h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm going to take rather a long time with this one - I may come back a couple of times. This decade started with me aged 15 and ended at 25 so it really was my time - I dedicated to living life to the full. Early couple of years or so was about short hair - The Suedehead has not survived the years but was less extreme than the Skinhead -an evolution of the Mod. Uniform = Black Crombie Coat complete with two tone artificial silk handcherkief. Ben Sherman shirt with button down collar. Levi Staprest Two-tone trousers or Levi Red Label Drainpipe Jeans. White Socks. Black Brogues or Steel capped DM's. Thin braces in red. Football scarves appeared in silk, which personally I miss and I think a campaign should be started to revive them and were worn on the wrist. Football was NOT a place for the whole family - there were frequently mass brawls involving large numbers moving up and down terracing. People sometimes got hurt - though knives tended to be rare.
The Bay City Rollers and Rod Stewart led to an invasion of tartan for a while but that died away with the coming of Glam Rock. Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane. We wore stars on our faces and glitter some went for makeup and STILL looked well 'ard. It was interesting times. LSD was at the time plentiful and cheap. Between '74 and '76 or so it was possible to get hold of pyramids at around 50p per tab and that was street cost not wholesale prices. Large numbers turned on and tuned in. Grew their hair. Wore flairs.
At the same time disco had been quietly pulsing away. Many arrived there via Soul which begat Northern Soul etc. A love of ska during the era of two-tone led to an interest in reggae with rumours abounding of the quality of Bob Marley in live performance which was available to all with the rease of the Live ! album - the man at his best. Sticky Fingers by the Stones. Bowie too. In the space of four weeks in the legendary summer of 1976 I saw The Rolling Stones at Ears Court, David Bowie at Wembley ( the White show) and Bob Marley playing Rastaman Vibration at the Hammersmith Odeon. I can assure you all that Bob Marley was the best of the best.

First job meant money to burn - discovering that many 'straights' liked disco. It had a place. Girls dancing round their handbags and guys trying to look cool in flaired trousers and revolting round ended collared shirts -please don't ever revive those!!
I actually went to the same school and worked in the same office as Nik Kershaw that year - for the record he ALWAYS wanted to be a star to gain revenge on boys who gave him a hard time about his appearance.
1977 saw the coming of punk - my drainpipe Levis which were now fashionably patched and red trainers had me dubbed a punk. I needed no encouragement. Now a student I was able on my state grant to squander it on various noxious substances although thankfully a loathing of needles stopped me from acquiring any seriously damaging habits. Spent several years trying to become a drummer, a feat which I evetually achieved. Punk was liberating in that it enabled anyone to think of themselves as a musician. It was the genuine style revolution but unfortunately people did not listen to the leaders which was to do your own thing in your own way and f*** the consequences and just started aping those leaders, which was NOT the point. The music and fashion industry was able to reassert control over the kids, one of the saddest things about the seventies, which really ended with the victory of Thatcher in 1979. Wow I feel better for getting that out. I'll come back with some points about prices etc, but as a consequence of the above, my memory of prices is a bit hazy.

I remember that Marley concert well....excellant...i was one of the first down in front of the stage...getting high on the atmophere ...not to mention the monster Bob was toking!!

I was in a altered state of reality at the time - I still have no idea how I managed to navigate someone through London who was a stranger to the place!! I love the fact that every nation mentioned in WAR is now free to make their own mistakes. In our lifetime! I never dared to believe it would happen so quickly.

Sorry Androtd...afraid you've lost me there...maybe i missed something..can you explain or am i vacant

When the seventies began i was 2 months old. My view of the decade is therefore the childs view. It has also a lot to do with growing up in Sweden. In the seventies, the welfare state of Sweden seemed indestructable. There were no homeless people, no neo-nazis, practically no unemployment, the weather was always good (as far as I can recall anyway). We had Abba and Bjorn Borg. The Abbas were still married and Bjorn didnt do coke, at least he didnt get busted for it. Everybody had long hair, and quite a few of the men grew beards. In fact all grown-ups looked like Agnetha and Frida or Bjorn, Benny and Bjorn.

When the people of Sweden disagreed on the use of nuclear power we immediatly voted on the subject, and the people collectivly decided to use alternative power sources, but that the transition would be allowed to take up to 20 years. That way almost everybody was happy, the pro-nuclear people because we would still use it for a long time, the anti-nuclear people because we would eventually get rid of it. Making everybody happy was the prime priority in Sweden in the seventies.
Also; the outcome of the vote meant that it wasnt until the nineties that we realised that those in charge had no intention of fulfilling the peoples wish.

But what I remember most fondly is the high quality of childrens tv-programs in the seventies. The warmth and originality of animated shows like Barbapapa, Balthazar and Bamse (by pure coincidense my favourite shows had titles beginning with the letters Ba) is still unrivaled today. I cant really go any deeper into the subject beacuse tears of nostalgia are filling up my eyes as I think about it (thus making my boss suspect that I'm writing something completly different than the article on e-commerce that I'm supposed to be writing).

Oh, and the colours of the seventies! Bear in mind that unlike androyd i was quite unaware of LSD in the 70's, so I can safely say that the colours really were beatiful. Bright orange, yellow, green, red... When I take a quick look around the office where I'm currently pretending to work I see various nuances of grey and beige and a lot of white.
Things may not actually have been that much better in the seventies, what do I know, I was just a kid, but at least they were represented in better colour schematics

Remember the song based on a Haile Selassie speech something like:
Until the clour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the cour of his eyes....everywhere is WAR
Until the unhappy and ignoble regime which holds our brothers in Agola, in Mozambique, South Africa, subhuman bondage, has been completely and utterly destroyed...everywhere is WAR