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I much preferred the 60's to the 70's. I liked the first half of the 70's well enough but from about '75 to the end,I didn't like it at all. Pop music was changing, clothes and hairdos were at their ugliest, and disco was born. I had some fun with the disco scene but was glad it passed and I never missed it.
Early-70's still had terrific rock music but it started to change direction later in the decade.
Key-exchange (partner-swapping) parties. I remember a few who pretended to be hip and go with the flow. Actually, to me the 70's was the most promiscuous decade.
BAD movies!
Muscle-cars, cheap gas prices ~ cheap enough to cruise along main street on weekend nights.
I'm young, born in 1989, so I know nothing about it.
But I always listen to 70's music, watch movies made in the 70's, and listen to my parents stories about it. I'm just wondering, how was the 70's like in America? It seemed much more peaceful back then than it is now. I wish I could go back in time and experience it....
Your post is somewhat dated, but I'll give my two cents anyway. I was a 10 year old growing up in 1978 and I can tell you that life was so much simpler. No video games, no internet, no computers. After school, you would hang out with friends at the diner or go fishing or just watch movies. The streets weren't packed wall to wall with cars and traffic. You could walk out in the street and wait 10 minutes for a car to drive by. Not just a side street either. A main street. It was nice. They weren't spraying the skies with chemicals and the air was cleaner. Laws were so much more relaxed. They weren't arresting parents for spanking there kids. They were encouraging it, lol. If a 14 year old stole a car, he was slapped on the wrist and handed over to his parents. Now they go to prison as adults. It's amazing. A great movie that shows what life was like around that time was ET. Spielberg got it just right as far as the setting of that time. Another one is Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, also by Spielberg. Those two show what life was really like in 1978-79. Walkmans had just come out and that was the latest thing. Listening to a tapedeck with your fav music. Wow, it's a slippery slope. A newer movie that shows 1979 well is Super 8. Hope this helps. I like your post. Brings back the good times for me. Oh yea and Dazed and Confused is a great movie to remember that time!!!
Last edited by Haddonfield04; 06-26-2011 at 06:01 PM..
Reason: forgot something
Your post is somewhat dated, but I'll give my two cents anyway. I was a 10 year old growing up in 1978 and I can tell you that life was so much simpler. No video games, no internet, no computers. After school, you would hang out with friends at the diner or go fishing or just watch movies. The streets weren't packed wall to wall with cars and traffic. You could walk out in the street and wait 10 minutes for a car to drive by. Not just a side street either. A main street. It was nice. They weren't spraying the skies with chemicals and the air was cleaner. Laws were so much more relaxed. They weren't arresting parents for spanking there kids. They were encouraging it, lol. If a 14 year old stole a car, he was slapped on the wrist and handed over to his parents. Now they go to prison as adults. It's amazing. A great movie that shows what life was like around that time was ET. Spielberg got it just right as far as the setting of that time. Another one is Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, also by Spielberg. Those two show what life was really like in 1978-79. Walkmans had just come out and that was the latest thing. Listening to a tapedeck with your fav music. Wow, it's a slippery slope. A newer movie that shows 1979 well is Super 8. Hope this helps. I like your post. Brings back the good times for me. Oh yea and Dazed and Confused is a great movie to remember that time!!!
Your post was how it may have been in the suburbs.
I was 14 in 1978 and it certainly wasn't like that for me.
I had to go through metal detectors to get into my high school.
I think the air in NY is probably cleaner now than it was then.
There was traffic everywhere.
Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a great time but all areas were not like a Spielberg movie.
Your post was how it may have been in the suburbs.
I was 14 in 1978 and it certainly wasn't like that for me.
I had to go through metal detectors to get into my high school.
I think the air in NY is probably cleaner now than it was then.
There was traffic everywhere.
Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a great time but all areas were not like a Spielberg movie.
Agree.
