Prism02 said:
Sounds like someone was able to get into Studio 54.
I’ve got to agree with the OP- seeing old ads with a shirtless Mark Spitz or OJ Simpson hawking Dingo boots seem really creepy.
Yes, you’re correct about OPEC which decided to screw us in 1973 or 74, but it took a few years for the damage to really hit. Then the layoffs began, the government started slashing funds, mental hospitals started dumping patients on the street, businesses started folding and major companies kicked out thousands of loyal employees.
The ‘Black exploitation’ films then were mild in comparison to today’s. Today, Spike Lee loves to show his people in ghetto settings beating each other up, killing each other over drugs, women or just for fun, downing Whitey, hammering slavery, looking ludicrous and hard headed and then demanding that ‘Whitey’ stop treating them funny.
Yes, some of the performers were ugly as hell – though you have to watch it with these new commercials selling tune collections. They have a tendency to mix old shots in with new and some performers who were not too bad looking back then are rather homely now. The willowy blond in Peter, Paul and Mary, the 60s folk singers, who was cute with loooong blond hair showed up in a commercial boosting a CD of their past songs and, boy! talk about change!! She must have gained something like 150 pounds!
I don’t dance – having no rhythm and something like 5 or 6 left feet, but I used to love to sit in the lounge and watch the couples dance on the electric dance floor with all of the dance lights flashing from the roof. (I never liked the mirrored ball all that much.)
The girls looked good! Even the guys looked good. (I wasn’t all that crazy about guys in platform shoes though.) The DJ looked like he was having fun, the dancers were not dancing to tunes talking about rape, killing, ‘boyz-in-da-hood,’ beating up women, slapping ‘bitches’, dealing drugs, shooting ‘the man,’ or gangs.
Black men and women were Black men and women. They were not Nubian princes and princesses, did not walk around with NOI skullcaps and weird chin whiskers, were not ‘gangsta’s’, and were not demanding equality with segregation. They were cool! The Black singers were great and the female performers wore beautiful costumes, body makeup and hairstyles. Black men wore hair instead of shaving themselves convict bald.
You did not see a skinhead haircut on any White guy, nor did they walk around with pierced tongues which they kept sticking out in hopes of seducing women. The American Nazi Party was a bad thing. Being tossed in the drunk tank over night was OK, but being an ex-con was not. Most guys did not carry guns in their cars.
The music was hot and fast and cheerful. Radio DJs were funny and not sarcastic and mouthy. Neil Diamond was cool and for making love to. Kid shows did not show kids treating their parents as morons, talking at a constant scream (Malcolm in the middle), talking back to the folks and doing what they wanted to no matter what the parents said. Cartoons had not introduced kids to absolute grossness (Ren and Stimpy) and being an insensitive clod as a parent was not considered cool (Family Guy).
I will admit that I was never a big fan of the Partridge Family or the, yuck! Brady Bunch. Cagney and Lacey bored me and the Dukes of Hazard was just too stupid.
There is this picture of me and my parents, circa 1979, that sums up the 70’s.
I have a bowl cut, a mustard-yellow velour v-neck pullover over a white turtleneck with orange & olive green & yellow plaid pants and white shoes. I look like a boy (I’m a girl) wearing a 1970’s kitchen. My dad looks pretty much like Rob Reiner (Meathead) on All In the Family. Ditto the turtleneck, only his is tan. My mother has attempted some kind of feathery-disco hairstyle and porn-star makeup.
I miss that gold Buick sedan with the tan seats that would get hot and melty and reek of vinyl in the summer. I used to get carsick and vomit on a regular basis.
I miss our Harvest Gold kitchen appliances, and the orange vinyl swivel chairs in our kitchen.
I hearken back to that era every time I see the “Early Sanford & Son” loveseat that I rescued from the hall of my building and brought to my apartment.
I agree with the OP - everything was just a little off.
I was in high school during the 70’s and I dug it.
Highlights:
Getting high for the first time
Getting laid for the first time
Led Zeppelin
Bob Marley
No AIDS
KISS
“The Godfather I and II”
Falling in love with Brad, my first boyfriend
“Wizards”
Going to the Vogue Theater on weekends to catch midnight movies back when they were cool.
Getting stoned at the Vogue Theater
Teachers who turned me on to Frank Herbert and Aldous Huxley
Being the “HighQ” team captain for our high school two years in a row. (HighQ was a Louisville, KY Sunday morning version of Jeopardy on WAVE channel 3 pitting area high schools against each other)
David Bowie
Hanging out at Rocky’s Sub Pub after school
Quaaludes
Going to concerts at Freedom Hall
The Sex Pistols
Talking Heads
The Ramones
Watching “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the first time and knowing it was talking about me.
I’m with goboy; I also spent my teens in the 1970s. The Sexual Revolution was taken for granted by the middle of the decade, the worst you could suffer STD-wise was a dose of the clap, and the drugs were cheap and plentiful.
I managed to avoid the ugly-ass clothing by pretending it was still the 1960s. I spent the '70s with my hair down my back, dressed in Levi’s, army surplus, and cotton workshirts.
I avoided the crappy music by developing an interest in classical music and bebop. The Grateful Dead played most of their best shows in the '70s, too.
