Why were the 70s such a tacky decade?

[HoosierDaddy]

That's strange..we are hearing from Nashville and Illinois in this thread..plus my examples of Florida. AG was from experiences in California. I also ran around in parts of Ohio (same thing). BTW..the cruising was mostly done in town not windy back roads or freeways. Kids cruised around & around several blocks to see who was out and about..stopped in and parked at drive ins and hangouts(most mainly on weekends). Cars were purchased from working after school or/and summer jobs...and then fixed up generally by those same kids working on them. I think it was a little more 'universal' than what you may think. Of course I know little about what was going on in Maine.
HD

 

[31 Model A]

(I have to add, though, that the only radio station in our area that broadcast a top-40 rock-n-roll format signed off at 8pm. But we didn't care, because we were all listening to the Red Sox game on another station. Baseball was far, far more important to the youth culture in my area than music. The kids I knew couldn't name any of the four Beatles, but we could name all the infielders on the '67 Red Sox. Or the '46 Red Sox.)

I skipped school and went to the 64 World Series in St Louis 42 miles away, we went by bus, everybody's dad had the cruisin car at work. We really wanted to go to a Beatles concert but no bus was going to Liverpool...................

 

[LizzieMaine]

Youth culture here involved walking up into the woods behind the high school with a paper shopping bag full of Narragansett tallboys. It was like that in my parents' day, and it was like that in my day. And it was only a small sub-set of voc-school boys who did this.

Most kids here didn't have drivers licences until after they got out of high school. We walked or rode bicycles to where we wanted to go. It was the same thing in my parents' day. I got my license when I was twenty-one, my mother got hers when she was nineteen, my father got his when he was eighteen, but he went into the Air Force straight out of high school and never got around to "cruising."

There were no teen "hangouts" in my town. We had a drugstore, a lunchroom, and a -- yes! -- a drive-in ice-cream place, but the drugstore and the lunchroom were frequented mostly by working people, and the ice cream place, open only from Memorial Day until Labor Day, was frequented by families, many of whom walked up. We had five gas stations in the middle of town, and none were frequented by teens -- they were dominated by heavyset middle-aged men in flannel shirts and red-and-black plaid wool caps who would have run off any teenagers who tried to horn in.

 

[The Good]

I understand completely why the 1970s is considered such a tacky decade, often alongside the 1960s and the 1980s that it bridged. There were a number of goofy, awful, and mediocre fashions throughout these decades, although there are aspects that I also like. I am twenty-five years old, having never lived the 1970s, and only the last few months of 1989 for the 1980s. Concerning the 1970s, I don't think it was, musically speaking, a bad decade. A lot of rock and pop music from that decade still gets some airtime on the radio, although still considerably less than 1980s music would (1960s music is pretty rare to hear on the radio, and I almost never hear 1950s or earlier music on there, except if they were Christmas songs).

While the rock and pop aspect of 1970s music is still pretty well-regarded, including some funk and disco, those aren't the genres of my main musical interests of the 1970s. I do not particularly care for much of electronic music today, but some earlier artists and albums of the 1970s through early 1980s do fascinate me. My favorite example of this kind of music is the German band Kraftwerk, which from around 1970 to 1973 were more of an experimental rock band using some electronics, but after 1974 moved onto purely electronic sounds, including synthesizers, vocoders, and some of the earliest electronic drum pads.

The band Kraftwerk do not strike me as having looked very much like fashion victims of the time. They seemed to be inspired by earlier clothing, and I think for the most part kept it in good taste compared to so many at the time of the mid and late-1970s. Since 1975, they all cut their hair a little shorter than fashionable, and by 1978, even shorter, reminiscent of early 20th century haircuts.

This picture is from 1975. A couple of the guys appear to be more '70s looking than the others, with longer, shaggier hair. The member on the middle right also appears to have flared pants with platform shoes.

Here is a 1976 picture of the group. The band wore narrow ties at a time when they were perceived as out of fashion since the late 1960s, and it was still a little before the resurgence popularized by the New Wave movement of Britain, which Kraftwerk partly inspired because of their electronic sounds and their looks.

Here is a photo of them in 1977, around the time they released Trans-Europe Express.

This picture is from 1978, and they are standing to the left of their mannequins, used for "The Robots" performances, from The Man-Machine album. They were inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis to embrace a robotic image, and their album title is a reference to the 1927 film.

