What were the 70s and 80s like for you?

[bleubird]

In 1963 I was in the fourth grade at a Catholic school. The nuns cried when JFK died. They even had the news on the PA.In 1968 I stayed up to see RFK win California,went to bed before he was shot.Went collage in '70,met some Vietnam Vets,who took me in and "woke" me up.Smoked a lot of shit pot,drank a lot of shit beer."72 started machinist apprenticeship. Worked the trade till "79,got married, moved to Alaska. Music:Still think '70 's & 80's had the best.

 

[bleubird]

One more thing about the '60's.Every dad,and some moms were WWII vets in my hood and at school.

 

[crazyfingers]

One more thing about the '60's.Every dad,and some moms were WWII vets in my hood and at school.

I was born in 1961 and my dad was only 9 years old when WWII finished. He only hardly knew his dad. He died in 1942 when as skipper of a. US submarine he was depth charged and was sunk in the Pacific.

 

[excreationist]

I have fond memories of TV (mostly cartoons), movies, music, toys (Lego, Masters of the Universe, Transformers). Though I was about the only guy I knew who had Lego. Well I knew a guy that had this set:

In primary school I had at least 4 (4.5 volt) motors... I was a bit jealous of the Transformers and Masters of the Universe my friends had.... one of my friends had the 6 figure "Devastator": In my 20's I eventually got one (a cheap knock-off).

Sometimes I'd fantasize about some MOTU figures that I'd never seen in real life: I liked the colors...

I was a big fan of the Commodore 64 and my school had a lot and my friends had them too... the programs I wrote were from books and normally were very short (e.g. less than 5 lines).

In primary school my friends watched Porky's and violent movies. In about grade 3 a lot of boys went to watch Rambo 2 at a guy's house. I was a bit traumatized from this torture scene:


My favorite movies included Gremlins, Ghostbusters and Back to the Future

 

[Bullmoose Too]

I was born in 1984 so not much. Just soiling myself and breastfeeding until I was weened and toilet trained. Sometime afterwards I was being taught to speak.

Edit: Hey, excreationist. Have you ever watched Netflix’s Toys That Made Us?

 

[funinspace]

Most of the 1970's are a blur even though I graduated from HS in 1981. I guess I was just too into playing, girls and some music to notice much else. We had 5 channels on TV. One of the things I liked about our rare trips to NE was all the channels grandma had on her TV. The Vietnam war was just something that didn't come up much at all once it was over. My dad served in WWII, and liked to dwell on 'hey this show is good history of XYZ from WWII'. He was an old fashioned economic conservative. But he seemed distant to the Vietnam war. I remember those liberals pushing "it's a sin to build a nuclear weapon" and found it weird. One time I brought up checking out the Air Force's ROTC program to help pay for college, and boy did my dad's very rare temper flare...oky doky, don't talk about that again. Decades later, I warned my dad that if Bomb Bomb Iran McCain won and got his way, we could end up with a draft, and we would literally be willing to leave the country to protect our son. And I made him answer if such a war would be worth drafting his grandson. He agreed that it wouldn't. Ironically, one of my dad's stories was of his 2 Iranian college friends (they went back to Iran when done), which told him that the US was foolish to get involved in the crazy shit of the middle east. My mom played the part of Harriot (Ozzy and Harriot) in our family, she was nice but naive of the world. My parents got a VCR a little before I graduated from college.

I grew up liking The Beetles, Queen, ELO, Jethro Tull, Styx, et.al. I wasn't a big fan of disco, but I didn't dislike it. I always thought Queen's 'Hot Space' LP was interesting even though Freddie dipped into what they weren't as a band. Other 70's bands released what I thought were great whole LP's in the 1980's from Wishbone Ash's 'Just Testing" to BOC's "Cultösaurus Erectus". I thought the 1980's had fun with other newish or new bands like Cheap Trick, The Cars, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, to Metallica among others.

Though I enjoyed the Star Wars movie, I was already into Frank Herbert's Dune books, so to me it was nice flash but didn't really stand out. A few years later, I liked Blade Runner more...

