Reasons the Seventies Rocked
It seems the farther you get away from a decade, the more you realize how much you loved about it. We decided to take a look back at some of our staff’s favorite REASONS WHY THE SEVENTIES ROCKED. And so here they are in no particular order:
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1. Music
The Seventies meant so much to music it would be difficult to know where to begin. We had Southern Rock; Americana and Blues merged and the Allman Brothers peaked. Punk Rock broke out, giving popular music a kick in the ass. The youth rebelled against disco and bloated corporate rock with simple, aggressive songs that you didn’t need to be a virtuoso to play, and changed the musical landscape in the process. Glam Rock brought us glittery pop rock, flamboyant androgyny, Ziggy Stardust, Bowie, T.Rex, Roxy Music, and Mott the Hoople. We danced on the ONE: James Brown, George Clinton, Bootsy, Earth, Wind & Fire, WAR, Sly, etc had asses wiggling even BEFORE disco kicked in.
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2. The Album
The album gained popularity in the 60s, but it really came into it’s own in the 70s. If you bought an album, you would listen to the whole thing all the way through because it was a pain in the ass to listen to only certain tracks. You really developed an appreciation for the whole album. And of course, great album cover art made the 70’s extra cool.
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3. Monday Night Football
Howard, Dandy Don & The Giffer. The iconic theme song. Halftime highlights. The worst day of the week was now something to look forward to.
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4. Toys
The Evel Knievel Super Stunt Cycle : Only the best toy ever. Ever!
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5. Saturday Night Live is Born
Saturday Night Live appeared on NBC on Oct 11, 1975. If you were doing an all star cast of all time SNL cast members , you’d use at least 4 from the original seasons. SNL has been on the air for 37 seasons but they are still riding the same wave that crest and broke in the late 70’s.
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6. Kung Fu/Spaghetti Westerns
The Seventies marked the last times good westerns were made, especially Sergio Leone’s. And nothing was cooler than Bruce Lee and Kung Fu. Today’s action stars don’t hold up at all compared to what Bruce and David Carradine did.
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7. Watergate
The 1970s number one reality show was the Watergate hearings. Plenty of bodies were thrown out of the oval office with the finale of Richard Nixon forced from office throwing gang signals into the air as he climbed into a helicopter.
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8. The Other Deep Throat
Porn exploded into the mainstream for good. Without Deep Throat where would internet pornography be today?
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9. The 70’s cinema explosion
For a magical time, directors ran the show. Real dialogue, real situations. Sometimes the ending wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary. The beginnings of so many amazing directors, it’s mind boggling, and we knew their names: Coppola. Scorsese. Spielberg. Ashby. Altman. Friedkin. Bogdanovich, DePalma, Lucas, Milius, Woody. A period of filmaking that will never see again.
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10. Sexy Revolutionaries
Angela Davis. Huey Newton. Patty Hearst. Carlos The Jackal. They fought the law and looked good doing it.
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11. Urban Myths
Justin Bieber isn’t dead. I know because I googled it. Kids of the seventies didn’t have this luxury, so without any way to debunk them, outlandish rumors spread like wildfire. With no one to tell us otherwise, we believed that Mikey from the Life Cereal commercials died because he ate Pop Rocks and drank Coke, that Alice Cooper wouldn’t perform until the crowd ripped apart a puppy, that the Beaver died in Vietnam, and that Rod Stewart had to get his stomach pumped because… um… er…
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12. Shampoo
Looking back at some of the family photos, perhaps, you might not take the 70’s for a time of excellent hair-care products. But the 70’s had some of the best smelling shampoos EVER, and the best shampoo commercials in history. Clairol Herbal Essences deep emerald green formula was like a cool breath of fresh, flowery forest air. Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific is another great throw-back scent of 70’s Shampoo. Lemon Up, Faberge Organics (and they’ll tell two friends! ) and Breck!
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13. Unexplained Phenomena
How come no one seems to care about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, possessed houses or finding Noah’s Ark anymore? In the 70s, the public was fascinated by the unknown. The fact that there were best-selling books, movies, and highly rated TV shows all devoted to these types of things is a testament to its popularity. Today there are niche TV shows and radio shows devoted to this kind of stuff, but it’s doesn’t captured the public’s imagination like it did then.
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14. Kitchen Design and Decor
The color palettes were tangerine, robins egg blue, harvest gold and avocado. Everyone wanted a kitchen that looked like the Brady Bunch kitchen, right down to the plastic melamine dishes and brightly colored tupperware juice pitchers and containers.
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15. Cheech and Chong
The comedy duo became a cult phenomenon in the seventies, resulting in the release of four comedy albums, and culminating in the release of their first movie “Up in Smoke” in 1978. They entertained audiences everywhere with their brilliant stand up and launched an entire industry of pot/drug related comedy.
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16. Counterculture in Major League Baseball
Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four made players look all-too human; Yankee pitchers Fritz Petersen and Mike Kekich swap wives, families, houses & even the dogs. Dock Ellis throws a no-hitter while tripping on acid. The Oakland A’s grow their hair out while Oscar Gamble & Bake McBride bring the Afro to the bigs. Mark ‘The Bird’ Fidrych brings the game back to roots while Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee introduces Zen philosophy – and pot – to America’s pastime.
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There’s a lot here, but we know there’s more. What did you love about the 70s?
