So, rather than sport fashions that were five years out of date or sweat over a sewing machine to make their own, more modest clothes, women reluctantly adopted the miniskirt across the board. While some saw it as a “tool of rebellion” and enjoyed using it to flaunt their sexuality, others nervously tugged at their hemlines while waiting patiently for the 1970s, when a feminist reaction against the objectification of women finally saw skirts lengthening again. Of course, we still wear things that are hideously unsuited to us from time to time – but that’s more on account of our own poor taste than the lack of any alternative.
Casually Wielding a Yo-yo
Over the years, the popularity of yo-yos has gone up and down as regularly and rapidly as yo-yos themselves. While there’s evidence that they’ve been around since ancient times, the modern story begins in the 1920s, when a Filipino gentleman by the name of Pedro Flores started manufacturing the “yo-yo” (a Tagalog word meaning “come back”) in California. It’s often suggested that the yo-yo was originally a weapon, but this does tend to conjure up images of jungle dwellers doing spectacular yo-yo tricks to render animals unconscious, when what they actually did was chuck a stone with a cord attached to enable easy retrieval.
Yo-yos steadily increased in popularity throughout the middle part of the twentieth century, but it was a television advertising campaign in 1962 that suddenly had everyone yo-yoing, with 45 million units sold by the end of that year. Unfortunately for the manufacturer, Duncan Toys, the passing of the word yo-yo into common parlance saw them lose the rights to the trademark in 1965, and a yo-yo free-for-all began. Since then, the toy has fallen into roughly five-year cycles of popularity, partly enforced by toy manufacturers who know that while trying to continually market the toy is pointless, after five years the general public will have forgotten the yo-yo’s limitations as a source of entertainment.
Putting on a Pair of Cardboard Specs to Experience a 3D Movie
The early 1920s was an astonishing period for innovation in film. Jaws were dropping at the first experiments with synchronized sound, Technicolor films had started to receive nationwide distribution, and a 3D film, The Power Of Love, was screened in Los Angeles in 1922 to a roomful of people wearing spectacles with one green and one red lens. Tricking each individual eye into seeing separate images to create a 3D effect wasn’t new, but enabling a roomful of people to experience it together was expected to revolutionize cinema.
It didn’t, of course – although enthusiasts continued to dedicate themselves to the form, and the development of Polaroid filters paved the way for what’s known as 3D’s “golden era” between 1952 and 1955. It was heralded by Bwana Devil, a 3D film with the enticing tagline “A lion in your lap! A lover in your arms!” (Given the choice, one would probably plump for the lover.) One review ended: “The worst movie in my rather faltering memory … I immediately went to see a 2D movie for relief.” Nevertheless, it was followed by a series of more critically acclaimed 3D-ers such as It Came From Outer Space, and the future of the medium for a while looked rosy. Unfortunately, the need to project two prints, the difficulty of keeping the two in sync without giving your audience vicious migraines, and the problem of people at the sides of the cinema not being able to experience the full effect meant that 3D went into decline. Today, we’re so urbane and sophisticated that we consider an alien’s head magically emerging from a 2D surface to be, well, a bit gimmicky.
Sharing All your Possessions with a Bunch of Strangers while Living in a Jerry-built Shack
Sharing one’s living space is fraught with problems. If you’re cohabiting with someone who allows you to interfere with them sexually, it makes their appalling habits (such as leaving toenail clippings on the sofa and milk out of the fridge) a little easier to bear. But if all that links you together is a desire to have a roof over your head, it’s likely that your lives will be regularly shattered by blistering arguments over ownership of shampoo. That’s just how it is. And it makes you yearn for some kind of privacy.