Grew up in the Rust Belt. Lots of violence and gangs in the early 70s. Drugs went from pot to acid and lots of pills. Kids would OD in grade school and high school, during school. We had drug dogs in our Catholic High School, but students were allowed to smoke cigarettes on the front steps and in the school basement. PCP became popular and permanently fried many people's brains, but it was sold as "THC". During the late 70s the government sprayed the Mexican marijuana crop with weed killer (paraquat) but it got harvested anyway and people came down with lung diseases. Alcohol made a major comeback when there was a drug shortage in the late 70s, and violence, drunk driving, and accidents increased. I lost several friends and neighbors. Schools were wildly overcrowded with the peak of the baby boomers in school. Factories were closing down, and there was high unemployment. The cities were dirty and decaying. Inflation took off in the late 70s, and prices increased almost every day (I worked in a supermarket and had to change them). Gas went from 30 cents to 1 dollar a gallon, back when cars got 10 mpg and minimum wage was 1.90 an hour. Redlining and white flight turned some decent neighborhoods into bad before your eyes. Racism was strong, and if black people came into white neighborhoods they were harassed, and I remember a black policeman who moved to our neighborhood regularly got his picture window broken. In our high school homecoming parade some students dressed up in KKK outfits. I remember in Boy Scouts while on a bus driving through black neighborhoods the entire bus would sing out racist chants.
There was good and bad during the 70s, but I remember back then we were nostalgic for the 60s, as we were younger and felt we missed out on all the great things that happened then. We were past the crest of the boom, and felt like we got few of the advantages that our older siblings had. We saw the 70s as a "wasted" decade in almost every sense. The early 80s weren't much better, and maybe even worse.
When we were kids we played outside until dark, unsupervised, including fields adjacent to busy railroad tracks. There were dozens of kids on every street all day and late at night, playing touch football, running bases, or street hockey in the streets. When I was 10 I rode my bike miles from home into parts of the city, including to places to see where recent riots had taken place. We would play pick-up sports at playgrounds and parks, always unsupervised, and strangers always joined in and were welcomed. Fireworks were illegal, but during the 4th of July the city lit up like Baghdad with fireworks smuggled in from Ohio. There was music everywhere, and there were city sponsored concerts all summer in the parks. Sometimes they had to bring in mounted police to break up the crowds. We would hang outside clubs at night to listen to bands since we were too young to go in. The drinking age was 18, and many bars didn't card you (especially girls) and so there were bars frequented by high schoolers, sometimes with patrons as young as 14 and 15.
I had a great time during the 70s, but it sure wasn't Mayberry that I grew up in.
boy i tell you i would kill to have the music back from the 70's
compared to the garbage that is produced these days!
garbage
guarantee you any musician from mainstream today will not be rockin and rollin in the year 41 guranteed
sunnyandcloudydays, I'm older than you and I love music from the 70's, well I'm more 60's and early 70's. But anyway, I know you're in theChicago area Don't you think there's stuff on XRT as good as anything from back then? Maybe not the vast quantity, but really if you open your mind there's a lot that's good.
Edited to add - Don't ask me what it is though. Part of being able to remember not just the 70's but the entire 60's and a little of the 50's vaguely, is I can never remember the names of current songs I like or who did them. I couldn't load an ipod to save my life.
Last edited by subject2change; 06-27-2011 at 08:25 AM..
Hey Mike. Yea, growing up in NY at that time must have been very tough for you. I can only imagine. I lived just across the GWB in the NJ suburbs, just outside NY at that time and I know that NY was a tough place during 1978. You had to be tough to live there. The air quality was always poor and the crime was high. So I sympathize with you. The area I was in was small town America at the time, with slightly fewer people and good schools. I was fortunate in many respects. My brother lives in NYC now on the streets, so I can relate in some ways to your childhood experience.
People also make great points about the drugs. Drugs were everywhere. There were railroad tracks right next to my HS and it was a big hang out spot for smoking or doing whatever you could get your hands on. I should've noted that yes I did grow up in the suburbs outside NYC. So in a sense I had it better than many others. I should also mention that air quality in the cities was much worse then, then it is today. I honestly think the air in the burbs is worse today. But they say its much cleaner due to regulating the quality of gas in cars. There were a lot of gangs in the city areas, not the burbs. Anyone involved with city life during the 70's had it particularly rough. Life was not easy in the cities. The one thing I always appreciated from that period was the music and the films. Some of the drugs, lol. You don't see blodder acid much anymore (bummer....)....lol.
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Movie that captures the 70's
