What were the 1970s and 1982 like?

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We can't all be purists. Many people need something more melodic. I love the Clash songs because they were very melodic with a very pretty voice, and they had punk energy, right?
And The English Beat (The Beat ouside of the US) and the ska sound?

Sure there's watered down stuff for commercial success. I understand purists, but I for example for me punk is too heavy to listen to it on a regular basis, even tho i might like the genre.

I liked "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell

"It's raining men" by the Weathergirls.

"juicy" by Mtumi (spelling?)

"I ran" by Flight of Seagulls

"Out of Touch" by Hall and Oates

In 1985, I liked "One night in Bangkok."

I can get that. I'm 29 so most of the 'extreme music' genres had already taken form before I was a teenager. By the time I was old enough to have 'my own' musical tastes shock rock and punk and heavy metal of the 70s sounded almost quaint in comparison to the different 'extreme music' genres (which typically weren't even consciously attempting to be shocking). Sex Pistols or The Clash never struck me as fast or aggressive or shocking, but I can understand that they were perceived that way when they were starting out.

I haven't found anything that I consider 'too heavy to listen to on a regular basis'. I can listen to grindcore all day and never get bored, annoyed or overwhelmed. If early punk is too heavy, grindcore is probably mind boggling due to it's intensity, speed and briefness.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4MW2XKhxs[/youtube]

I was born in 1974 so I don't remember too much of that and mainly from a kids' point of view. I remember my mother being into ABBA and would play it on our record player so much I named one of my dolls Abba. She and my dad were also into Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, and I had a number of children's record I used to listen to all the time with those giant headphones. I had The Chipmunks Punk record, where Alvin Simon and Theodore sang My Sharona and Crazy Little Thing Called Love. I read a few years ago that album actually went platinum! My brother and I got an Atari 2600 and we thought it was the best until The Commodore 64 came along. And then The NES came along. We had the original Zapper light gun with Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley, and R.O.B, who only had two or three games ever made. Getting up on Saturday morning was something I actually wanted to do so I could watch cartoons until noon. I was always excited in the fall because there would be new cartoons or new seasons of older ones. Smurfs, My Little Pony, Transformers... I knew these things before most people into them now were even born and yet they think it's weird that I do. On Sundays I looked forwards to watching The Wonderful World of Disney(especially if it showed cartoons), and Fraggle Rock. Some of the older cartoons I watched were really violent or politically incorrect like Tom and Jerry or Pink Panther but I didn't grow up into the serial killer or promiscuous drug addict the moral guardians wanted wanted everyone to believe. We lived out in the country where there were hardly any stores or anything so going to the mall was like Disneyland! The arcade to me back them was this magical place filled with colors and lights and I was psychologically very drawn to them before I had any skill at all how to play them. I watched others play, and learned...

Whenever younger people are clueless about such things from when I was a kid it pains me. Today my mom said at lunch my cousin and her boyfriend, who must be around 20 now, were playing some charades type game with my parents on the computer and the thing they had to guess was Fred Flintstone. My parents gave out clues like "Barney Rubble's neighbor" and "Father of Pebbles" The boyfriend couldn't guess because he had no clue who Fred Flintstone is!
I used to watch The Flintstones almost every day as a kid, but of course they were reruns back then. I weep for anyone who doesn't even know them.

Yeah, I tease too about music, but its easy because I like a bit of all genres. And yes, I think that is probably pretty accurate about the effect of MTV.

In the beginning of New Wave, like 77/78 is was just this weird stuff all over the place musically, and like a evil twin of disco, because both were dance orientated. But while disco was very pop and about hair styles and dance clothes, New Wave was over-the-top odd, make your own trend in hair and clothes and you danced liked idiots. Anyone could do it, and nobody cared, so it was fun. It came up alongside punk and in the beginning it was sometimes hard to differentiate because the definitions weren't so set. In the middle of it was a Rockabilly revival that just added to the strangeness. One never knew what to expect going to the clubs in those days. At least that was my take on it, first in New York, out West and then in Germany in 82. Europe, particularly Germany had its own New Wave movement, but there it was mixed in with Techno too.

