my 12 yr old is learning this on guitar great 70s music
God bless Texas----------------------- Old 300 I will remain what i am until the day I die- A HUNTER......Sitting Bull Its not how you pick the booger.. but where you put it !! Roger V Hunter
Graduated from HS in 1980. The high school I attended allowed students to smoke cigarettes between classes and during lunch in two designated "smoking areas". And there was alot of pot smoking going on too. Even a couple HS teachers were rumored to smoke pot.
I did not smoke either, went deer, duck and pheasant hunting in the fall/winter and fished the rest of the seasons.
I graduated from high school in '75. The '70's came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. From the best of everything to some of the worst.
Just maybe, Rocky Mountain Way is the best rock & roll song of all time. Someone wrote about an outdoor concert at the old Met Stadium - as best I can recall:
'The opening chords of Rocky Mountain Way blared as a thunderstorm rolled in. Lightening flashes cut through the pot haze that hung thick in the stadium, and everyone in attendance believed Joe Walsh was God.'
Mike, Whenever someone asks me what it was like in the 70's my reply has always been that the way I lived the 70's I cannot remember anything. I have been told by many friends from that era that they have the same selective amnesia. Have pretty good recall beginning in 1980 the year of my 10 year class reunion.
The early seventies were a bitch. Body counts on the news every night. Homegrown terrorists, Black Panthers and Weathermen. Returning military heroes spit on in the streets. Soldiers ashamed to wear their uniforms while at home on leave. Waiting to find out what your draft lottery number was. The fall of Saigon. "I am not a crook". Woodward and Bernstein. Wondering if your brother or cousin or buddy or son was going to come home alive from Vietnam. Nixon's resignation. Ford's presidency, followed by Carter's incompetency. double digit inflation, and price controls imposed on most of the retail sector.
Bright points that standout: the successful lunar landings of the Apollo program, and of course we were all glued to the TV for days awaiting the safe return of the Apollo 13 mission. Patti Mcguire did the playboy centerfold, the same issue where Jimmy Carter admitted to "Lust in his heart" if I remember correctly. I could go on but the other guys covered the high lights pretty well.
Fortunately, like Bristoe, I barely missed the draft. I also graduated HS in 74. I was mostly acquainted with the miseries of our nation during this period via television reports. My biggest concern during this decade was that the cows all got milked twice a day and all the new calves got pulled in from cold.
The disco music of the late seventies reflects the joy and merriment of the nation as it relaxed form the tensions of the Vietnam war.
There is quite a contrast between the protest songs popularized in the late sixties and into the seventies and "everybody be happy and dance" disco era of the late seventies.
People who choose to brew up their own storms bitch loudest about the rain.
Mike, Whenever someone asks me what it was like in the 70's my reply has always been that the way I lived the 70's I cannot remember anything. I have been told by many friends from that era that they have the same selective amnesia.
Yep , the '70s are mostly a blur for me too. Glad the '70s are over , no desire for a repeat
We had just lost a Russian sub that had chased us into the Med (which was a first for us).
We received the message the president had resigned. The captain announced that news over the 1MC. Very soon afterwards, we went to battlestations-missile... there was no mention of a drill.
That was perhaps the most frightened I've ever been in my life.
Lots of good stuff was going on for me - got commissioned at Ft. Bragg and did my OBC at Aberdeen Proving Ground MD in 1976. At APG I met a couple of other 2LT's (one from PA and one from MA) who introduced me to deer hunting and pheasant hunting - two animals I had never hunted (we were small game hunters in my family). I graduated from college and got married 1n 1977 - both very good things for me (and still are). My wife bought me my first high power rifle - a Ruger M77 in .270 WIN that I still own and hunt with. I got my first fulltime "career" job - that was good too. Bought my wife a new 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo, 305 V-8, I remember that as a very good car (I had an old 1968 C20 Chevy - tough as nails). In 1976 we had the Bicentennial - that was a great celebration - saw the Freedom Train at the Pentagon. I don't remember much about the music, except I never liked disco or leisure suits!
The down side to the late 1970's? The first idiot president - Carter, took office. Until recently I truly believed no other president could ever be as bad (until we got hung with Obama).
Hey Odessa, I went to school in aberdeen pg in 1990 for small arms repair. took up boxing there for the Marines, bumped noggins with some army dogs there for fun.
Quite a place, went to my first Marine corps ball there at APG.
RUGER 4570 - "Buddy Holly had been dead for 10 years and Elvis was just getting started.
Elvis Presley was gigantic long before Buddy Holly came around. Presley recorded "Heartbreak Hotel" in 1955 and it immediately went golden. Holly was just getting started when he was killed in 1958, or 1959.
You '70s guys like real rock 'n roll?? Try this one.
Kiss .. Heavy Metal .. Glam Rock wasn't my kind of music ...
I kept Logging ... Logged my way up to Ketchikan and back to So Cal by late '72 ... even working a stretch in the Redwoods on a pulling crew falling 20+ ft (in diameter) trees. Helicopter Logging started and was new and experimental .. it was exciting and the Heli-logging crews were made up of long haired hippies and Nam Vets .. much alcohol and smoke dope was consumed.
Seems like Cocaine became popular ... you would see Loggers and Fishermen snorting lines off the bar (in Ketchikan) as the 70's wore on. You could tell Camp Life was about over as companies started hiring Homeguards.
The Alaska Pipeline was hiring all hands.
Plenty of Deadheads following the Grateful Dead around the country.
I had enough Tramping by the late 70's and moved up to Ketchikan / POW Island to stay.
Ya, the 70's were pretty light. Vietnam was winding down, people were just into having fun. When I listen to the oldies from the 70's, then listen to today's music, today's music is so damn dark and depressing. I really think the music for the generation really speaks volumes to what the mindset was for that era.
Today the music is all about the ghetto, shootings, bad times, nobody understands me. Back in the 70's most of the songs were about falling in love, & having a good time, becoming enchanted with a long cool woman in a red dress, a witchy woman, Mustang Sally, now days my girl turned out to be a ho, so I shot her, Of course there was Billy Joe MacAllister.
Another '77 grad, I think we got lucky, the 70's were a great time to grow up.
There's good and bad in every time period but the seventies got pretty tough for some. I was out of the army in 68 out of college in 72 with a wife and new baby. We never went hungry, but finding decent jobs could be hard. The inflation, fuel shortages, and the deep recession of the Carter years kind of took the shine off of the 1970's for me.
Some of the best movies in history came out of the 70's
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Apocalypse Now; Rocky Horror Picture Show; The Godfather, The Omen ... are a few I remember seeing.
Easy Rider seem to start it out ... I remember tree planting one winter over on the OR Coast and going to see 'Sometimes a Great Notion' that was filmed around there. That's a classic.
