Ship of Fools: The Return of the Seventies

Thread: The Return of the Seventies Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

(From the thread on car colours:)

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Orange, brown and yellow? Eek! Are we on for a return to the seventies?

I've been wondering that, ever since our local pub suddenly started offering scampi in a basket and chicken in a basket. Platform shoes are already back. Flared trousers are here.

Have you seen any other signs of renaissance of the era? What would you like to see back - and what do you fervently hope won't be revived?

I don't mind scampi in a basket, but flares, platforms and wedges - ugh.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

That hairstyle of basically short layers but with rats' tails hanging out all over. Also mullets and perms on men.

Posted by Welease Woderwick (# 10424) on :

Grey Ford Cortinas with whiplash aeriels!

Glam-Rock.

YUK!

It really was the decade that style forgot.

But I do have a multi-hued nylon Afro wig here which I wear for watching cricket.

Posted by Sparrow (# 2458) on :

The only good thing about the Seventies was that it was followed by the Eighties!

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sparrow:
The only good thing about the Seventies was that it was followed by the Eighties!

Really?

The music:
Free,
Led Zeppelin
Deep Purple
Bowie's Ziggy Stardust era.
Then Punk.

What's not to like. Even Blondie who were around in the 80s were essentially a '70s band.

OK, there was Disco, bet even then Earth Wind and Fire were making good music, shame about the inferior acts on the bandwagon.

The '80s:

Classic Rock turned into stadium rock and hair rock.
Later punk turned into gimmick punk.
Disco staerted turning into dance music.

Everything about the 70s was turned into something inferior.

The WORST thing about the '70s is that it was followed by the truly awful '80s.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Series 3 E-Type Jaguar - made the 1970s a whole lot better. Sold for a ludicrously small sum and was cooool.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

Good things about the 70s:

Cheap holidays, being able to turn up at an airport and get a standby flight without the 3-hour check-in and luggage restrictions, Abba, the lack of mobile phones, sensible house prices, the Professionals, the Morecambe & Wise Show, Blake's Seven, libraries that actually had books in them, London's department stores, the iconic red buses, playing Pong.

Bad things about the 70s:

Male hairstyles, those awful moustaches and sideburns, tank tops, flares, the shoes, Medallion Man, lava lamps, click-clack balls, Brut, smoking anywhere and everywhere, definitively losing the sixpence and shilling (and my collection of Victorian pennies) for the faceless and boring decimal currency.

Posted by Welease Woderwick (# 10424) on :

Brut is still available here, is it still available there?

It is still just as awful!

[WW ashamed to say there was a (brief) time when he wore it [Hot and Hormonal]

]

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

so why is a mullet called a mullet?

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

Please tell me when I can put my Rambo hair band again.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

As always, California is ahead of the curve (or is it behind in this case?) bringing back in 2011 our 1970s era governor

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

avocado and shrimps followed by steak and chips

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Oh yes. And Black Forest gateau. I don't understand why people laugh at that kind of food. When it was done at all well (quite a big proviso about food at any period, and if you think we don't need to make it now have a browse through, say, Jay Rayner's restaurant reviews) it was and is great.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
avocado and shrimps followed by steak and chips

Steak and chips have never gone away in our house. The avocado, admittedly, turns up more in guacamole and the shrimps in Asian stir fry.

What I don't miss is the chicken in condensed mushroom soup.

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Oh yes. And Black Forest gateau.

Anything with as little cream in as '70s BFG does not deserve the name gateau. Gateau is all about cream. I cannot say anything else about this outside of Hell.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

I've seen Surf & Turf on menus recently as well. If retro is going to be a thing, they should bring back "Neapolitan" ice cream, the vanilla wafer sandwich, and bars of butterscotch.

Nice to be able to get olive oil and fresh herbs in the shops now, though.

[ 12. July 2015, 15:10: Message edited by: Ariel ]

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

I am also not pining for Vesta curries, Findus crispy pancakes, toast toppers or what we used to refer to as Angel Depression.

I'd quite like to drink Cremola Foam again - but I suspect it would taste revolting. Space Dust - anyone remember Space Dust?

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
so why is a mullet called a mullet?

I don't remember it being called a mullet in the seventies (c 1972). Does anyone remember it being called a "feather" cut? It was popular with girls who hung out with skinheads.

Vesta curries were pretty bad, but how many of us knew that at the time? We were in blissful ignorance.

I do miss cheap, plentiful cod and chips. Personally I blame the Spanish fish hoovers.

[ 12. July 2015, 16:57: Message edited by: Sioni Sais ]

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

Don't forget the drought 76 putting the price of decent teddies up SS.
Marble sized potatoes weren't any good for chip making. Only thing was the price of chips didn't drop the following year despite a plentiful supply of large spuds [Paranoid]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
As always, California is ahead of the curve (or is it behind in this case?) bringing back in 2011 our 1970s era governor

California Uber Alles

Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :

Flares and platform shoes were very fashionable in the 90s so I'm puzzled by the surprise that they're back - 90s fashion is back, which was essentially a copy of 70s fashion. Wedges have always been around because they're much more comfortable and practical than other kinds of heels, though I personally prefer flatforms.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
As always, California is ahead of the curve (or is it behind in this case?) bringing back in 2011 our 1970s era governor
California Uber Alles

(Oh by the way, there is a bit of a movement to introduce deep breathing, yoga, and simple meditation techniques on the preschool level in California Head Starts. And IME, they take to it like ducks to water. California Uber Alles!)