Communes, however, appear to have been free of such petty bickering. This 1960s counterculture approach to domesticity, jettisoning the traditional nuclear family and replacing it with a heady mixture of vegetarianism, Eastern philosophy, nudity, group decision-making, free love and the sharing of material goods drew thousands of people out of the rat race and into homes where bean casseroles were as plentiful as self-styled flower-children and psychedelic drugs. These gently hallucinating extended families enthusiastically went “back to the land” while preaching peace and goodwill to all men; what’s not quite as widely documented is why these communes slowly began to die out towards the end of the 1960s. Surely it can only have been down to arguments over failing to put the lid back on the toothpaste.
Creating that Special Mood with a Lava Lamp
A chance visit to a British country pub saw one Mr Edward Walker discover a bizarre egg timer behind the bar, consisting of a lump of wax suspended in liquid that would melt and rise to the surface when heated. Keen to steal the idea and make some money out of it, he was delighted to discover that its inventor was dead, so after perfecting what he described as a “display device” he filed a patent for it in 1965. At a trade show in Brussels it caught the eye of a couple of Americans who bought the US rights, renamed it the Lava Lamp and started shifting millions of them each year from a factory in Illinois.
Walker retained the rights in the UK, keeping the formula of the lamp’s contents a strict secret. And thanks to people who were desperate to make their “pads” more “groovy” he found international success. “If you buy my lamp, you won’t need to take drugs,” he said, ignoring the fact that many people found drugs and lava lamps to have a perfect synergy. Walker also opined that his invention would “always be popular; it’s like the cycle of life.” On this count, however, he was very wrong. By 1976 sales had slumped to a miserable two hundred a week, and Walker was probably wondering why he hadn’t put more effort into his other great love, naturist parks and nudist films. Fortunately, his lamps found themselves rehabilitated in the 1980s as part of retro chic, and today they’re an essential inclusion in any post-ironic sitting room. But for how long?
Immobile Pets and King Crimson Cassettes: The Seventies
If you were forced at gunpoint to identify unusual human behaviour associated with the 1970s, you’d probably start by gabbling on about the colossal errors that were perpetrated in the name of fashion; you can look at a photograph of a social event from 1972 and be just as astonished by people’s clothing choices as if they were clad in eighteenth-century French court costume. But while horn-rimmed glasses, wing collars, platform shoes, A-line skirts and violently flared trousers are distressing to the modern eye, their influence still occasionally bobs to the surface, like a cigarette butt that refuses to be flushed away.
Other 1970s ideas that seemed fleeting and ephemeral have stuck around even more stubbornly. When the first facelifts were performed they were regarded as a passing fad, but now we’re as desperate as ever to go under the knife and make things bigger (or, very occasionally, smaller). Feminist theories that were widely scorned have, thankfully, gained acceptance; men no longer assume that their wife will be cooking dinner every night, although parity of earnings is still, for some reason, maddeningly elusive. And while we no longer “Do The Hustle” or unleash torrents of saliva at the Sex Pistols, the musical influence of both disco and punk is everywhere.
While we struggled with the consequences of oil crises, the continuing Cold War, stagflation and left-wing terrorism, we occupied our conscious and subconscious minds with some of the following (which we embrace few of quite as heartily today).
Protecting Toilet Rolls from Everyday Stresses and Strains with Knitted Covers
Some things just don’t need protection. Tartan bodywarmers for dogs aren’t remotely necessary, and represent something of an indulgence on the part of the dog’s owner. The amount of cardboard packaging that envelops, protects and nurtures th
e average Easter egg on its journey from the supermarket to your home could be described as excessive, especially bearing in mind its eventual destiny. But toilet roll covers must rate as the most needless protective device yet devised.
The number of critical shocks sustained by the household toilet roll during its short life spent in your bathroom are limited to the featherlight settling of dust, and the gentle wafting of air. Neither of these things particularly distress the toilet roll, or indeed impinge upon one’s enjoyment of it. These covers came in a range of fanciful animal-like designs, indicating that over-enthusiasm for craft projects was to blame for us being saddled with these useless knitted sheaths that stopped us getting toilet paper off the toilet roll. Which, let’s face it, is the point of a toilet roll.
