For my beloved Generation-X: please write your off-the-cuff memories of the 70s. I'm trying to create the next great story for tv & I'm considering a show about Rolling Stone magazine, amongst other scenarios.
This is a guest blogger invite to contribute to the zeitgeist!
This is a guest blogger invite to contribute to the zeitgeist!
Forget Rolling Stone....
ReplyDeleteGo with a more subversive and less known rock/culture magazine like CREEM.
Boy Howdy!
Watergate hearings on tv....energy crisis....long lines at the gas station...Manson family....long hair is normal for men and no bra for women. All In The Family rules the TV world.....
Black Water (ain't got no worries / coz I ain't / in no hurry) sets tone for early series timeline: 'funky Dixie land' innocence will devolve into post-'tricky Dicky' outrage & cynicism; a collective resignation that lead to studio 54 apex of excess, gas crisis lines like queues for bread in Communist bastion 'back in the USSR; death of disco (along with roller rinks), to new wave, punk, metal, the lead in to the material girl, next up, celebrating the excess on a more macro level. What exactly happened in the 70s- that no-man's land between idealism/the force of youth calling out corrupt establishment to anything goes (movie 'blow' captures the vibe) -- the sex, drugs & rock 'n roll just got more out of control with nothing cultural to reign it in).
ReplyDeleteThe idea is -- is the 70s just a continuation of the 60s (without the naïveté of 'hope') where the momentum diverts to one of nihilist excess that is the perfect set-up for the societally-sanctioned greed and one-up-Ed excess of the next decade of bad hair, Wall Steet 'greed I'd good,' Material Girl shameless consumption & the beginning of a slow crumbling of the myth that once bound us together. A fracture, a fissure, an incidious undercutting of values we'd been fed in our Gerber green pea paste.
I am seeking perspectives, accounts, details & discussion on the decade that defined our passage into the grown-up world. Innocence lost by Vietnam, an impeached commander-in-chief & welfare/gas crisis/Urban decay, then the collective response that spawned the endorsement of the 80s, without the second-guessing that kept us on check.
I want became I need.
Comments please. The 70s, your recollections, anecdotes & analysis -- and them, stay tuned!