Living in the bowls of Rent Hike Hell, I really would like to see the Ashram/ Commune movement come back. Minus the scary culty gurus, I mean.

Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
avocado and shrimps ...

Avocado???? How very exotic! [Big Grin]

I'll 'fess up straight away: there are certain aspects of the 70s for which I have a nostalgic fondness (in no particular order):

The music (especially Queen, Status Quo, ABBA and some of the really cheesy bands like Slade that still come out at Christmas)

Ruffly peasant-blouses (which seem to be making something of a comeback)

Wild Musk scent (although you can still get it at Wal-Mart, and I occasionally do)

Proper prawn cocktails with Marie Rose sauce - none of the spicy tomato-and-horseradish nonsense you get on this side of the Pond

Proper Television™, especially comedies like Morecambe & Wise and The Two Ronnies and action shows like The Professionals, Target and The Sweeney with lovely, hunky blokes [Hot and Hormonal]

Things I'm glad have gone away:

Coloured bathroom fittings

Flared trousers

Instant mashed potato (although the adverts were excellent)

Wallpaper, furnishings and carpets in at least three different patterns in sundry shades of brown and orange

Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
... Does anyone remember it being called a "feather" cut?

Certainly do - I had one, circa 1972 and it's taken most of the intervening 43 years for my hair to recover. [Hot and Hormonal]

Sorry for double-post - missed the edit window.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

My sister refuses to get anything but a feather cut.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

round these parts a feather cut was not at all the same thing as the justifiably much-maligned mullet, though both were popular in the 70s.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

ISTM that the 70s are not a thing, at least in the United States. Politics, fashion, music, and many other facets of culture changed so much between 1971 and 1979 that it is almost absurd to lump them together based on their third digit and call them part of the same era.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

That would be true for any 10 year period though: the 60s, the 50s, the 40s-- all show similar evolution.

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
ISTM that the 70s are not a thing, at least in the United States. Politics, fashion, music, and many other facets of culture changed so much between 1971 and 1979 that it is almost absurd to lump them together based on their third digit and call them part of the same era.

These labels for decades don't often fit the calendar. I base everything on the Sixties, which for me run from the death of JFK/The Beatles/availability of the Pill to the oil crisis at the other. That's from 1962-63 until 1973. The seventies ran from then until the Thatcher and Reagan elections (c 1979) and the eighties was the period those two were in power, the end of which coincided with the end of Soviet-bloc communism. Since then it all seems to have been a mess, not to mention a rush from the tailend of my youth to the substance of middle-age since.

btw, I can't find any etymology for the "mullet" cut before about 1995 (The Beastie Boys). Does anyone have an earlier date?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
That would be true for any 10 year period though: the 60s, the 50s, the 40s-- all show similar evolution.

Which is why they are problematic for discussions such as this. Bell bottom pants can "return" without disco "returning." And punk never really went away. And so on.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
And punk never really went away. And so on.

No, but a handy guide would be something like this...

In 1982, the TV show Quincy did a (fairly ridiculous) moral panic episode about the evils of punk rock, and how it was making kids commit suicide and whatnot. (Check it on You Tube, it's a riot.)

Now, setting aside that the script betrayed a completely whacked-out idea about what the punk scene was about, it remains the case that most of the people watching it would recognize the words "punk rock" as signifying something that was very much au courant in early 80s USA. Sure, there were kids in that era reviving the "greaser" look, and bands playing 1950s music(eg. the Stray Cats), but if anyone had done a TV show about the threat to youth posed by slick-haired greasers, the audience would have seen it as laughably retro.

And, while yes, there are still bands playing punk today, you're not likely to see punk portrayed on TV as THE major youth trend of the 2000s. Whether that's because there really are fewer punks now than there were in the 80s, or whether the media has just subjectively decided that punk isn't important anymore, I don't know. But it still remains the case that it is possible to talk coherently about punk being a definitive aspect of early 80s culture in North America(the UK might be a different story, I think it was already dead over there by that point, in a way that it wasn't an aspect of previous eras.

[ 13. July 2015, 15:28: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Next Stop, Nowhere

The punk kids shown in the photos are classic, though not in the sense of "accurate".

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

It's all true, I tell you. Why, there are numerous types of popular music which, if I am obliged to listen to them in a confined space for any length of time, make me want to kill somebody (starting with whoever controls the sound system right the way through to the recording artistes).

Posted by St. Gwladys (# 14504) on :

If you want punk with a difference, try The Bad Shepherds - punk meets folk, and it works really well. There are a number of tracks on Youtube, and they make punk sound good.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

We may be looking at the wrong era. One of the young things in my office informs me that "the Fifties were so long ago that they're cool again now".