Heating your Dinner by Boiling it in a Plastic Bag
Convenience food will be with us for as long as there are people who think that cooking is some kind of black art, a fringe activity that’s indulged in by poncy gastronomes with too much time on their hands. But even today’s most microwave-dependent citizen would balk at a plastic pouch containing a lump of cod in parsley sauce – and that must surely mark out boil-in-the-bag as a low point of the quick’n’easy meal industry.
Well into the 1970s, the words “boil in the bag” could be casually dropped into an advertising campaign for, say, ready-made curry, without fearing a colossal slump in sales. In fact, quite the opposite: this was the cutting edge of phenomenally lazy cuisine, and we slothfully embraced it. To be fair, the contents of the bag were more dubious than the system itself, which has been rehabilitated by gourmet chefs such as Joël Robuchon and Heston Blumenthal (although understandably they call it sous-vide instead) but it has neverthless become synonymous with glutinous, unappetising slop. And the only circumstances under which we’d be prepared to boil food in bags today would either be during a jungle expedition, or a war.
Not Being Ashamed of Being a Devoted Fan of Gary Glitter
Disgrace is a curious thing. There are many reasons why Gary Glitter could have lost his broad appeal since his 1973 heyday: the overwhelming size of his silver epaulettes; the abundance of clearly visible chest hair; the questionable showmanship; our unwillingness to be told to “come on, come on,” by a man staring at us in a maniacal fashion while jabbing a podgy finger in the air. And that’s before we’ve even got around to analyzing the substance of the music itself.
But the media furore surrounding his possession of child pornography and his subsequent conviction for paedophilia has effectively sealed his back catalogue in a heavy box and dumped it over the side of a ship. Wedding DJs aren’t that keen on rounding off their set with “Leader Of The Gang” any more. Advertising companies are reluctant to market products using a Glitterbeat. Gary Glitter fan conventions are noticably thin on the ground. It’s even possible that you may never hear him sing again, unless you actually own one of his records and fancy a trip down memory lane. Your neighbours are unlikely to assume that you’re a child molester if you listen to it, but maybe best to keep the volume on a low setting.
Covering your Floor with Shag Pile Carpet
As the hair on our heads became more unruly, so did our carpets. By the 1970s, the shag pile had reached a length of as much as three inches, and while this presumably symbolized sophistication and slight decadence, it was instrumental in creating dirt, filth, and untold graft for the poor soul whose task it was to clean the thing.
Whole ecosystems were able to flourish undetected at floor level, kept nourished by fragments of food and the tasty bits from the underside of nail clippings. Now, rugs can be shaken out. You can dangle them out of the window and watch the debris cascade to the ground beneath. Not so with something that’s nailed to the floorboards – so the vacuuming of a shag pile was complemented by combing it with a rake-like object. Within a short space of time, your carpet looked more like an explosion in a factory that produced both wool and cheese’n’onion crisps. Our realization of the shag pile’s myriad disadvantages sent us fleeing, panic stricken, into the equally aesthetically dubious arms of laminate flooring.
Using Mood Rings as an Emotional Compass
Human beings are complex creatures. Several millennia of social interaction have enabled us to assess other people’s state of mind, sense awkward situations and react accordingly. But someone in the late 1960s decided that this emotional latticework could be neatly distilled into a colour-coded mood ring. Made out of thermotropic liquid crystal, it reacted to your body heat – or, more precisely, your finger heat – and changed its hue accordingly.
Quite why heat was supposed to signpost mood swings is unclear; after all, not everyone breaks out in hot flushes when they’re mildly amused (thank goodness) and while the accompanying mood ring chart might have indicated that someone was “passionate”, “harassed” or “overworked”, a more accurate chart would have said “going down with mumps” or “competing in the 400m hurdles”. Strangely, no fewer than three people – Marvin Wernick, Joshua Reynolds and Robert Parker – lay claim to the invention of this remarkably useless trinket.