And I avoided the crappy teevee programming by not watching any.
the 70’s were great,
I was conceived
'the 70’s were great,
I was conceived"
The 70’s were great,
I was conceiving.Sorry man, you can’t smoke that in here! (Oh wait…I’m the San Francisco Vogue Theater, not the Kentucky Vogue.)
Dungeons & Dragons and Fortran 77.
I was born in '76, so I don’t have much to add. However, this
made me laugh out loud. What is with those 70s kitchen color schemes? The last two places I’ve lived have had avocado/harvest gold/burnt orange appliances. Will they never die? Did the heinous colors contribute to their longevity? I can’t get rid of my burnt orange stove as long as it works, but MAN, it is ugly.
I spent a good chunk of the 70’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Band, and having a great time at ‘bush parties’ and other inventive ways to get drunk and/or stoned. Anyone remember Yucca Flux? Take as much Tequila and other hard alcohols as you can find, dump it in a big vat of some sort, fill said vat with slices of apples, oranges, and cherries. Add some OJ or fruit juice. Drink until you go blind.
I had a '67 Camaro with a 425hp engine, and we’d head out after work and just have a great time.
The 70s were depressing. I was a teenager for the latter part of the 70s. I just remember the crappy music, crappy clothing, and my awkwardness in growing up.
I am with Ukulele Ike on a lot of it, though. I listened to Classical music, so I wasn’t subjected to much of the music. I was sort of oblivious about clothing - wore old jeans and t-shirts, and my sisters’ hand-me-downs - I wasn’t trying to keep up with the latest hideous 70s styles. I didn’t watch much TV. (Our parents wouldn’t let us watch much TV. And when we did, it was often re-runs from the 50s and 60s! Gimme “Maverick” and “Wagon Train” any day!) I knew even back then that I would never take drugs, so the quality of drugs was never an issue.
But still, I cannot see what the big deal about the 70s is. It was merely a decade to be gotten through, as far as I am concerned.
In the early 70s I was straight laced and boring.
Then came my first apartment! Followed by my first trip to a real night club, followed by my buying my first real hot rod, and dressing in something else besides jeans and work cloths. (I never went for the full 70s look, though I was close.) Then came new, exciting friends, a new and exciting job, college, my first real sexual encounter, followed by more, another, better apartment, parties, lots of fun, my first real stereo, exciting adventures and meeting exciting people. I met people who were both into the 60s and the 70s. (Down here, the 60s were still going on when the 70s hit. It was great!) I first went to a strip club in the 70s and fell in love about 8 times. I first tried pot in the 70s and first met people who actually had and used the drugs mentioned on TV! (I chose not to.) The first liquid crystal digital watch came out then - a heavy metal affair with a constantly glowing red LCD that drained the battery fast. (It was expensive!) Then came the first pocket calculators with LCD and they were expensive. No one had a PC. ATARI was not invented yet and - thankfully - nothing like POKIMON was even dreamed of.
We had landed on the moon and were still going there and the attitude was that we could do anything! We saw Barbarella - with a then half nude and beautiful Jane Fonda who had not yet managed to betray the American Fighting Men and Women in 'Nam. We saw 2001 and marveled at the special effects. (No computer effects back then, remember?) We fully expected to have bases on the moon by the 80s, stations around the Earth by the 90s and to have landed a man on Mars before the 2000s. Microwave ovens had just appeared, but mainly in 7-11s and other such places. The home version was very costly. There were no microwave dishes out.
I met my first love then and lost her. I met my second love then and lost her. I partied on. I got my first waterbed. I bought my first optical light. I bought my first rifle. I took my first dancers to breakfast from a strip club. I bought my first prostitute. Cablevision was first introduced in our town. HBO was stimulating and exciting. It was not against the law to steal cable.
No one knew anything about an Internet. The cold war was still going on and it was us against the commies for the safety of the world. The news media was ignoring the bad treatment of returning Vietnam vets not only by the government but the populace in general. AIDS was not around and HERPES had just begun. The only thing we used condoms for was to prevent babies and to keep from getting the clap – which a shot would cure. There were smoking sections in some movie houses. There were no mega movie houses, showing a half dozen movies at once.
It was a good time.
I don’t know why i should be surprised. But somehow it still sounds strange,to hear the same old refrain: everything was better back then, we had good technology not this stupid pointless stuff, and the kids today…with their hair and their clothes…oy vey! Oh, and back then the blacks knew their place.
to hear this stuff from somebody who grew up in the 70’s.
Thus shall it ever be, I guess.
Give it 20 or 30 years and you’ll be singing the same tune about your favorite decade.
Maybe I will.
I did say thus shall it ever be.
It hasn’t been 20 or 30, but it has been a few years since my flaming youth…the really flaming part anyway. And yeah, music you heard when you were 14- 18- 21 will always sound different than anything that comes after. And of course people were better looking then. And of course you’re going to connect forever with the particulars of the first world you entered into as an adult (and I don’t mean just getting laid…well ok maybe I do). So you’re bound to think of it fondly (unless of course you don’t…see yoemitebabe, and me on the subject of the late eighties).
But…is it not possible to celebrate one’s youth without the “…and now everything sucks” corollary?