I remember my 11th grade math teacher having a TRS-80 in his class, which seemed so WOW. As a freshman in college I took my first programming class in the spring, and had to use punch cards to upload it. The next fall, they handed out a manual for the terminals and dove right into the next programs. We had computers at work when I arrived in 1986, and by 1989 we were using a Sun Microsystems computer to work on technical documentation over a network. By 1994, I was using Mosaic to find things on the internet. By 1996, I was helping to maintain a Radius secure dial in point to work. I also played with OS2 Warp on my first PC at home, when I was allowed to take home the extra memory it needed. Now I would throw out a USB flash drive so friggin small...

 

[Playball40]

At the risk of sounding cliche' I felt like the late 70's and early 80's were a much freer time. I grew up in Miami with all it's history and diversity. We rode bikes everywhere. As I got older, we had (how do I say this) the best party scene. We had Star Wars and Space Shuttles, Rocky Horror and awesome outdoor concerts. I remember protesting Apartheid in S. Africa. I remember the Mariel Boat Lift and 'race riots' and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I naively thought Reagan was cool and voted for him the first time I ever voted. I thought 'greed WAS good' and that the 86 tax changes was 'an evil Democrat plot' to take our money (yes, I was stupid). As a college drop out and new single Mom in 1986, I started to learn how things really were and my views started shifting. Information age helped my enlightenment a lot.

The 80's put out some good music: REM, The Clash, The Talking Heads, U2, Ultravox, The Smiths.

One thing I do miss about the 80's is that you COULD get somewhere based on intelligence and ability, unions were still common (although not where I grew up - Florida has been a 'right to work' state for a very long time) and college and housing was still affordable. I think young people today, even with all the technology advances, have it MUCH harder than I did. Having low interest rates today doesn't matter if you can't afford to buy anything.

 

[untermensche]

In the mid to late 70's in New York there was a movement towards legalization of marijuana. Getting caught with less than an ounce was a ticket. A small fine.

In 1980 Reagan, who said marijuana was the most dangerous drug in the world, wins and the insane drug war begins.

The 70's was a time of increased freedom. The woman's rights movement begins. You see the beginning of gay rights.

The insane crowd that voted in Reagan were as bad as the people who gave us Trump. They did not like woman having rights and they were anti-gay bigots.

In the 80's you begin to see the militarization of the police as the insane and destructive drug war grows out of control.

The 70's were not bad.

In the 80's you have the rise of the insane right wing, Limbaugh rises to prominence in the late 80's, that has been harmful ever since.

 

[barbos]

I remember standing guard in school near portrait of Brezhnev after he died
Everybody thought America would attack Soviet Union.
I myself was not convinced America even existed. I thought it could be just fiction, nobody I knew has ever been there.

What else? School was a drag especially these celebrations/demonstrations when children had to learn to march in formations. Now, I can't believe how these teachers (99% women) could really believe and more importantly do all that crap without laughing.

 

[bilby]

I remember standing guard in school near portrait of Brezhnev after he died
Everybody thought America would attack Soviet Union.
I myself was not convinced America even existed. I thought it could be just fiction, nobody I knew has ever been there.

What else? School was a drag especially these celebrations/demonstrations when children had to learn to march in formations. Now, I can't believe how these teachers (99% women) could really believe and more importantly do all that crap without laughing.

Yeah, everyone in the UK in 1983 thought the US would attack the Soviet Union, or vice versa, probably by mistake, and we would be obliterated in the crossfire. I lived fairly close to the USAF listening station at Menwith Hill, which was expected to be a priority target, so even a limited exchange would have been pretty bad for everyone I knew.

That WWIII really did nearly happen by accident a few times during the 1980s doesn't surprise me, but I am frankly glad I didn't know how close it got. It was worrying enough as it was.

 

[barbos]

Well, in Soviet Union they thought US would attack because Brezhnev died. Not because of some real tensions which ordinary people knew nothing about.

