A grand day. Some interesting Motel Skulduggery awaits at the end of all this. Or, if you’re impatient, go here, and click on to the fourth new page. But really: you can wait.
Daughter has decided to read Harry Potter, perhaps because it got the Imprimatur of Teen Cool from a camp counselor, so we went to the library to get it. We walked. She wanted to walk. Down the hill of Jasperwood, down the lane to the creek, down the steps to the bridge.
Then up to the bustling street, over to the library. There weren’t any copies. I asked the librarian: I’m looking for something called . . . I don’t know, Harold Patter? Pitter?
“Harry Potter,” she said with exaggerated slowness. “We have had some requests for it.”
All copies out. Well, she got some other books, and we continued on to the grocery store, past the old movie theater, which was a Hollywood Video during the olden times when people went to a store and stood in line to rent a movie they had to return a few days later. Can you imagine such a thing? Lands sake.
It’s now a ballroom dance studio. Like so many other commercial spaces that emptied out because the world changed and the bottom fell out, the replacement is less grand than the previous version. The Hollywood store was very cool, for its time; movie quotes written on the walls, a huge collage of pictures from classic films and blown-up photos of local movie houses; fake versions of Graumann’s Chinese theater handprints, grimy from a half-decade of kids putting their mitts in the prints. “It’s kinda sad that it’s gone,” she said as we passed. Said the kid who would later request my iPad to watch “Bolt” on streaming Netflix.
I don’t remember having the sense of Large Things Going Away For Good when I was 11.
At the grocery store I checked the samples department, and hello: rye bread and cracked-pepper pate. For free. Have some! America. I found it delicious; she made a face like a bug pooped in her mouth. Oh, fine. Got bagels and a tub of my favorite salsa. Not a necessary trip, really, but as long as we were walking around, I wanted to prolong the excursion. At the checkout I chatted with the clerks about the power of this particular salsa, and how it was just magically delicious.
“Dad,” she hissed. “No one cares about your opinion about the salsa.”
“What, I embarrass you by talking about salsa with the clerk?”
“No, but they don’t care.”
I suppose she’s right. I misjudged my audience. I’m used to the clerks I know at the store. The one who calls me That Newspaper Guy, the manager who hears me on the radio, the guy who’s been there since I moved to the neighborhood in ’94, the big guy who’s a very good artist, the nice lady who sneaks a smoke out back, the other manager I see around the church basement. You know, the stuff you never think about, because it’s just the background cast of the stage where you happen to live. But everyone chats with the clerks. I’m not the kind of guy to swipe and nod and leave. Give ‘em a pitch, a hail-fellow-well-met; you never know what might follow.
In this case, nothing, but that’s okay.
Back home, talking about ice cream sandwiches. I described how the Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich was invented during my college years, and they revolutionized the way we looked at the things. Previously there were just the rectangles, which were either perfectly soft or dismayingly hard. In both cases the chocolate part seemed to belong to that curious genre of Not-Quite-Chocolate – I mean, I don’t think you’d eat the brownish rectangle portion of an ice-cream sandwich and say “oh boy, that’s chocolate!” if you hadn’t been given a heads-up first. It’s like Hydrox cookies. We think they’re chocolate because they say they’re chocolate.
“Have you had one with strawberry ice cream?” she asked. She got a look of an angel transported to a new level of celestial ecstacy. I said I hadn’t. Apparently they had them at camp.
Don’t think we had ice cream at camp. We may have gotten popsicles packed in dry ice. Government surplus.
Up the hill and back home. I posted a lovely little cartoon on the PopCrush blog, which I’ll repost here. I just love this.
Nickelodeon is bringing back its 90s shows for its teen channel. Nostalgia for those who are just beginning to look back with fondness. People have warm regards for the TV that flickered in front of them while they were small and safe and happy. Or at least they thought they were; whatever bedevils you at that age fades into insignificance, as it should. The strangest stuff, though, is the stuff that lies at the absolute outermost border of recollection. I remember Captain Kangaroo with great fondness, because that jaunty song announced the start of another good day, probably at home with Mom, eating warm oatmeal from a blue ceramic bowl that had a bunny embossed on the bottom, holding a spoon, with the words “ALL GONE!” etched into the glaze. There was Tom Terrific, which was fascinating, and rare – a cartoon on Kangaroo was a special thing. Any cartoon was special.
