The 70s
Categories : History |
This is the decade in which I was born, so I remember very little of it, aside from sitting in front of our black and white TV, which was in a big wooden cabinet with speakers built in on each side and had a record player and radio in the top, watching to see what would appear through the round window on PlaySchool. When you look at it that way you can see a mixture of stasis and flux. Kids still sit in front of the TV (though it’s colour now, and usually a big screen), they still watch PlaySchool (though through the round window the kids now have two mummies, and no daddy to be seen), and there’s still big speakers on either side (plus a centre, sub, and two rears). The record player however is long gone in favour of the CD. I think I’m probably one of the last generation who actually bought 45 singles when I was a teenager. The first few singles I bought were on 45, then it was cassingles (can you still get those?), finally in my late teens CD singles became the norm. Now in the post-napster new millennium I doubt even CD singles will be around much longer.
Anyway, although I can’t remember much about the 70s, it’s a decade to which I can look back as producing some enduring pieces of popular culture. A great deal of quality music – Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, John Lennon, David Bowie; Elton John and Billy Joel when they were cool indy piano-men before they sold out (take the current classic track for example); Kiss, early heavy metal, punk, funk and disco. Some of it endures for it’s retro value alone (eg much of disco) while some endures because it is inherently timeless and classic. A lot of cheesy TV (The Brady Bunch, Fantasy Island, Happy Days, MASH) and some of the best movies of all time (The Godfather, Star Wars, Close Encounters, 2001 – just to name a few). I can comment less on the cultural and social changes that occurred during this time but the aftermath of Vietnam must have loomed large (will this be the post-Iraq decade? I doubt the effects will be so pervasive. Sept 11 will resonate for much longer than Iraq). Anyway what this is all leading up to is that I’ve just found a really interesting commentary on the 1970s – check it out here – the author traces the origins of many of today’s postmodern trends back to that eventful decade. Worth a read.
