"Stuck in the 1970's" Topic

One of my work collegues accused me of being stuck in the 70's like it was a bad thing. Well considering I was born in 1964 I grew up with T-Rex, The Sweet, Slade and Suzi Quatro on tv, and every book cover, every album cover was Sci Fi orientated.

Recently I've been digging into that past for influences (I guess even the Hindhu stuff is kinda hippy). And have found such a rich source of inspiration, especailly from art books I got off Amazon (Roger Dean, Peter Jones, Tim White etc). And don't forget that Star Wars came out in '77!

So are we all products of our formative years? Is it a good thing or a bad thing to be stuck on the influences of a past decade? What is your formative decade?

80's.

I am 10 years younger than you.

Cool, so it would have been Spandau Ballet then? The Buck Rodgers tv series (ooooh Wilma Derring)…

I was into Metal and electronika as a spotty oik.

Buck Rodgers, Battlestar Galactica, Airwolf, Baywatch, Time Team, Fall Guy, TJ Hooker, Kinght Rider, Doctor Who, Styar Trek.
So many great things.

the 70s were a hell of a decade, everyone smoked, drank, slept around and doctors told you to eat lots of red meat and lay in the sun.
You can't beat that.

60s & 70s for me. Nothing bad about having your formative years influence you. For me, its made a huge difference in how I approach my gaming and enjoyment of the hobby overall. After all, you can't go wrong growing up with 50s/60s sci-fi & horror films, Major Matt Mason, and the epic first space flights and moon landings! Now, where's my 70s hits tapes?

Naturally the decade you spend your adolosence in influences you. I was born a couple years later than you but still have fond memories of plenty of the 70's stuff.

Hey, speaking of Sci Fi oriented album covers, and music too, I heartily recommend a most excellent band, even if their name is one of the corniest ever (The Sword).

The cover of "Warp Riders" is soooo 70's!
link

ALL of The Sword's albums are retro '70s. This is because they are a retro '70s metal band.

Good one too, definitely recommend picking up their albums. I have all of them to date…

Damon.

70s and 80s for me, I was smack dab in the middle. Pop culture today is less than stellar.

" What is your formative decade?"

My iTunes share is called 'The Sound of the 70s', which says it all. I still think of The Smiths as a new band.

1961, I was one of those naughty punk rockers.

"Naturally the decade you spend your adolosence in influences you"

Agreed, although exactly in what way is hard to say. I have very fond memories of being 17, but I'm not sure I'd want to go back to a world of such poverty, ignorance, violence and unrest. I'm rather fond of mod cons like central heating and double glazing and not having the power go off just as Blue Peter is starting.

"Buck Rodgers"

Ah yes Buck Rodgers, ideal viewing before going to the pub, along with Monkey. Ldldldld hi Buck. That is really, really hard to type…

Can't forget the benefits of low-budget television making you think you can recreate anything on the gaming table. Rat Patrol, Outer Limits, and even Space 1999 made me realize it doesn't take a budget to kick-start the imagination.

I fondly remember the days when science fiction gaming was groping toward some outlet, some justification for the rules to make it to the printed page … and then Star Wars came out.

Born in '65 to a pair of dirty stinking hippie engineers working for NASA…thinking that all of NASA would be lab coats and tight haircuts is fantasy.

So most everything about the drug culture of the late '60s and '70s did not sit well with me but

the floating islands

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pop science fiction…DAW was my favorite word for a long time

I was first in line for Star Wars, cut the ribbon :)

Had a deep fear of a huge shark waiting for me in dark water

And the first 24hr cable station TBS introduced me to a wealth of B grade b/w science fiction with late night marathons

And then the wonders of the New Wave…DEVO, B-52s, Go-Gos, etc.

So I would say that certain elements of the science fiction culture as well as pop culture of the late '70s and '80s are where my tide lines were set.

80s for me also.
Lots of influence from D&D, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Black Hole.
From the music side… Duran Duran, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Belfegore, Overkill and Megadeth.

Overkill and megadeth don't go with duran duran or frankies goes…..

80's has a lot of good memories as well.

Do have fond memories of 70's sic fi Dr who, blakes 7, battlestar gallatica , buck rodgers

Born in 56, so it was also the 60s and 70s for me.

It depends but a lot of late 80's and early 90s for me.
The era of Commodore computers :)

I'm not stuck in the 70's,all I had for figures were Airfix at that time.Not that I can afford much more than that now.

Relive your 70's dreams…
link

Thanks for the recomendation of The Sword band. Great stuff.

Dropzone…that was interesting.

Any character I directed would have to throw out the Leftovers…hates me a dirty stinking hippie…

Perhaps a Wanderer on a mission…one man army bringing the age of Aquarius to a bitter end…

(roshambo hippie!)

