What was life like in the 1970's?

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They weren't very nice. I had no friends until senior year in high school I made up for my sadness by pretending to sing "opera" on the subways.

At least I lived near Jamaica Bay for a while---but I didn't take full advantage of the beauty of the area back then. My aesthetic sense wasn't fully developed yet.

I carried my books in my arms. Not many backpacks then. You could get a decent-sized pizza and a coke for $1.00 in 1979. Nobody carried a laptop into class, of course. There was a typing class using old 1950s Olivetti and Royal typewriters.

It was even worse when I went to junior high.

Probably the social studies classes, and some of the English classes.

How is school for you? I hope it's far better than how I experienced it.

lesse, those times are in my dusty musty back pages.... I remember when the miniseries "The Bastard" came out, there was a controversy where some stations wouldn't carry it, so they got a censored version called "kent family chronicles." "mary Hartman, mary Hartman" and "soap" were two controversial soap opera parodies, that generated FCC complaint letters en masse from blue nosed prudes. "All in the family" got a public rebuke from president Nixon when Sammy davis jr. kissed archie bunker. the local PBS station carried a racy [for the period] televideo called "steambath" that showed actress Brenda Vaccaro totally nude, and was the first American tv program to feature uncensored profanity. it was shown late at night so almost nobody ['cept for me] noticed. later on, an import across the pond from Thames Video, called "Rock Follies," upped the ante somewhat. perhaps Americans were more tolerant by then because either nobody watched or they heard nothing to complain about.

there was much more fun and laughs
the second part was crammed with ww2 memorial-whatnots, as if we weren't fed enough with that before,

NASA was still active on the moon, at least in the early part of the decade.

there doesn't seem to be a single color photo from that era that isn't tinted orange. so weird.

it seemed to be a day-glo-orange-tinted and shag-carpeted decade, with big ol' JBL tower speakers blasting bassy disco music on its soundtrack.

Everything was colored burnt orange or avocado green. Everyone wore polyester outfits, platform shoes, lots of yellow gold jewelry and went to the disco.

History is the one subject I really like and am good at.



And now for one of my favorite disco songs. Mainly cause it's kinda weird.

I was born on Feb. 9th, 1974, so my memories of the 70's were vague at the time.

I remember listening to record players and 8-trqck tapes.

My mom played Abba so much that I named a teddy bear Abba.

I got my tonsils and adenoids removed when I was around 4.

I owned a Chipmunks Punk record, which I loved.

Everything was orange or brown in color.

I watched Sesame Street and the Flintstones a lot. Of course, The Flintstones was in reruns at that time.

My parents, my brother and I lived in a mobile home until I was around 11. It was within walking distance to my grandparent's house, so we'd visit or stay over with them a lot. I had an aunt and two uncles who were young and still living with my grandparents. In fact, my aunt was in grade 5 or 6 when I started Grade Primary (that's kindergarten in the US) at the same school.

Portable TVs were usually still black and white but regular-sized TVs were in color, I think. A big box with a tube. And they had dials instead of buttons for changing channels, adjusting pictures and sound.

When the Atari 2600 was released it had a switch for B&W TV.

My parents had a Pong game. It was on some game console that came from Sears, I think, that had Pong and variations of the game already programmed into it, but you couldn't play anything else on it.

Pinball was popular, and arcade video games such as Space Invaders and Galaxian. It was the start of the Golden Age of arcade games.

However, it was also the Dark Age of animation, although that really began in the 50's.

Many sitcoms were more like situation dramedys, like All in the Family or M*A*S*H*.

My mother recently told me my older brother was potty-trained before he was even 2 years old and partly the reason may have been because they only had cloth diapers which were too uncomfortable. I was potty-trained at around 2 when disposable diapers became common, even though I read they were invented in 1946.

I remember my sister listening to Sweet:


In the 80's i listened to Slade when they had a brief revival and 70s music went back into popularity:


Revivals like that happens regularly, i remember the song "Far Far Away" was used in commercials a while ago.