Like most kids I consumed as much Saturday morning cartoons as I could, feeling a grey sadness settle in when noon came and the shows were replaced by westerns and bowling and documentaries and all the other stuff they threw on because no one was watching. That was the assumption, it seemed: people had better things to do. I’ve revisited a few on YouTube and some compilations, mostly out of horrified fascination. They’re awful. They’re all awful. The same voices, the same sound effects, the same music, the cheap animation, the meritricious characters – a funny shark, in a rock band! A rock band that solves mysteries! A group of meddling kids solving mysteries! “Scooby-Doo” was something of an innovation, since it had show-length plots and actual mysteries, but it was crap, and the late-boomer worship of that show is the worst sort of nostalgia: elevation of the objects of your childhood to an undeserved status simply because you enjoyed them, which means they were special. They weren’t. They were just around, that’s all.
I bring this up to push back a bit against all the Doom and Decline and lamentations for a greater time, and make a sweeping generalization: nearly every cultural product is, in many ways, better than it was 40 years ago. Materially, the same goes, although I’m sure some will point out that the Mr. Coffee of 1971 lasted somewhat longer than the Mr. Coffee of today – I’m not certain it’s true, but the modern version looks better, since it doesn’t have a wood-grained plastic face. Radios looked worse. Cars. TVs. Design was at a nadir, since no one seemed to know which cultural trend to follow – psychedelic? Back to nature? Pop art? None of these things lent themselves to electronics. But I’m getting off the point: the cultural products are, at their best, much better. Animation: no question. Science-fiction movies: sure. Television: yes; TV was in a trough, and all you need to know about the era can be gleaned from a few witness sniggering sentimental “Love, American Style” episodes.
Music: well, here we get into tricky territory, because everyone always things there was a golden age around the time they were 18-30, and if you fall in that group, everything to day is noise and cussin’. Here’s the top 40 for 1971. Eh. Melanie, “Brand New Key” at #7? The chorus is like hearing a cat in a mangler; she couldn’t hit those high notes with a ladder and a hammer. The worst of modern music is worse than anything ever before ever, period, but the range and depth of music you can find today is extraordinary.
Architecture? Commercial architecture is better than 1971. Food? No question. Yes, yes, I’d love it if Trader Joe’s had a 60s aesthetic with distant Muzak playing uptempo happy-shopper songs, and the freezers looked like they came from the mind of men who dashed off the designs as a break from making spectacularly tail-finned cars, but here I’ll take substance over style.
Book cover design: better. Furniture: better. Magazine design: better. And so on. Disagree? I’m open to argument. Find me something about the general design and quality of consumer life in 1971 that’s better than today. Comments, as ever, are open.
Update: Motel Postcards. There’s only four, but the last one involved almost an hour of research last Friday night. I couldn’t find the address; I poked around; I peered hard at Google Street View, pacing up and down the street until I discovered something quite unusual. It’s HERE. Enjoy!
Pass it along, if you wish
92 Responses to 1971
Host with the Most
@Moishe: “to use concrete to make artistic statements in architecture. How cool was that? It was – impressive.”
I understand your point, but I mourn some of the wonderful architecture that was torn down to make those artistic statements. Penn Station in NYC is but one terrible example.
One thing people have forgotten- variety/Comedy shows.
The best of those were better than anything on TV today.
Sullivan? What did you want? Rock, Broadway, stand-up, dramatic reading. Sullivan had no talent but he had the newspaper man’s eye.
Jack Benny- television genius
Smothers Brothers -watch that and see how good that show was.
Laugh-In- not as good but groundbreaking
Go back farther- Your Show of Shows- most of the readers don’t know it, but it was as good as anything TV did.
Even Berle on Texaco -was a never miss show.
And lesser efforts like Hollywood Palace and Danny Kaye’s show were pretty damn good.
What on TV comes close to that genre today.
You can go thru all 500 cable channels and not duplicate that genre today.
@Cory: Your Show of Shows invented manic skitcraft on TV. many of the writers and stars did the other “breakthrough” shows that have been reminisced about here and elsewhere.
@swschrad & @Richard C. Moeur; I get plenty of blood tests, IVs, etc. I have developed a procedure that I think works very well that you may wish to consider. That is, before the nurse, PA, etc. inserts the needle, I tell them, “You get one chance to do it correctly. Then I get to try on your arm!”
You would be surprised how well it works. They always show more care and attention to their job after I say this.
@swschrad & @Richard C. Moeur; I get plenty of blood tests, IVs, etc. I have developed a procedure that I think works very well that you may wish to consider. That is, before the nurse, PA, etc. inserts the needle, I tell them, “You get one chance to do it correctly. If you fail, I get to try on your arm!”