 

[funinspace]

I remember standing guard in school near portrait of Brezhnev after he died
Everybody thought America would attack Soviet Union.
I myself was not convinced America even existed. I thought it could be just fiction, nobody I knew has ever been there.

What else? School was a drag especially these celebrations/demonstrations when children had to learn to march in formations. Now, I can't believe how these teachers (99% women) could really believe and more importantly do all that crap without laughing.

Yeah, everyone in the UK in 1983 thought the US would attack the Soviet Union, or vice versa, probably by mistake, and we would be obliterated in the crossfire. I lived fairly close to the USAF listening station at Menwith Hill, which was expected to be a priority target, so even a limited exchange would have been pretty bad for everyone I knew.

That WWIII really did nearly happen by accident a few times during the 1980s doesn't surprise me, but I am frankly glad I didn't know how close it got. It was worrying enough as it was.

I grew up near a bunch of these, if WWIII came, we'd be vaporized in about 3 seconds, 5 times over:



I guess it kind of just got to the point growing up that crawling under our desks was kind of a joke as an exercise. The whole threat seemed more of something from SciFi than anything else...

 

[Politesse]

Which is funny 'cause, you know, the threat of nuclear annihilation is very much still there. I am uncomfortable about how close we apparently came to deploying nuclear weapons during the last administration. We're just not preparing kids for the realities of nuclear war anymore like we used to..

 

[barbos]

Which is funny 'cause, you know, the threat of nuclear annihilation is very much still there. I am uncomfortable about how close we apparently came to deploying nuclear weapons during the last administration. We're just not preparing kids for the realities of nuclear war anymore like we used to..

Yeah, nuking Covid19 and hurricanes was a bad Idea.

 

[jab]

The first half of the seventies were an extension of the sixties, at least for me. Political turmoil (Vietnam War still going on, Watergate and Nixon, Patty Hurst, etc.). Drugs, sex and Rock n’ Roll was still the mantra. I was living in Canada at the time, and have some strong memories and stories to tell about the Canadian reaction to US politics. Pierre Trudeau seemed like the hippest head of state imaginable, except I was living in BC, where the archaic Social Credit Party still had control.

Things settled down politically in the US with Jimmy Carter as POTUS. There was tremendous inflation. Interest rates were 13-15% for a mortgage, IIRC. Then the eighties. Reagan became POTUS. In many ways he was as corrupt as Trump. For instance it was pretty clear he had made a pre-election secret deal with Iran to kill the negotiations with Carter about the hostages. The Democrats couldn’t get any traction on that issue though, and barely got convictions on the Iran-Contra deal. Americans in general loved Reagan for some reason. Most won’t believe you still today if you point out that in terms of felony convictions alone, Reagan’s administration was the most corrupt in the late twentieth century.

in my 20s for most of the 70s and in my 30s for most of the 80s:
70s: sex, yes please, and lots of it; drugs--except for caffeine, I just said no; rock 'n roll: dies out during this decade--revived somewhat singlehandedly by Springsteen. I disliked disco and heavy metal and the Carpenters/ most "easy listening"--(as a young gay man) I felt both free and yet somewhat constrained and also wired up--all that caffeine, perhaps. People became somewhat more self-absorbed then in the 60s: Saw Ian & Sylvia, The Band, Crosby Stills & Nash, Dylan's Rolling Thunder Express, Bob Seger (wow!), Rod Stewart, the Persuasions, Loudon Wainwright, Joni Mitchell in concert. Began reading Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, V. S. Naipaul, Thomas Pynchon, Iris Murdoch. Also read Maria Campbell's Halfbreed and John Rechy's City of Night, which took nearly 30 years until I was experienced enough to get it--originally I felt a fascinated repulsion. Songs of the decade: the Kinks "Lola", Aretha Franklin's "Spanish Harlem" & "Spirit in the Dark", Neil Young's "Tonight's the Night"; Pointer sisters, "Fire", Loran bennet's "Breakfast in Bed" Movies, Cries and Whispers, , Alien, Dog Day Afternoon, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
80s: burgeoning of cable t. v. got my first laptop towards end of decade; working on computers at work before then; AIDS--the current pandemic had me singing along in my head to Springsteen's 'Street of Philadelphia"--one felt like a stranger to oneself, and every particular physical twinge was anxiously monitored as a possible precursor; neo-cons galore--an even more self-centred decade than the 70s. Was the least ageist period during my lifetime--elderly people in movies and on t. v. got worse in the decades after. Saw Springsteen, Aretha Franklin (wow!), Etta James (twice), Leonard Cohen, Bette Midler (twice--but the second time may have been in the early 90s) in concert. Saw Thompson Highway's Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing in performance, and began reading his other work. songs of the decade: Eurythmics, "Sweet Dreams are Made of This"; Leonard Cohen, "The Night Comes On"; Bette Midler, "Beast of Burden" as performed on Johnny Carson; Joni Mitchell, "Cool Water"; Eddy Grant, "Electric Avenue": Movies, Do the Right Thing, "Women in the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown", "Marianne and Juliane"