(this one made me smile :)

(…wow…that was a serious punch…a reaction to how bad the hippie smelled)

(…this is the picture that goes with the joke "what is the only thing better than a bus full of hippies…")

Yeah…dropping the hammer on their hippie heads…coming to a skirmish game table near you!

Glad you like it;
If you want to jump into the 80's I have this bit;

28mm… I think your hippie-issues are a bit… of an issue. Poking fun is one thing, reveling in violence against them is kind of lame.

On topic…
Ever since I took and aesthetics class in art school I've been much more aware of what I like and why I like it and what era that like might have evolved in.
I've got a definite yen for the aesthetics of my youth… colors and materials and lighting… the good, the bad and the ugly (I definitely prefer porn from the 70s and 80s)… but generally I'm not the nostalgic sort. Those were not happy days.
My taste in music and movies and books… and miniatures… isn't stuck in any particular era as far as I can tell.

A lot of the story-types I like are pretty firmly 1980s (funny, since I was 12 in 1990). Phillip K. Dick and Bill Gibson, plus their influence on Masamune Shirow.

I am kidding about the hippies…really could care less and certainly do not wish them violence…soap and a job, but no violence.

:)

*****

Having been forced to live on a hippie commune as a kid…it was not the idealistic happy place that they would like you to believe…it was dirty, smelly, and gross.

That stuck with me and burned sights and smells that you can not wish away.

But all that aside, it was a lifetime ago…I was just poking fun.

And you are right, any focused celebration of violence on a person or group of people is lame.

*****

On topic, it is that experience dealing with hordes of hippies that forged a strong feeling of loathing for all that the reality of the hippie presented…I had to live in it and it sucked.

In the 70's I found the first of a long line of musical influences…

Led Zeppelin…just a ridiculous amount of artistry and talent wrapped up in their work

KISS…outlandish live performances and some of the best rock and roll ever produced

The Who…simply great

Rolling Stones…the sort of raw talent that carried them into legendary status

AC/DC…rough, raw, and powerful

Van Halen…late 70's but wow just wow

or the Disco route…big butterfly collars, lots of chains, chest carpets, etc…but plenty of fun.

The 70's do catch a lot of poo in general but there is much to celebrate…as noted the "yen for the aesthetics of my youth", yes I agree…especially in the context of gaming…the first games of D&D, Traveller, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World…you can not get back the innocence of the time.

It does not mean they were better, but in my case these elements were fundamental and constructive.

PS
I have never done any harm to a hippie…I actually prefer to avoid the stinky bags of bong water…I would never do anyone actual harm except in the ring or on the mat and that would be for points not to make a point.

Before they taught new math. Or new new math. Or no math.
Who and Guess Who and two different Dr. Whos.

@28mmMan… Ok, sorry if I overreacted… my own experience of those folks is a mixed bag, positive and negative… pretty much like my experience of any other group of people.

On topic… I wonder if there will be less nostalgia from now on because it's become so much easier to revisit the past… find your old toys on Ebay, see old movies on cable or Netflix… find any music/books you like on Amazon and ITunes.
Harder to have things drift into the gilded memory of past times.

Indeed the internet and google petty much closes the memory gap within seconds.

And no worries…I do tend to advertize the loathing of hippies…but I equally dislike fantasy viking dwarves :)

What gets me about today is that they say that the 70's was the era fashion forgot, yeah really? Like track suits and hoodies bought from the cheapest stores imaginable are sooooo cool, having yer trousers hanging down past yer crotch is soooooo hip!

I must confess a slight dislike of hippies, including the New Agers with all their psuedo englightenment and retail Nirvana! I was a Metalhead, a Rocker!

I guess for me a lot of what I got from 70's Sci Fi was the freedom it had, you could have broadswords and blasters, crystal ships and techo-wizards from the Lost City of the Ancients.

And the cool thing about Amazon is I can get out of print novels and art books (like Great Balls of Fire) for really silly prices!

Born in 73 so the 80's were my decade – some good stuff about at the time I guess, but for the most part fashion was awful, we saw the take off of the 'made to measure pop group / person' which was an abomination along the lines of reality tv. I wish I was a teen in the 60's – free love, free drugs, works for me ;-p

I'll have to try The Sword just to see what I think.

I'm a late seventies and early eighties person myself.

Hippies, only people I know that are more self righteous then some of the religious right. (anyone else remember the "the nineties are going to make the sixties look like the fifties" movies? – the one with Cheech in it was actually pretty good, the one with Dennis Hopper was way too preachy for me – might have been the same movie too)

There are a few Chris Achilleos paintings in his Beauty and the Beast book that are so pefect for my ideas. One has a couple of guys in very ornate space armour fighting with swords, and the other has some kind of priest guy, a wrecked city and a spaceship parked nearby. Perfect!

link

This is the second one, 'To Die in Italbar'

Slide rules.

