The Seventies

Has there ever been a more intrusive decade than the seventies? A great sweaty, grinning, brainless decade; a decade in an open-to-the-navel, floral-patterned, round-collared, jersey-knit shirt with a chest wig and a medallion; a multi-coloured, platform-booted, Denim-reeking decade, poised clumsily between the politicized idealism of the, like, 1960s man, and the raw, padded-shoulder greed of the 1980s. Eventually, as decades do, the 1970s passed. But it left its spoor in a trail of musk, glitter and bondage trousers; it cast a long and lurid shadow; and its icons and brand names hang just below the level of our collective consciousness. To recite them is to awaken a primitive sort of horror, like intoning the names of half-forgotten, monsterous demons from the Age before Humankind. Cleanse your spirit. Apply a little Patchouli oil, say ommmmmm. Gird your soul. Fold your hands. Devoutly intone the Hundredfold Litany of the 1970s. 10cc Applique Aqua Manda Ayatollah Khomeini Bay City Rollers Bean Bags British Leyland Brut Cambodia Cheesecloth shirts Chopper bikes The Clangers Coal shortages Columbo The Common Market Corduroy shoes Cyprus Decilmalization Digital watches Ding-dong! Avon calling! Disco fever Drought Dungeons & Dragons Earth shoes Eight-track cartridges Evel Knievel The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin Fawlty Towers The Female Eunuch Floppy discs Football hooligans The Godfather The Goodies Hai Karate Hamlet cigars Harold Wilson The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy Inflation The I.R.A. The Joy of Sex K-Tel Kohl Lebanon Liebfraumilch Loons Lurex Mannix Mateus Rosè Maxi-coats Medallions Mood rings Moon Buggies Mrs Thatcher Milk Snatcher The New Avengers North Sea oil Oli spills Pan’s People Panne Velvet Patchwork jeans Pet Rocks Petrol shortages Plato’s Retreat Players’ No. 10 Pocket calulators Pong Power cuts Punk Randall & Hopkirk: Deceased Rats Red Barrel Restrictive Practices Rhodesia Ronco Rubbish in the streets Skinheads Skylab Space Hoppers Spandex St Bruno Star Wars Stockhausen Studio 54 Supertramp The Sweeney T Rex Tartan Ted Heath Test Tube Babies The Mile Island The Three-day Week Tiger Balm Tiswas Tricky Dicky Unemployment Unions Vietnam Watergate Wheeltappers & Shunters Social Club Women’s Lib YMCA Here endeth the Litany Though some of its artefacts remain, the 1970s are lost forever. Which proves that not all that’s lost is a loss.