hueys flying in the wounded every night on TV, often with body counts given for us and the VC. Older guys in school would discuss the draft.
Yeah, we had the MIA bracelets. Had a wall of MIA/POW at school. Wall would get updated with date returned home or date Killed In Action.
We had incredible access to air fields. We could drive right up the barely fenced off end of the runway at Ellington AFB and watch fighters come in for touch and go. Took lots of jet pics for my HS photo classes. The noise was awesome. We could drive right up to hangers at Houston Hobby (civilian airport), walk all around the passenger jets and even peek inside some smaller planes.
Actually, LSD was made illegal in New York State in 1965, in California in 1966, and federally in 1968. Nixon had nothing to do with it. Not that this halted its popularity, though. I think the stats generally indicate that the late '70s/early '80s were the druggiest time ever.
For me the 70s was end of high school/college/year off/start of grad school. So, a period that definitely evokes nostalgia in terms of my personal life. During that time I was pretty alienated from the mainstream culture, so my nostalgia is sort of skewed… no nostalgia for mainstream culture but lots for 60s-holdover, serious prog rock, and punk.
I wasn’t yet born during the 70s, but there are times I wonder what it would’ve been like to be alive then. Not for the music, fashions or whatnot–for something that is well and truly irreplaceable.
My interest in the popular culture of the early 20th century often leads me to read the reminisces of historians who actually got to meet the stars, directors, singers and others from that era. I get tinges of jealousy when I read about the people who got to hang out with Allan Dwan, Lillian Gish or Sylvester Ahola. It’s true that meeting them wouldn’t have been exclusive to the 70s, but that decade was a good time to research the early entertainment scene and there were countless books published every year that shed more light on it. Not everything about the so-called nostalgia boom of the early 70s was wonderful, but it did allow people like Ruby Keeler one last moment in the spotlight.
Many things have changed for the better today–improved research, vastly better availability of films and archival documents, and the Internet just makes it a lot easier to share these resources and help each other in the bits of research that we fans of the period do. The one thing missing is (most of) the people who were there–and whatever else one may feel about the 70s, that’s one thing we young’uns really missed out on.
We had the outdoor malls in the Chicago area; Old Orchard had Marshall Fields, Saks, Sears, and a lot of others, and Woodfield opened as an enclosed mall in 1971.
^
More like 60s if you think of matchbox and Tonka cars, battery-powered toy guns, wooden blocks, etc. This persisted to the 70s, at least in my country.
Hell, even as a kid who grew up in the 80s, the early 80s seemed to have lots of metal toys. Not just all those Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Tonka trucks, etc., but those old Transformers and Go-Bots, etc. Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, etc. Now whether there were “more” of these than the plastic kinds, I don’t know, just that wood & metal toys were quite common even through the early 80s.
Ah, the 70’s, when Mimes had their own TV show, ‘Convoy’ became bigger than any Internet meme you’ve every encountered, ‘Wolfman Jack’ was the height of radio communication, and some of the best car chases ever put on film were filmed.
When fashion considerations were: “what brown goes with this other brown?” When shag carpeting was used as wall covering.
When music hit such experimental heights as Progressive Rock, Rock Operas, the best Arena Rock there would ever be, Disco, and early work with synthesizers - and then turned around and gave us the “pina colada song”, “Afternoon Delights” and more Disco. Its little wonder things like punk rock and New Wave came along.
Outside of the classic movies listed in previous posts it was the era where the idea of the summer blockbuster started. Jaws, Star Wars, etc. These movies became part of the collective mind in ways most people cannot imagine - its not hard to see why, they just didn’t make as many movies to compete. Harry Potter movies might pull in huge bucks, but they came out with a host of other blockbusters released the same year. Star Wars was a summer release, the other big movies of the year were Close Encounters (in November), and Saturday Night Fever (December -and R rated). The only competition Star Wars really had was… Smokey and the Bandit.
Continuing with movies: It was when Bond movies hit their cheesiest level, and it was when the last of the Big Cast War Movies were made. It was an era in movie-making that could be incredibly bold and incredibly cheesy at the same time (Zardoz) and where an action sci-fi movie could consist of a huge amount of cerebral mumbling (Rollerball).
I was a child in the 70’s. I don’t really miss it, at least not all of it.
I remember my Dad’s gold Pulsar watch. It had a dark face and when you pressed a button on the right a red LED would display the digital time. It was so modernly different from anything else out there and I think Mom paid $2000 or so for it, a huge chunk of change for the time. It was around then that TI calculators began to take off too.
I’m just remembering a hobby I had in those years: macrame. I tied all sorts of patterns and sold them for decent prices. Must have tied over 100 during a three or four year stretch.
The 70’s is going back to highschool, most of it I loved, and I still go on vacation with my 70’s friends all these years later. We just pick up where we left off, with no pretense because we know each other so well. What I loved was the high school football and hockey games, the rock concerts, the house parties and the first time listening to Genesis, Elton John and Queen and just being blown away.