In case you're interested, here is "The Robots" music video. Prepare for something strange, at least. Even if you do not like robotic sounding vocoders in music, Kraftwerk at least had robots as a part of their theme, unlike most later bands or singers that used similar effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DXdJrGhaVo&list=PL3pBB4tQSlTrKQAvfGmZFbas7-f-ln3kG&index=106

Although they may be an odd group, for a 1970s band, I think Kraftwerk did quite well to avoid appearing as garish and dated as others. They kept a more conservative image, combined with futuristic sounds for the time. I think they were inspired by the early half of the 20th century (and the 1960s), at least in their general dress sense, and their appreciation of modern art and films from before Nazi Germany came about in 1933. They wanted to take inspiration from the Weimar era of Germany in particular, because it represented to them the last point in time that the arts were a more free pursuit, and still developed independently from British and American cultural influences. They wanted make music for Germany of the 1970s and '80s, rather than take inspiration from the British and Americans, as many of their contemporaries did.

They are about the most un-1970s band of that decade I could think of, that still experienced popularity, especially the later half of the decade. I like their conservative, stiff, seemingly anti-rock aesthetic. They are hardly representative of what most people think of, when they recall the 1970s, though. I don't think they are very well-known outside of Germany, Britain, France, other European nations, and possibly Japan, but I got to see them live in Los Angeles, earlier this year.

 

[dh66]

Kraftwerk are flippin' AWESOME!! Thank you for that well written post and a strong reminder that not everything from the seventies sucked.

As far as American Graffiti, I enjoyed it but it was kind of hokey. There were far better movies from the 70s.......... like Smokey and the Bandit!

 

[HudsonHawk]

We had a huge car culture in the early 80's...cruising was big...sitting on the hoods of our cars at Wilson Park talking about girls and cars...racing them out behind the airport. There may have been something wrong with us, however.

 

[jamespowers]

We had a huge car culture in the early 80's...cruising was big...sitting on the hoods of our cars at Wilson Park talking about girls and cars...racing them out behind the airport. There may have been something wrong with us, however.

Not much wrong with you. Out here, we had/have a HUGE car culture. I cruised my 57 Chevy on the weekends up and down the strip after work on Saturdays. The local police cracked down on the cruising in my city in the 70s and that ended that. We went over to the city next door and cruised their main drag. The police were on to us eventually and they got on you if they so you go by more than three times.
Yes, we stopped at local eateries and caroused around a bit. We never got too rowdy though. That has all ended now. Now the youths end up staying at home playing ridiculous video games. No human interaction….
In my parent’s day there were drive-ins that were destinations for youths. There were car hops and the whole thing that you saw in AG. That was us. There were hotrods with decent paint jobs. By today’s standards, the youths were respectful and decent for the most part. Yes, you had the leather jacket wearing Fonzes around way before that TV show.
The 60s and maggot infested hippies ruined it by the mid 70s. No one wanted to see that dreck on the streets and they ended it because they couldn’t behave. Damned wotthless fools ruined it for the rest of us in the future. Who wanted to see the long-haired 70s mess on parade. The “fashions” were horrible polyester monsters that still give me nithmares……:eeek:

 

[Stanley Doble]

The Good are you familiar with Syrinx? Canadian synthesizer music from the beginning of the genre. Here is the first song, Melina's Torch from their first album in 1970.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6BeS14PpoQ

If that is not to your taste there are other songs, like Appalosa-Pegasus, Tillicum (Here Come The Seventies), Tumblers To The Vault, Better Deaf And Dumb From The First, Chant For Your Dragon King, Ibistix, and so on.

There were some interesting things going on in Canadian pop music in the seventies. It wasn't all Anne Murray and Rush.

 

[Stearmen]

I skipped school and went to the 64 World Series in St Louis 42 miles away, we went by bus, everybody's dad had the cruisin car at work. We really wanted to go to a Beatles concert but no bus was going to Liverpool...................

I know there was cruising in Colorado and Arizona! We were still doing it in the mid 70s, fun, chatting up girls, harmless drag races. I did not own a car until I was 21, but, I did have motorcycles. You could have a lot of fun for $5.00 back then! And, yes Lizzie, I worked hard for my cheap Honda 360! The 70s were a great time, kids could still play out side, no "stranger danger," no AIDs, gas was cheap, insurgence was to, now it's either to expensive or to dangerous to be a kid!

 

[Stanley Doble]

By the way... Kraftwerk were popular in Canada, at least among the kind of people who dug prog rock. They even got a little air play. I think I still have their Autobahn album around here someplace.