You would be surprised how well it works. They always show more care and attention to their job after I say this.
Re: Sat. morn. cartoons
I can remember feeling stoked on Sat. mornings back 40 years ago. Not only was it no school, but it was an all-cartoon morning on TV, and my mom was glad to let me “couch potato” the morning away. Now my kids may watch an occasional cartoon on Saturday morning, but they end up on the computer or playing video games. And we don’t even have cable! I guess when you can stream whatever you want whenever you want, Saturday morning is just another morning.
As far as things better in ’71, the first thing that came to mind were McDonald’s french fries. I’m sick and tired of the food nutzies telling me what is or is not healthy, and legislating away the good stuff. I heard last night they’re changing Happy Meals to make them healthier. Sheesh! Back 40 years ago a Happy Meal was when the folks actually took us out for fast food – forget the toy. We went to one of the first ones on Ogden Ave in Downers Grove, back when the sign would change to show how many million burgers were sold.
I graduated the same year as @Moishe3rd so the sights and sounds of 1971, good and bad, are the wheelhouse of my youth. We lived in a small town so remote that the only way you could pull in the 3 networks was if you had “cable.” When I graduated and moved to the Midsize City for college, “cable” meant you got the 3 networks plus PBS and the 2 or 3 independent stations from the Big City that played lots of cartoons and reruns. TV bliss! Now, with the hundreds of channels available on “cable” (what we still call the digital service), I still regularly watch only about six channels.
And I’m bummed because “Torchwood: Miracle Day” is on STARZ, and I refuse to pay for another subscription channel. Looking forward to the day when ALL television is On Demand/PayPerView.
Thanks for all the comments (but this is OGH’s site, not mine – probably shouldn’t have mentioned anything in the first place). Now in the ‘nuclear medicine’ section – hoping to get some real cool superpowers out of this.
And the vampires have had remarkably good aim – so far.
I’ll take a 1971 Datsun 240z over anything rolling off the assembly lines today.
But I’m partial.
Two words. Ernie Kovacs.
Close thread.
@Richard C> Moeur: ahhh, nuclear medicine. the superpower I acquired was wearing stents. I also got the superpower to attract DHS employees when a block away from a border checkpoint thanks to radiation sensors.
when I got my (good) right eye tuned up, I got that screen cover for nighttime protection to wear a week. the superpower I got as SuperFlyEye was the unerring ability to find steaming piles. bzz. comes in handy for reading the newspapers lately.
superpowers aren’t what they’re made out to be.
@John Robertson: add Sgt. Bilko, and the thread is closed.
Swift recovery to you then Richard!
“Brand New Key” isn’t the worst of 1971′s Top 40. The infamous cannibalism song “Timothy” was No. 19. (Two guys fall into a mine shaft, only one emerges, plumper than he was before, if I remember correctly)
@bgbear (roger h): “I thought I was going deaf because I was always flipping back a scene on TV or asking my wife, “what did he say”. It occurred to me I don’t do this when I watch older films. People mumble and talk to soft in new films and TV. Is it suppose to be more realistic? I find it annoying.”
That’s the only complaint I have about Fringe, a series I greatly enjoy. Anna Torv (Olivia / Bolivia) whispers way too many of her lines. Some of the other actors do that too, so on comes the closed captioning.
Some of the 1971 music has already been commented on, so I’ll just add mention of…
What Is Life – George Harrison,
Domino – Van Morrison,
I Hear You Knockin’ – Dave Edmunds,
Liar – Three Dog Night, and
Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers. Yeah, I know, I know, I know…
_@_v – same people who did timothy did that pina colada song if the mst3k people are correct…
“Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” and “Timothy” (three miners, not two) were written by Rupert Holmes, creator of one of my all-time favorite television shows, “Remember WENN” on American Movie Classics.
He’s done a massive amount of work. For Broadway he wrote “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” and the one-man “Say Goodnight, Gracie” starring Frank Gorshin as George Burns.
I’ve forgiven him for those songs.
“Timothy” was a publicity stunt that backfired. Holmes & co. expected it to be banned/boycotted for its subject matter.
Without Hanna-Barbera we wouldn’t have this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8aIiYEFO4
This episode even has an Eyrie tie-in at the end.
I liked the cartoon . It reminds me of Pingu, a 00s claymation show that focus very much on home, hearth, and friendship. Aimed at a general Euro audience it, like Eyrie, uses subtext instead of spoken words to convey the story. My daughter loved it, my infant loves it.
