I was reminded of dazzlepaint camo on ships…
…
One of the suckiest things about the both the 70s and 80s was the insufferable 50s revival… for instance, Grease, or Wham’s Wake Me Up. But aside from that sort of re-hashed junk, the worst fashion crimes of the 80s (that were indigenous to the 80s) were perpetrated by pop stars, celebrities and fashion models, with few ordinary folks making complete fools of themselves except with their hair. Not so in the 70s - ridiculous hair was yet more prevalent, and average people could be found wearing the most laughable stuff.
Clothes:
80s
http://www.ivstatic.com/files/et/imagecache/636/files/slides/the-cure-636.jpg
70s
Music: from a Rolling Stone reader’s poll, the worst song of the 80s crushed the opposition, and is without doubt one of my most thoroughly hated songs… I totally concur with the poll.
So there’s that… Rolling Stone then did another poll for the 70s, topped by Disco Duck, which although mightily crap, for mine is easily thrashed by #2:
Like Rolling Stone, I’m amazed they managed to make a song about a mid-afternoon shag so utterly, completely execrable. Would rather suffer We Built This City, and that’s saying something.
I won’t hit you with more than a single song for each, but IMO music generally improves with time as it evolves; older-style stuff persists (perhaps not in the mainstream though), while innovation gives rise to novelty at least, which has some small value of its own. Not that all that speaks much to how crap it can get and predominately be, but it’s a factor… I was only 6 at the close of the 70s, but I’m told by someone who suffered long and hard that it was all MOR and disco, with rock all but dead. To my ear, the 80s were more interesting.
Hair:
80s
http://www.ivstatic.com/files/et/imagecache/636/files/slides/bon-family-477.jpg
70s
http://hairstylesites.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/70s-Hairstyles.jpg
Edit: and don’t get me started on interior design…
Or maybe P K Dick’s Scramble Suit?
Early monochrome version.
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You have forgotten about punk (I mean real punk, not the Seattle variety). The 70s were great for music. I was 14 in 1970 and saw a lot of it first hand. It was easy to avoid disco and its associated crowd. It was the popular people from high school who went that way. The aging 60s rockers entering their solid periods (Neil Young) then Prog rock which mutated into music like the Mahavishnu Orchestra, then punk and new wave from the Sex Pistols to Devo to Pere Ubu. Awesome times.
I was thinking more in terms of what you’d have to suffer on the radio.
Edit: I did refer to the Rolling Stone reader’s poll vis-a-vis the worst, and both were very popular…
Also, you were bottom feeding. There was a lot of terrible music, too.
The whole basis of the comparison is the everyday here.
If you heard punk on the radio, you would’ve been lucky, I gather - either university radio or something like 3RRR here in Melbourne.
I was responding to this very general statement. Punk and New Wave were definitely a reaction to the trash available on the radio and probably the end of a monolithic culture due to over-production and too heavy a hand on the tiller by the labels.
I gather things on this side of the pond were apt to lag a bit back in the day, that could well be a factor…
Epic post/comment.
God help the poor soul that clicked “play” on We Built This City.
As a Bay Area native, I apologize to the world for that.
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I always preferred Rodney Allen Rippy.
Omg, I always thought Nimoy was kind of a baller until I saw that video hahaha double lol
Haha, oh man, thanks for posting that link. I think about that post all the time, but never when I’m in front of my computer.
Yo I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those Plaid Stallions are ILL! Haha, although I’m not sure how I feel about “Man Mates.”
That’s what happens when your luggage gets involved in a transporter malfunction.
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