 

[The Good]

By the way... Kraftwerk were popular in Canada, at least among the kind of people who dug prog rock. They even got a little air play.

Thank you for introducing me to Syrinx, December Angel was nice. I think Kraftwerk were popular in Canada, and the United States in 1974/1975, because of the song "Autobahn," which received a fair amount of radio play. At the time, the public was almost entirely unexposed to music like that, so it was mostly regarded as a one-time novelty hit until electronic sounds in music became more commonplace by the early 1980s.

 

[Edm1]

The 70's had lots of bad music, but also had southern rock that was good and in my opinion was the Golden era of country music..(mid 70s-mid 80's). Though there was some bad stuff there too. Hey, I liked the 80s. That said I was young and in school then. I also lived in the south. Where I was it may have said 80s on the calander but we were over a decade behind. And I am not referring to racism. Where I grew up my school was 80% Black 20 % white. As kids we all got along great. The thing I remember about the 70s was how dark everything was.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not much wrong with you. Out here, we had/have a HUGE car culture. I cruised my 57 Chevy on the weekends up and down the strip after work on Saturdays. The local police cracked down on the cruising in my city in the 70s and that ended that. We went over to the city next door and cruised their main drag. The police were on to us eventually and they got on you if they so you go by more than three times.

There's where the biggest difference was between where you were and where I was -- we didn't have "strips." We had a two-lane Main Street thru the center of town and bunch of dinky side streets branching off it, many of them still dirt roads until the '70s. You couldn't cruise even if you wanted to.

I saw "cruisin'" for the first time when I lived in Santa Barbara in 1983. It was, as far as I could see, almost entirely a Mexican thing there, and they all seemed to drive early-sixties Chevrolets with no mufflers. Which made me laugh, because those were the kind of cars old people drove back home -- in their case, though, the mufflers were rusted out. As you say, though, the police took a very dim view of it and were constantly chasing them off the streets.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing I remember about the 70s was how dark everything was.

That brown business started in the early sixties, and was well underway by the turn of the decade. They called it "earth tones," but it was just twenty different shades of brown.

 

[31 Model A]

I saw "cruisin'" for the first time when I lived in Santa Barbara in 1983. It was, as far as I could see, almost entirely a Mexican thing there, and they all seemed to drive early-sixties Chevrolets with no mufflers. Which made me laugh, because those were the kind of cars old people drove back home --.

I use to first laugh, then shake my head and then lower my head in embarrassment wherever I was overseas and over hearing American tourist in their matching polyester shirts complaining how people drive, the food was terrible and they sold no Budweiser. One time I turned and said, " you should have stayed home".

 

[HudsonHawk]

I know there was cruising in Colorado and Arizona! We were still doing it in the mid 70s, fun, chatting up girls, harmless drag races.

Unfortunately, our drag races weren't so harmless. The authorities put a stop to it a few years after I was out of high school when a kid was killed, not racing, but as a bystander watching.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Thank you for introducing me to Syrinx, December Angel was nice. I think Kraftwerk were popular in Canada, and the United States in 1974/1975, because of the song "Autobahn," which received a fair amount of radio play. At the time, the public was almost entirely unexposed to music like that, so it was mostly regarded as a one-time novelty hit until electronic sounds in music became more commonplace by the early 1980s.

Kraftwerk were not regarded as a novelty or a "one hit wonder", they were just so avant garde that they had limited appeal. Lots of bands in the 70s were like that, as the 70s was the most creative and diverse decade in popular music.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Kraftwerk were not regarded as a novelty or a "one hit wonder", they were just so avant garde that they had limited appeal. Lots of bands in the 70s were like that, as the 70s was the most creative and diverse decade in popular music.

Bix Beiderbecke, King Oliver, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and Louis Armstrong would like a word with you.

 

[dh66]

Kraftwerk were not regarded as a novelty or a "one hit wonder", they were just so avant garde that they had limited appeal. Lots of bands in the 70s were like that, as the 70s was the most creative and diverse decade in popular music.

Yes! Kraftwerk, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones, ZZTop, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Porter and Dolly on the t.v., ShaNaNa on the t.v., Hee Haw on the t.v., Jan. 14, 1973 the apex of human technological achievement - Aloha from Hawaii - the King himself in all his 70s jumpsuited glory broadcast LIVE via satellite to 40 countries around the world.
What a shame to let all this great achievement be obscured by the pacer and some macrame owls.

 

[dh66]