If you don't remember a giant wooden slide rule hanging at the front of your math class, when you knew full well a Texas Instruments calculator was the wave of the future, then you can't really appreciate the 70's.

Slide rules, yup. Caluclators were banned!

'70's for me. Traveller and Laserburn both appeared in the late seventies and I've not looked back.

My curebr 'modern' wargame campaign is also set in the '70's: winterof79.blogspot.com

However, all my current Sci Fi influences are XBox game based.

Cheers
Mark

I do remember the downside tho, stupid strikes and such. Nothing quite like having to sit around candles with no heating or lights in the winter. Tho my mum did make some really nice home made bread when the bakers were all out!

> Slide rules, yup. Caluclators were banned!

Times change, my son HAS to bring a calculator to school now.

Which is so weird! I still think that's cheating even if its legal now.

'Rock around the clock' YouTube link and 'Forbidden Planet' YouTube link …
mean you, one had to wait for UFO to see a 'futuristic' mini-dress again YouTube link!

Youngsters! Then the early "70 had good aspects indeed -though in France most of the "60 were even better (France was knowing peace for the first time since 1939).

Well, it's a lot better than being stuck in the 2010s… LOL, OMG, …

"I must confess a slight dislike of hippies, including the New Agers with all their psuedo englightenment and retail Nirvana! I was a Metalhead, a Rocker!"

I guess that I would have been a comicbook and science fiction geek by today's terminology…I played 6 seasons of baseball and 14 seasons of soccer before I went into the US Marine Corps…as well as studying karate/judo since I was 11yrs old.

So I guess I did not fit a particular mold but was seriously molded by the 70's.

*****

Just a thought on the free love and free drugs…the reality of that is that nothing is free except venereal diseases, hepatitis, tuberculosis, crabs/public lice, etc…as for free drugs, someone has to pay for them…hippies do not work…they are the long pig version of locusts…hippies consume and then move on…

Seriously, the whole free love and free drugs is more like taking advantage of a completely stoned person and taking what you want/need from where ever and whoever you want…sounds like a group of crackheads…which is much closer to the truth and a lot less colorful and appealing.

I know that it is just something to say, "Yeah free love and free drugs!" but having had to live in the middle of the hippie movement with hippies I can tell you it was not anything pleasant.

*****

Jean Louis and others remind me of how different the same time period was for each of us depending on where on the globe we lived.

Most of my musical interest came from the second and third waves out of England and I was stateside…the new ska revival of the late 70's and then into the 80's for example.

The punk movement did not mean the same thing to me as it did to many others, but I still liked it…I just was not as angry or safety pin in the cheeky :)

If BOC is the 70s then yes….. Other than that I am a punk… Oh wait that is 70s too…. But, all the neat tecno junk isn't going to start kippling-up the world for another couple of years, and really I am a digital boy a child/parent of the coming cyber-dystopia.

The house hold I grew up in was monitored by the FBI, which surprised me when I found out, especially in light of the Top Secret clearance I received in the Service, but to be honest that was kinda because I got to play Classified Document Trash-man, or at least that is my excuse.

I had a final secret and billet top secret through out my 21yrs of military service…I was a cryptological electronics technician and TEMPEST inspector…the results of the interviews and background checks for my final secret clearance revealed many questionable issues with the parents including a short business relationship with James Warren Jones which ended just short of a move to Guyana…and then good ol' Dad getting caught sharing joints with fellow NASA employees was a subject that came up often.

So I don't think my house was monitored but Dad and Mom were (are) on their pay attention to list.

Yeah…fun times.

Born 1964… grew to maturity… drinking and smoking and sleeping around by 1979. The best of times… universal cotraception, and all STD cured with a penicillin jab..

Plus music.. Clash, Sex Pistols, Stranglers, and the oldies lide Led Zep, Deep Purple, etc.

Fun was running around with the boys, wearing a bullet belt so I could smack the Hilltown Huns or the Lochee Fleet as required. Happy Days.

Its the 70,s and 80,s for me,does anyone else remember gold spray painted punch card Christmas wreaths?

Couple pieces of art that sum up nicely the end of the 60's and early 70's, as far as style and gaming adventure potential

What do I remember? I tend to ignore the years as they go by, which has a pleasant side effect of not realizing how much time has gone by. Down side is you're shocked at just how old things are and….

Is that a Danger Diabolik picture I see?
MST3K's last movie. (T_T)

I want to see a Captain Scarlet movie, as long as its better than that awful rectal parasite of a Thunderbirds film! That stunk so bad I could spend my whole life happy if I never had to see it again.

Hippies do seem to have been regrded as soooo cool, but from what I get from seeing documentaries and such is that they were a selfish bunch, and the communes were just another kind of conformity to the cultleader. And don't forget Charlie Manson…