Dear God Almighty...

[panik]

I don't  know if anyone else is watching BBC4; Top of the Pops, an end-of-year retrospective show from 1978. Now, I'm old enough to remember the seventies - it was Glam Rock and Punk and Disco, wasn't it? Dear God; so far we've had Grease and The Brotherhood of Man! O: - and The Smurfs and Mull Of f***ing Kintyre!! (how can we make this bloody awful dirge of a song even worse than it already is? I know, let's add some bagpipes!) and Noel sodding Edmonds in flares.

And just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any worse... Matchstalk men and bleedin Matchstalk Cats n Dogs.

I mean, as if we didn't have enough to put up with with the rubbish piling on the streets, the power cuts, the dead rotting unburied in the morgues, the Winter of Discontent and all the rest....

Has my memory been playing tricks on me? Was it really this bad?

Comments

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

LOL - quick - turn it off!

Re: Hee!

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Oh no... It's Abba.

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Too late! It's already burned on my retinas!!! O:!

[fluterbev.livejournal.com]

Has my memory been playing tricks on me? Was it really this bad?

I'm afraid it really was that bad! Which is why, around the same time, I completely stopped listening to popular music and threw myself wholeheartedly into traditional music.

Well, there were noteable exceptions, of course ::points to icon and genuflects::

LOL!

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

The thing is, we all remember the good stuff, but it was actually the dross that makes the bestsellers every bloody year - Last night we watched the 'pop on trial' debate about the 60's.

So, we're talking The sixties... Greatest decade in the history of popular culture, and you're thinking; Beatles, Stones, Hendrix and Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett; Mods and Hippies and acid and that, and what were the biggest hits? Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdink, Cliff Richard and (biggest seller of the decade) Tears for Souvenirs, Ken Dodd.

Not that I have anything against Doddy but...

If nothing else, it proves that taste has always been the preserve of the few and memory is highly selective. *g*

Re: LOL!

[archaeomom8.livejournal.com]

Now that's just sad...

Re: LOL!

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

That show almost made me cry with the sad!

But it just goes to show - it's the 70's; you're thinking, Floyd and Zep etc. and what do we get? Boney M. ::shakes head with the horror::

[aerianya.livejournal.com]

The clothes were worse.... and the hair, dear god the HAIR!

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with the hair? I *like* the hair - it's the bloody awful music I can't tolerate! *g*

[aerianya.livejournal.com]

You could mute the music or change the station, but the hair was out there....everywhere....really big hair or Farrah hair or worse yet ABBA hair!

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Ah, Abba hair, yes - or worse still, Abba beards. ::shudder::

I was thinking more, Syd Barrett, Marc Bolan - the Noel Fielding look.

[aerianya.livejournal.com]

LOL

[luicat.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank goodness I missed this!
:o)

You cheeky monkey, you.

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Heh heh heh!

Hey, you've gotta have something in the background when you're editing fic or you'd go mental.

Re: You cheeky monkey, you.

[luicat.livejournal.com]

This is true, but there is a limit!
:o)

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

I remember 1976 better. Did you watch Morecambe and Wise? They often had the Nolan Sisters, with their bright shiny tight pants and shaggy dog does, warbling away - 'I'm in the mood for dancing, romancing..." The favourite song to sing on the bus on the way to Home Ec when I was twelve was 'Billy, don't be a hero' by Paper Lace. Ah me. Happy days. ;-p

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Did I watch M&W? Did anyone NOT watch M&W?! *g*

I guess, my memories of the 70's were somewhat groovier than the reality; though I suppose it depends on what your reality was and I think everyone remembers their teenage years as brilliant no matter what.

[callistosh65.livejournal.com]

Was it really this bad? 'Fraid so. And we all thought we looked so cool at the time. I remember begging my mum to make me brown and orange flared dungarees with a huge orange heart on the bib, so that I could be as hip as my friends. Oy. And don't even ask about my tartan Bay City Roller phase..

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

You know, I have no beef with the fashion at all; I kinda like it, people might not have looked terribly tasteful but what's taste? Just a lack of imagination, imo. (o:

It's the music - there was some fabulous music in the 70's but this 'best of the year' show from 78 is just - agonising. O:!

[miwahni.livejournal.com]

LOL ing! Mull of Kintyre, the song that was stuck in my mind for six bloody months in 1996 - god knows why - until I was ready to scoop my brain out through my ears, just so I didn't have to hear it any more. Ugh!
Apart from that, the 70s were a lot of fun. I still love flares and platform shoes, and longish hair on guys. And I have Led Zeppelin playing in my car at the moment.

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Oh God... I hate that song with a passion I normally reserve for Abba and the Grease soundtrack. It's just HORRIBLE, and it was the best selling UK single for YEARS, until 'Do they Know it's Christmas' (.... ::too stunned by the horror to comment::) took it's dubious crown.

And you are SO right; the 70's were great! I have such seventies love; I'm sure it's why I have such a thing for Noel Fielding. *g*

[miwahni.livejournal.com]

I just googled Noel Fielding as I had no idea who he was. I now know that he stars in The Mighty Boosh which is a show I've not seen outside of DVDs in the ABC shops. (so really I'm none the wiser).
And I kinda liked Do They Know It's Christmas....*grin* Still, a lot of the disco stuff and boy-band precursors left me cold. I couldn't abide ABBA either!

Spreading the Boosh luuurve...

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

That's Noel, in my icon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IjGNJPNyzU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzTGNIiidbI&NR=1

And check out Old Gregg; ever drunk Baileys from a shoe?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRWVJ3AeFAk

DTKIC can throw me into a coma. I hate it so much it burns out my synapses. (o: Now disco, I kinda like... (o:

Re: Spreading the Boosh luuurve...

[miwahni.livejournal.com]

Well they were certainly entertaining! Especially the Ice Flow song, that cracked me right up. I can see I'll have to look into this further - see if it is televised here.

[suemc.livejournal.com]

Yes it really was like that, although I was no longer a teen and well into amateur dramatics, so I didn't notice it much.

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it was like that for the poor musical illiterates who had to rely on the daytime R1 play list - I guess people of taste (o: had John Peel, Annie Nightingale and the Whistle Test to resort to. (o: There was some brilliant music in the 70's; some of the best ever written, hence my horror when I saw what poor Joe Public was actually being duped into buying. Sheesh!!!

[arnie1967.livejournal.com]

Yep, it was that bad. Which is why it's a bad idea to watch *any* nostalgia shows about the 70s (or 80s, come to that).

I reckon we all have selective amnesia. That's why we only remember the good stuff.

Except for Noel Edmonds in flares. I never managed to shake that memory off. ::retreats to behind the couch::