The 1970's... best decade ever!

cooldad

I was at in high school in the mid/late 70's. I discovered sex and drugs and rock and roll. And motorcycles.

Best decade, ever.

EOT

pinno

Wasn't that lead singer from the Bangles singing eternal flame on the beach sooo frikkin sexy?

I would give an arm and a leg to be at Studio 54, snorting coke, boogying to disco and cavorting with the ladies in New York sometime between 1977 and 1979.
Mind you, if I could wind the clock back to when trad jazz was at it's peak in the mid 30's somewhere in down town Chicago/New York smoking the very best weed, I would do that too.

CiB

The 70s were brill, I went from being 7 to 17, from pedalling a 24" wheeled straight barred bike to full on 5-speed racer, from football nut to too-cool-for-football; learnt to drive, then as now failed to have the vaguest idea about girls...

The best thing about the 70s is the music. Discovered albums - Led Zep 1 was my first, then Queen's first album, 2nd hand for 75p from the local record shop. Hawkwind's Space Ritual, Patrick Moraz, Yes, AC/DC by the end of the decade on my best mate's Sharp Music Centre. Alan Freeman's Saturday Rock Show, The Friday Rock Show with TV on the radio - I told Nick it was in stereo on VHF but we couldn't find it, till he said 'oh you mean where Radio 2 is?'. Fancied his sister something rotten, and her mate... And Susan who sat right in front of me in history when we were 11, then 12 & 13. Blimey. Didn't learn a thing for 3 years. Being 'Dinner Monitor' and deliberately holding the line when she was next, and playing football in the rec knowing that her bedroom looked out on it and saving the best volleys & diving headers for when she was in there. Being 13 was tough, but good exercise.

Left school into an apprenticeship, moved on, really enjoyed life from about 75 well into the 80s when it became more grown-up.

A weekend highlight these days is Pick Of The Pops on Saturday lunchtime, esp if an early - mid 70s year is on. The big hits are endlessly recycled on the radio, but the ones that slipped away take me right back. Sailor. Moments & Whatnauts. Kiki Dee. Tina Charles other hit, Stuff that we only heard in on medium wave; here they are for the first time in years, in decent quality. Sometimes I'd give my right arm to go back for an hour, if only to March 1976 to ask Susan out. And all my grandparents were alive then.

Garry H

Went from 0 to 8. All I knew was Evel Knevel, Steve Austin and Action Man.

seanoconn

Pinno wrote:

Wasn't that lead singer from the Bangles singing eternal flame on the beach sooo frikkin sexy?

Susanna Hoffs was amazingly sexy. 80's though.

seanoconn

CiB wrote:

The 70s were brill, I went from being 7 to 17, from pedalling a 24" wheeled straight barred bike to full on 5-speed racer, from football nut to too-cool-for-football; learnt to drive, then as now failed to have the vaguest idea about girls...

The best thing about the 70s is the music. Discovered albums - Led Zep 1 was my first, then Queen's first album, 2nd hand for 75p from the local record shop. Hawkwind's Space Ritual, Patrick Moraz, Yes, AC/DC by the end of the decade on my best mate's Sharp Music Centre. Alan Freeman's Saturday Rock Show, The Friday Rock Show with TV on the radio - I told Nick it was in stereo on VHF but we couldn't find it, till he said 'oh you mean where Radio 2 is?'. Fancied his sister something rotten, and her mate... And Susan who sat right in front of me in history when we were 11, then 12 & 13. Blimey. Didn't learn a thing for 3 years. Being 'Dinner Monitor' and deliberately holding the line when she was next, and playing football in the rec knowing that her bedroom looked out on it and saving the best volleys & diving headers for when she was in there. Being 13 was tough, but good exercise.

Left school into an apprenticeship, moved on, really enjoyed life from about 75 well into the 80s when it became more grown-up.

A weekend highlight these days is Pick Of The Pops on Saturday lunchtime, esp if an early - mid 70s year is on. The big hits are endlessly recycled on the radio, but the ones that slipped away take me right back. Sailor. Moments & Whatnauts. Kiki Dee. Tina Charles other hit, Stuff that we only heard in on medium wave; here they are for the first time in years, in decent quality. Sometimes I'd give my right arm to go back for an hour, if only to March 1976 to ask Susan out. And all my grandparents were alive then.