I liked New Wave from the late 1970s (e.g. "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads)--but I didn't like the PEOPLE who were afficianados of that music. They tended to be sarcastic, pompous, and quite exclusionary. They had an exaggerated view of their own worth.

About 15-20 years after that, most of these people I encountered in high school would be known as Goths.

I knew at least five people who would fit the criteria for Goths today.

I graduated High School and started college in the seventies. The seventies for me was, pretty much, all about clothes and music. I had no idea about cable television, for instance. In the mid seventies it was Fleetwood Mac, Queen, Elton John, Olivia Newton John....

I've always felt that Rock, Country, Gospel, and R&B were VERY closely related. My family's from the South (well, I am too, actually, as Maryland is south of the Mason-Dixon line), so I was into the country stars at the time: Dolly Parton (my number 1 fav), Charlie Rich, The Charlie Daniels Band (I couldn't hear "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", ENOUGH!! !), Glen Cambell, and others.

For R&B (I grew up on Motown): It was the 5th Dimension ("Aquarius"), The Chi-Lites (pronounced "Shy") - I think, if I remember correctly, my first 45 was "Have You Seen Her"----which I still have; Dionne Warwick, etc.

I was never "a Stoner"----though I liked The Rolling Stones. I was never really into The Beatles, though they were okay. I was OBSESSED with ELVIS!! ! I kept a scrapbook of every little thing I could find about him. When he did his concert from Hawaii (the first, EVER, show by satellite), I took notes (literally) of every "Thank you, thank you very much", and still have my scrapbook of him, and the newspapers that came-out the week he died!! To me, his death was one of those that people always say: "I'll always remember what I was doing when he died". My mother and I were driving to somewhere and we heard it on the car radio, and my mother pulled-over so we could hear the full news report----I cried the entire week. I can remember when President Kennedy got shot (we didn't have a TV, but had gotten one second-hand and I got yelled at for walking in front of the TV while that news report was on) and I couldn't figure-out, for the LIFE of me, why everybody was crying over someone they didn't know / had never met, and then 14 years later (I think it was), I was crying like a baby when Elvis died.

Then there was Disco, and I couldn't get enough of Donna Summers ("Save the Last Dance for Me", for instance), LaBelle (Patti LaBelle and her sisters), The BeeGees (I couldn't get enough of "Saturday Night Fever", and became an obsessive fan of the Musical movie genre).

As for the clothes: During the Disco era, I had to have the bell-bottoms and platforms (my aunt bought me a pair of platforms, but because I was so tall, she made my grandfather saw off a portion of them). Just before the Disco Era, I wore hip-huggers (pants - the young girls are wearing them nowadays, but I don't know what they're calling them). I had a what I call a "Farrah Fawcett Flip"----my hair was in the style of hers.

As for other parts of the seventies: The most memorable to me was that my family, "down home", didn't have indoor plumbing, and I was scared of the wasps nest in the out-house. The seventies is when I first learned to shoot guns (rifles and shotguns----no Southern home is without one----I later medaled with them in the military cuz I had been doin' it all of my life; the city slickers were afraid of guns, and we hillbillies laughed at them LOL). I drove my uncle's truck around the farm (I was 12 and I was tall so I could reach everything), and stopped so he could throw-out the bales of hay. Nobody had a TV----the kids went outside to play. We made crafts, and learned how to cook and sew.

When we were "up home" (in Baltimore), there were gangs----they called them "hoodlums" then. I can remember I got jumped and I set the guy's hair on fire (I didn't smoke at the time, but was holding some guy's cigarettes and lighter cuz he was gonna "take care of this"), and I busted my nose open when he screamed and threw me to the ground. That was a time of alot of racial rioting. I can remember walking into my favorite teacher's math class, she was black, and she was going-around and closing all the windows, and she said: "You can smell them in the air". A girl got thrown out of the second (or third) floor window, at my Junior High School----they just picked her up, chair and all (it was one of those chairs with the desk attached), and threw her out of the window. Everybody was afraid of black people----that was a time when "White Flight" occurred----but, I never was, for some reason. I went to school with black kids, I had black friends. I remember one time, I got beat-up by twin black girls, and when we went to the Principal's office, I couldn't tell them who did WHAT, cuz they were identical!! LOL