Preferring Things if they were Brown
The kaleidoscopic madness of the 1960s gave way to a more refined, sophisticated approach in the 1970s, with a focus on one particular palette of colours: brown. Things might have occasionally swung green-wards into an olive-type hue, or yellow-wards into ochre territory, but there was an omnipresent brownish tinge. Wearing your brown trousers or brown skirt, you’d put on your brown shoes, open your brown front door and get into your brown car. You’d drive past a few brown shop fronts. Then when you got back home, you’d discover that your furniture and your carpets were still brown. And not even a very nice brown.
But perhaps the apotheosis of this unusual fondness for the beige, the buff, the caramel, the chestnut, was the urge to clad as many rooms as possible with pine panelling. House interiors would look like a Scandinavian sauna at best, and a poorly lit magistrate’s court at worst. Sure, it was inexpensive, easy to install and covered up nasty plasterwork, but it left future generations dealing with bouts of depression and gruelling weekends of DIY to put it right.
Playing with Toys that were Loud, Irritating and Dangerous
You can’t really blame children for wanting a toy whose sole function is to make as much noise as possible. Everyone is born with an inbuilt limit on the number of decibels they’re able to generate, and if you’re at an age when that limit is a constant source of frustration, the ability to crash through it by spending a few pence is irresistable. Clackers fulfilled that need; they were two rock-hard acrylic balls connected by a piece of string, and if you got the knack you could make these balls smack against each other loudly and repeatedly for hours on end, while you were repeatedly told to “stop that” by anyone older than you.
These balls were presumably tested for strength prior to being sold, but the manufacturers hadn’t counted on the ferocity with which they were going to be “clacked”. If you really put the effort in, you could get them to shatter explosively; this led to children with damaged wrists through the clacking, and eye injuries from the flying shards of plastic. They were removed from the shelves, then relaunched in tougher material – but when they started (somewhat predictably) being used as nunchaku-style weapons in local schools, parents and teachers had an excuse to call a halt to clacking once and for all. And noise-obsessed children were forced to let off fireworks or take up the trumpet instead.
Making a Macramé Owl
Many creative hobbies enable you to make something reasonably impressive, or useful, even if your skill set is quite limited. Novice cooks can knock up tasty pasta dishes with minimal guidance. The beginners guide to origami will have you folding a neat-looking butterfly within a couple of hours. Woodworking students should be able to build you a CD rack without losing too many fingers. But anyone embarking on a course of macramé in the 1970s would have given one of two decoratively knotted presents for Christmas, and neither look
ed particularly pleasant. One was a device for hanging pot plants from hooks. The second was an owl.
These horrific two-dimensional representations of birds of prey represented the entire scale of ambition for many macramé enthusiasts. Once they’d got the hang of the half hitch and the alternating square knot, they’d make an owl. And then another, slightly different owl. It’s not as if macramé is particularly suited to the owl format. The finished item looked more like a badly disfigured table mat. And they frightened small children from walls throughout the Western world. Almost inexplicable.
Going to See Highly Pretentious Music with Lofty Ambitions Performed in a Stadium by Rock Musicians
The masses have never really taken to classical music in a big way. As hummable as portions of Symphonie Fantastique might be, Hector Berlioz wasn’t the Elvis Presley of his day; the general public were far more interested in traditional folk ditties. And while Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring might have caused outrage at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, most people outside that theatre couldn’t have cared less.
But for a few years in the early 1970s, high concept, complex music had a bizarre surge in popularity. Impenetrable storylines played out across several sides of vinyl and encased in gatefold sleeves would sell millions of copies, and live reinterpretations of great classical works would be played in front of packed venues – mainly men, granted, but human beings nonetheless. A song lasting twenty minutes or longer didn’t cause anyone to bat so much as an eyelid – indeed, if it lasted less than ten minutes, the audience would feel short-changed. Then, as quickly as it had caught on, pseudo-classical rock music became incredibly uncool. Fortunes would never again be made from arranging Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.3 for a four-piece rock band.
The Next Big Thing Page 11