Regarding 1971 commercial experience, I’d say that going to the mall was in some ways better. I prefer shopping in an environment where people care about their appearance as opposed to the modern ‘fling something on’ ‘let your underwear hang out’ clientele where people wear shirts designed to offend you.
wasn’t the next year the CBS Saturday night lineup of All in the Family, some throw -in (I think Paul Sand, which actually was a decent show), Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett?
Name a comparable line-up in TV history in a single night on a single network.
How about NBC, Thursday nights, 1984-85? The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, and Hill Street Blues.
Yes, Kev, but don’t forget, the late-70s to mid-8os NBC (honchoed by Fred Silverman) also gave us such “classics” as Manimal, Project U.F.O., and Supertrain.
@John Robinson: I was trying very hard to forget that.
(And who’s to say that CBS didn’t have some clunkers during the era that Cory referenced above?)
Hill Street Blues was one of the greatest things American television ever produced. It was the first show that wasn’t The Fugitive or a soap opera to employ “story arcs” that stretched over multiple episodes, and it instantly rendered every “traditional” cop/detective show (Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Ironside, Mannix, The Mod Squad,/i> and so on) obsolete.
The Other Guthrie: Good call. I’ve got a yellow (yes, about half a shade off of “harvest gold”) ’71 240Z.
At least for cars back then, no concessions were made for aerodynamics and not every one that came out was the same windswept jelly bean shape.
Kev:
Close- certainly a worthy #2.
Take Cosby away and you don’t have the star power of the Saturday night lineup (O’Connor, Stapleton, Reiner, Struthers, Alda, Newhart, Pleshette, MTM, Harper, Kohrman, Conway, Lawrence and Burnett).
Almost everyone a TV Hall of Famer.
I love Hill Street, superb show, but it didn’t have the stars Saturday night did.
Fewer iconic characters on the shows themselves.
You have spinoffs, just not as many as the Saturday night lineup.
But I could certainly see it as worthy competition.
So why was there so much good music in 1971? My own theory is that there was a brief window in the years after Sgt. Pepper and Pet Sounds where artists were being given more control over the finished product. You started to hear fewer utterly lame studio background singers, fewer utterly lame string arrangements written by a guy who did them by the dozen in-between smokes, etc. But (and this is critical) the labels still had much of the say, and they were often pretty good at rounding out a band or a singer’s sound. To pick an example from before 1971, The Lovin’ Spoonful might have been a great coffee house act, but what would their records have been without the label’s help? Sometime between now and then, the production of music became amateur hour, and now a band might take months to produce a crummy, self-indulgent record. Listen to the guitars – no hint of greatness. Listen to the singers – the men sound lost and self-effacing. The women sound like children altogether. Yes, yes, there are exceptions. Someone mentioned Adele, and someone mentioned Gaga (not my cup of tea, but clearly way talented). I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Justin Bieber is also very talented. He is growing into the role, and becoming a better musician as time goes by.
The Police Tapes (1977) by Alan and Susan Raymond (of An American Family infamy) inspired Hill Street Blues, among others. TPT is a hoot, what with the clothes, hair styles and “primitive” police equipment. The scene of NYPDs Tactical Unit trying to break into an apartment using a battering ram is precious (take a break, boys, take a break).
@Richard C. Moeur: good luck – last week I spent four days in ICU with congestive heart failure. All my IV holes ache with sympathy for you. I got the impression I was being detained by escapees from Twilight. My nurses were all that good lookin’ (except the one with halitosis).
Paul McCartney. Wings. Say no more. Or, say one thing and then repeat it endlessly…
At least, the top tunes included something from “Jesus Christ Superstar” — which I listened to, again and again (with my new friends in the drama club). We all wondered if there would be a time when we could stage our own production, but shook our heads sadly — in Lancaster County, PA? Not likely. Ever.
Now it’s staged almost every year!
Culture-vultures that we were, we also listened to a lot of Sondheim musicals, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven.
I remember the 70s as being a time when the emphasis was on solo artists like Carole King, Carly Simon, Elton John, Billy Joel, Bette Midler, Joni Mitchell, etc. I tended to befriend people with really good stereo systems — the kind who would buy speakers from one place, a turntable from another, and build their own sound set-up.
Some of the music was pretty good but the clothing still makes me cringe. And the colors. Avocado green and harvest orange. (scream)
One thing that was definitely better — the selection in Goodwill. An earlier post-er said that a lot of people threw out old but GOOD stuff and a lot of it landed in Goodwill. I can remember when you took thirty dollars to Goodwill when you wanted to furnish your first apartment.