Okay, I guess I should shut-up now----I was on a roll!! ! LOL

Oh, as for 1982, I was in the military and stationed at the Pentagon, so I can't tell you anything about that or I'd have to kill ya!! LOL j/k

Last edited by Campin_Cat on 03 Nov 2014, 7:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Gothic rock and industrial both overlap with new wave, so I think you're on to something.

Yep....they were the "Shy-Lites." Part of my childhood soundtrack. "Oh Girrrrl!! !!" They were from Chicago (hence "Chi-lites")

Right after the 1976 Olympics, until about 1979, many girls and women used to wear the "Dorothy Hamill" hairstyle.

I had the Farrah Fawcett (Majors) poster; I never did care for her, though. My mother's boyfriend gave it to me so I could seem "hip." He wanted me to "seem hip" so I would "be" hip. He looked like some guy who used to go to singles' bars.

I had to hide my liking for Disco from the kids in my high school. Most of them were stoners who were into Arena Rock (some of them were into New Wave or Punk).

In junior high, they made attempts to integrate the school racially--but, at that time (1973-1974), it didn't work. The races were segregated within the school building.

One day, I wanted to be hip, so I went around looking like a pimp (with the Kangol hat and leisure suit). Kangols were late 70s; the wide-brimmed hats that "huggy bear" from Starsky and Hutch used to wear were usually worn by pimps in the early-mid 70s. That lasted one day.

It was last great era of comedy for the sake of comedy (i.e., The Muppet Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Hee-Haw), and the maturation of comedy for the sake of political commentary (i.e., M*A*S*H, Saturday Night Live, Cheech & Chong, George Carlin). We went from laughing at others out of humor to laughing at ourselves out of embarrassment.

"Macrame. Love beads. anti-war rallies. Tater tot casseroles. Shag carpeting. farrah Fawcet posters."

Ha! I was just thinking about all that macrame the other day. I was too young for those anti-war rallies (born in 1970) but I remember shag carpeting and that awful wood panelling on walls. All the high school girls on my bus made their hair like farrah with those big wings out the side- I thought it looked like cobra hair!

My parents didn't listen to popular music much - so I was mainly exposed to stuff on the school bus. Gave me a lifelong love of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Southern Stadium rock. I am NOT being ironic. I still think of it as 'bus music'. Thank you Mr Morning Bus Driver! (Afternoon Ms Bus Driver favoured 'soft rock', which I didn't develop as much love for).

Tater tot casserole sounds awful but fantastic at the same time. I live in the UK now, but I bet I could make it out of shaped hash browns or possible potato rounds that are a bit like tater tots. I'm making one this weekend. (oops just checked the recipe - cream of mushroom soup involved, a no-no for me, hard to source here and I don't like it, but I shall adapt!)

Apparently, I am a big fan of New Wave. I looove "Come On Eileen" and "Safety Dance" and "Africa". I love most 80s pop culture, actually.

I was a small child in 1982. I saw my first movie at a theater - "Annie".

The first movie I went to alone: "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" at age 10.

The first movie I felt like I could be a critic on: "Airport," when I was 9.

I was really into 60's rock/pop in the 60's; I'm still into it now.

They 1980s also saw the advent of Enya, a female Irish composer, born in 1961, who got her start in the family band, Clannad. She seems to have become the only "New Age" artist to have accrued enough wealth to have joined the "One-Percent Club".

I think Yanni is "new age"--at least somewhat--and he's plenty rich.

As far as New Wave goes, In the Beginning... There was Devo. Sad that most only knew the later songs, because they were tearing things up for several years before most caught on. This is one of my favorites and maybe one of the best rock intros ever. There's better quality versions, but you kind of have to see them and this was a good performance in 1978 where they actually sped the song up a bit.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YievWIX9AKk[/youtube]