Wow, just like an episode of the wonder years.

pinno

I remember, disco, Staying Alive, Grease, Charlies Angel's. Space hoppers, my Chopper (no, the two wheeled kind), the Stylophone, Starsky and Hutch, Kevin Keegan, Ipswich Town FC (only cos I was given a whole heap of football stickers by some forgotten kindly person), Lego, Scooby doo, Interstar Galactica, the constant talk regarding the wholesale destruction of wildlife at the time, the French Foreign Legion on training and anti-poaching duties, who helped us retrieve the Landrover exhaust and stitch it back on near the Mara river, when we left in a hurry - bull elephant taking exception to our presence, the night of the armed robbery ( I was 8 yrs old), an American bloke friend of the family who brought a Huffy bike in a bike bag from the states and put this shiny thing together in the kitchen (wow factor off the scale). the monkey's running a muck after getting drunk on fermented Loquats, me letting the piglets out when we were taking care of The Croze's farm when they were researching for their book 'The Pyramids of Life' and it took hours to get them back, the Servile Cats, the Colabus monkey and the wildlife at same farm, the big Olympic swimming pool at the American International School of Kenya which we could use for free with the high board and the friendly life guard, getting sun burnt in Mombasa and being treated with Camomile and lying in a bath of water and ice. The hallucinations during 2 separate bouts of Malaria, falling out of the Toyota land cruiser not long after swinging on the creepers in the Chula hills jungle (now gone), the French cultural centre every other weekend, my lovely primary school and my best friend Kubilai Khan (yes, that was his name), racing my bike through the coffee plantation, the Toucans demolishing the Avocado tree one year, the night the silly Yankee woman broke down in the wrong side of town and insisted on staying whilst her car was being stripped in front of here eyes and my mother telling her to get in our car quick before something worse happens (her husband was eternally grateful), snorkelling in amongst the coral reefs at Twiga beach, the Hippy colony at Twiga beach, my playmate Emma who lived next door and tragically died in a car accident in 1983, taking Jenny's clothes off in 1979 and not getting arrested ('cos that's what I thought would happen), my b4stard of a father and all the f*cking things he did, that feeling of total security in the company of my fluent Kiswahilli speaking step father and the respect he commanded everywehere and across all cultures, shooting tin cans out the back with him (to let the locals know) with an automatic and a baby Browning, my sisters friend who was once kidnapped at a party, thrown in the boot of a car and was luckily intercepted before being loaded on to a ship destined for Saudi Arabia by virtue of her dad being with the American Embassy (yes, these things still happen), the sheer colours of the tropics and the happy smiley people, the trip to Urusha taking baboon cages to a Canadian Institute studying them, the Geysers, Thompson's falls, Lake Naivasha and my first ever fishing trip, the Leopard that decided to sit on top of our car and purr whilst we sat quiet as mice for what seemed to be forever...

Vivid, vivid memories. Like yesterday. Not so vivid from the point of landing and staying in Blighty.

cooldad

I was brought up in SA and a lot of what you say is almost familiar. Different places, similar lifestyle.
Good times.

mrfpb

kleinstroker wrote:

A comment on another more serious thread, has lead me to believe that there actually some people who think life is better now than it was back in the day, the day being any day in the gloriously un-PC 1970's.
For the older members of this forum, I would like to ask if it is only me that remembers the 70's so fondly? And if it wasn't the greatest decade ever, then what is better now apart from technology?
The inexorable rise of political correctness would have seemed like a fairytale way back then, or maybe I'm just being too nostalgic and things were actually pretty crappy, strikes, powercuts, we had it all, but it was never uneventful.

Re: technology, in the 70's men flew to the moon (and back) and we had supersonic passenger flights across the Atlantic.

term1te

mrfpb wrote:

Re: technology, in the 70's men flew to the moon (and back) and we had supersonic passenger flights across the Atlantic.

Neither of which we can do today...

I remember at some point in the early 70s cycling round and round our garden with my father holding on to the back of the saddle and running behind me to hold me upright. Then discovering that he wasn't holding on anymore, one of the greatest achievements of my life to date. The bike was a really heavy child's single speed that had been re-sprayed gold and given to me for my birthday. The best thing about it was that it had a grease nipple on the bottom bracket shell, I imagined that's where the petrol went in, they don't make them like that anymore. I can't remember what happened to it now.

sungod

what's certainly better today is healthcare, we can fix/cure people better than in the 70s, though access to it is limited for most, aside from that, we restricted at least some planet harming things

the rest is debatable, varies by country of course, but on average, hmm

webboo

1976 Great year I retired from work for. the first time aged 21 to become a full time rock climber sponsored by the DHSS.
Pity it wasn't to last.

Garry H

Webboo wrote:

1976 Great year I retired from work for. the first time aged 21 to become a full time rock climber sponsored by the DHSS.
Pity it wasn't to last.

Were you living in Sheffield?

team47b

I was at art school From 1970-74 it was all brown and orange and rounded corners and lotsa drugs and those are my only memories of that decade, complete blank, I think it was the 70's, it may have been the 60's.

Sitting around all day painting and taking drugs...so nothing much has changed really

pinno

team47b wrote:

I was at art school From 1970-74 it was all brown and orange and rounded corners and lotsa drugs and those are my only memories of that decade, complete blank, I think it was the 70's, it may have been the 60's.

Sitting around all day painting and taking drugs...so nothing much has changed really

You missed... concrete.

team47b

Pinno wrote:

team47b wrote:

I was at art school From 1970-74 it was all brown and orange and rounded corners and lotsa drugs and those are my only memories of that decade, complete blank, I think it was the 70's, it may have been the 60's.

Sitting around all day painting and taking drugs...so nothing much has changed really

You missed... concrete.

Stoned