 

[TV and credit cards]

The late sixties/early seventies were a cultural period that can hardly be separated.
I remember my mom asking my dad if she could start wearing pantsuits. After all, she was a working woman now. I remember my brother (eight years my senior) getting a loud lecture from my dad while he removed the US flag patch from the bottom of his bell bottom jeans he had sewn there. I remember my first transistor radio. Dialing a three digit number on the phone to get the correct time or the weather forecast. Riding my banana bike everywhere. Going to the drive-in theater with my friend and his parents in their AMC Javelin. We saw Willard, The Legend of Billy Jack, Cat o’ Nine Tails. Another friend’s father who owned a new Camaro convertible, riding in the back with the top down going over the bridge by NASA. Felt like we were doing 100 mph. His grandfather owned a local race track. My dad had a mid sixties Mustang. My brother destroyed the transmission. At the time, even I knew he was lying when he said he didn’t know what happened. My sister had a pen pal from Germany. I remember her getting a copy of Match magazine. Some of the pictures were quite racy. I spent many a summer days building a fort in the woods. And fooling around with my sister’s best friend there.
The seventies was music and more music. I remember listening to Wolfman Jack on mom’s console stereo. It was filled with her Abba and Tom Jones albums. My brother had plenty of albums I wasn’t to touch, when he was home. In middle school many of us wore jean jackets with various rock band names inked on the back. This required your best artwork. Mine was exceptional, of course. Many kids prominently displayed Kiss in the upper center. I never liked Kiss. Thought they were a clown show with bad music. I think I was just getting into Yes at this time. I hated when disco came around. I felt it was killing rock. Then Pink Floyd put out The Wall and I was born again. Then MTV. A lot of MTV. Then I had to grow up.

 

[untermensche]

Drive in movies were a great experience for a kid.

For an adult probably not all that exciting.

They were dead by the time I was an adult.

Cable television and HBO and VCR's killed them.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Which is funny 'cause, you know, the threat of nuclear annihilation is very much still there. I am uncomfortable about how close we apparently came to deploying nuclear weapons during the last administration. We're just not preparing kids for the realities of nuclear war anymore like we used to..

I think that we could be pretty close to nuclear annihilation due to the Chinese threat over Taiwan. And I really see no compromise that could save the world from it.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Drive in movies were a great experience for a kid.

For an adult probably not all that exciting.

They were dead by the time I was an adult.

Cable television and HBO and VCR's killed them.

Ditto. Loved drive in movies when I was in high school. Wish that they'd come back...

 

[southernhybrid]

I hated when disco came around. I felt it was killing rock.

I tend to think that disco damaged soul, more than it did rock. There just wasn't that much great rock after the 70s, but the best soul, my favorite genre, died out about the time that disco became popular. Rap and hip hop just can't compare to old school soul and funk.


Still, I never hated disco because when it comes to dancing, there was nothing like "taking your body down to the ground". Disco was how we hooked up or met people to date. It was pretty much the equivalent of online dating, except at least you met the person before you dated. And, since I met my husband of nearly 40 years in a disco, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for disco.