[ 13. July 2015, 17:19: Message edited by: Ariel ]

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

I do notice that the standard summer frock these days appears to be something with a round neck, short or no sleeves, plain bodice and gathered skirt. Which was what I was wearing aged 7 or 8 (I remember the blue seersucker one, and my favourite pale yellow with tiny flowers).

Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :

Ah, His Bobness found a more mystical tone (vocally and lyrically), journeying from LSD to Jesus. I took the same journey, though the LSD (suspected, never proven) was accidental and the whole shebang was all packed into the 24 months after I completed secondary school. I was however busted for possessing and smoking dope on my 16th birthday.

I didn't bother with hairstyles, just the occasional cut. Looking back I wonder if the very attractive hairdresser pushing her breasts into my back as she cut my mop was being suggestive, but by then I was so into Jesus that I pretended not to notice in case I had Sinful Thoughts™

Posted by Spike (# 36) on :

quote:
Originally posted by St. Gwladys:
If you want punk with a difference, try The Bad Shepherds - punk meets folk, and it works really well. There are a number of tracks on Youtube, and they make punk sound good.

Yeah, the Bad Shepherds are OK, but don't do punk nearly as well as this lot

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Spike:

quote:
Originally posted by St. Gwladys:
If you want punk with a difference, try The Bad Shepherds - punk meets folk, and it works really well. There are a number of tracks on Youtube, and they make punk sound good.
Yeah, the Bad Shepherds are OK, but don't do punk nearly as well as this lot

I prefer Rob Brydon's version of this from 'I'm Sorry I haven't a clue', sung to the tune of 'Just When I Needed You Most' (which I can't find on youtube at the mo [Waterworks]

)
I collect Laura Ashley dresses from the early 1970s so for me 1970s fashion has never gone away.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

I just watched an episode of "The Facts of Life" the other day in which Jo reformed her tomboy ways by turning up for a dance in a fetching Laura Ashley blue velvet dirndl/ peasant sort of thing. The audience cooed like little doves. (Late 70's?)

Posted by Gracious rebel (# 3523) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
... Does anyone remember it being called a "feather" cut?
Certainly do - I had one, circa 1972 and it's taken most of the intervening 43 years for my hair to recover.

Sorry for double-post - missed the edit window.

I had one at about that time but it was called a gypsy cut.

Posted by crunt (# 1321) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
so why is a mullet called a mullet?
I don't remember it being called a mullet in the seventies (c 1972). Does anyone remember it being called a "feather" cut?

I also remember 'feather cut' as the term for what we now call a 'mullet' in 1970s South Wales.

By the time the nineties came around I was in NZ and the mullet was the preferred term, but the cool kids pronounced it as if it were a French word /mulé/.

Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :

I'd say the definitive feather-cut was probably as sported by Suzi Quattro.

I think that's what mine was meant to look like (not that it ever did ...) [Hot and Hormonal]

Posted by Banner Lady (# 10505) on :

Heh. Took a pic of Suzi Q to my hairdresser 2 years ago and have had the rocker's mullet ever since.

Back in the 70's the cross between the feather cut and the mullet was known as the 'Lioness' cut here in Oz.

Cars: orange and lime green Taranas and Monaros.

Furnishings: Brown shag pile carpets, diagonal baltic pine wood panelling, black satin sheets, lava lamps, egg chairs, candles in bottles covered in multi coloured wax drips.

Macrame everything: plant hangers, vests, headbands, belts, even patterns for macrame flares and mini skirts with maxi coats.

Disco music, folk rock, hard rock, glam rock. The Skyhooks and Bowie. It was a good decade for dancing.

[Smile]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by crunt:

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
so why is a mullet called a mullet?
I don't remember it being called a mullet in the seventies (c 1972). Does anyone remember it being called a "feather" cut?
I also remember 'feather cut' as the term for what we now call a 'mullet' in 1970s South Wales.

In the US those terms were never synonymous. A feather cut was a cut with a lot of layers, causing the hair to feather outward framing the face. Farrah Fawcet was the definitive example of a feather cut. A mullet otoh was a men's haircut that was short on the front and sides and had a thin long piece down the back ("business in the front, party in the back").

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

Yeah,I have always understood "mullet" to mean a short, boyish cut with a long section at the back.

Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
round these parts a feather cut was not at all the same thing as the justifiably much-maligned mullet, though both were popular in the 70s.

There was also the Dorothy Hamill Wedge, made popular by the American figure skater. She could do all her fancy skating moves and her hair would just fall back into place. Being a short-hair aficionado myself (read: hair that won't do anything), I wore this through the 70s. It morphed into the Lady Di in the 80s.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Agh, I see I repeated myself on my comments re feather cut v mullet. I was having trouble posting the links and thought it hadn't gone thru. I really didn't think my comments were so significant they needed repeating. My apologies.

**wanders off muttering under breath about senior brain**
[Hot and Hormonal]

Posted by Spike (# 36) on :

I've always thought the mullet was more of an 80s thing

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

The wiki article maintains its " zenith of popularity " was reached in the 80's, but it also full on shows a pic of Paul McCartney in a mullet and dashiki standing next to Linda, also in. Mullet and dashiki. Holy wow.

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