Now of course, we have yard sales and Ebay. People wised up.
Lots of classic stuff on the charts in 1971…and a certain amount of junk. It was sort of tough to be a DJ back then and sound just as positive about Timothy or “Chick a Boom” as about the latest Doors release.
On a Twin Cities related note, back in ’71 I made a couple trips over to St. Paul to take the FCC License exams and on one trip we stopped at KDWB (they were right off the interstate then) and got the story from the chief engineer about how hard “Shaft” was on the transmitter…too much dynamic range or some story like that. That and how he made a big deal about the “ton” of sand they had for weight in the base of their turntables.
Also good and possibly better in 1971 — Masterpiece Theatre. “Upstairs/Downstairs”, “Vanity Fair.”
I’m not saying Masterpiece Classic or Masterpiece Mystery is not as good, but they have a tendency to do the same thing again and again. How many times did they dramatize “David Copperfield”? There’s been how many reincarnations of Miss Marple? And two versions of “Bleak House.”
@oddhan: agree re Pingu. Watchable over ‘n over by the whole family. And no subtitles needed.
@MJBirch: Goldenrod. :::shudder:::
Toilets. Toilets were better in 1971. The right height and really really flushed.
For Richard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o29VoxtsFk&feature=youtube_gdata_player
From ’67, not ’71…
Terry Fitz:
Actually I think 1971 was a little after the best period (why not the period of Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper)
The drugs were starting to kick in.
A little bit didn’t hurt the musicians – heavy drugs ruined almost all of them with only one or two exceptions.
Three fifty-one, three fifty-two; whatever it takes. (Apologies to Michael Keaton).
Mid-level stereo gear was at something of a high point in the 70s, both for looks and performance. Silver-faced Yamaha products were especially elegant looking. Later (80s) everything went black-faced, then (90s) bulgy black-faced, but present-day stuff is reprising the classic silver look.
The sound quality of good 70s audio gear is certainly no worse than their modern equivalents.
Actually, the 351 vs, 352 is a a meaningful distinction in Ford V-8 engines. The 352 was part of the FE series (for Ford-Edsel) and came out in ’58, being discontinued after ’66. The 351 had two variations, the Windsor (other versions being the 221, 260, 289, and 302), being a small-block, while the 351 Cleveland (or officially the “335″ series) has the same displacement but is a different design. A ’71 Mustang with the solid-lifter Boss 351 engine (R-code) is very rare (only about 1,800 built), most were regular H-code (2-barrel carburetor) or M-code (4-barrel) versions.
Beg to differ on your timeline for the introduction of cookies to the ice-cream sandwich world:
http://www.itsiticecream.com/
9 for flavor, 3 for design – The cookies just ejected the ice cream into your lap as you bit down.
The 351 Cleveland could spin up quite a bit in comparison to a Windsor. The Boss 351 Mustang featured a Cleveland motor. Absolutely the most impressive burn outs I’ve ever witnessed from a stock, off the car lot, vehicle was my best friend’s 72 Gran Torino. 351C with a 4bbl, C6 AT and super skinny tires (or tyres). It was a two door boat, but man could it light ‘em up. Always wanted to shoe-horn a 351C into my 1974 2 door Mercury Comet – but the darn shock towers were in the way. Even a 351W with a shorter deck height was still too wide. I had to ‘dimple’ every set of headers I put in that car with my factory 302. But after a 10.5:1 compression rebuild, new intake, a 4bbl, and a custom cam with loads more exhaust timing, I could get it to break the tires loose on the highway when I dropped it down into 2nd gear at 60MPH. A new set of tires every 6 months. Dumb teenagers. Glory days.
I recently got access to TV channels running all the ‘classic’ shows of the 1970s and 80s, and what struck me is just how technically inept a lot of them were. I saw an episode of the A-Team that looked like it had been edited according to the I Ching. Cutaways and reaction shots that made no sequential sense, etc. The most routine cop procedural today may have annoying new quirks (jiggly cameras) but at the basic craft level of editing, they’re mostly impeccable.
Ah, that would be the “Q-code” 351 Cleveland “Cobra Jet,” (’71-’74) one of the last gasps of the high-performance era. The C6 automatic is bulletproof, perfect for burnout duty! The (new in)’72 Torino has a great, distictive look, with its fish-mouth front end. Unfortunately, it only lasted one year until the feds saddled it with those big bumpers. Maverick/Comet was a great platform for performance modifications, being lighter than a Torino or Mustang.