fett on 11/10/2007 at 14:10

---

You have to draw a line somewhere, and I've found that many times in my life, I would have been better off to draw it at GWAR.

fett on 11/10/2007 at 14:54

---

I think that's exactly what it means. Cultural touchstones and common experience kind of died with cable TV and the internet. No one sees the same commercials, TV shows, videos, or listens to the same songs on the radio now. As an experiment, ask someone in their 30's to name a commercial slogan that everyone else their age would know. You'll inevitably get "Where's the Beef?". Ask someone in their 40's and you'll get "Like a Rock" or "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen," etc. Then ask someone in their 20's. Also, try asking a 30 year old who was the biggest pop or rock star of the day. They'll give you Michael Jackson, Van Halen, and some other obvious ones. In the last 20 years, there hasn't really been a worldwide music phenomenon that practically *everyone* knew of, listened to, etc. I would say the closest things would be Dr. Dre or Nirvana in the early 90's, but they haven't had the staying power of those acts from the 70's and 80's. It breaks down the cultural conversation into specific interests. Just look at the explosion of print magazines. I remember about 4-5 music magazines in the 80's, now there are about 100-200. Again, no common experience.

SubJeff on 11/10/2007 at 15:27

---

You say it like it's a bad thing. It's just the media cycle - low level mass spam at the finally reaching critical mass so that the overflow doesn't spill into everyone's experience-cup now. Last century was just a blip.

Rug Burn Junky on 11/10/2007 at 16:04

---

If nothing else, I'm glad that there are some constants on these forums, and one is that, without fail, BR8675309(Jenny) doesn't know what he's talking about.Unlike say, the sixties, and damn dirty hippies:
http://www.gratefulthreads.net/hippies15.jpg

or the seventies, lounge suits and disco:
http://www.worldofkitsch.com/film/images/film_snf003.jpg

or the nineties and flannel shirted grunge:
http://trade.spinmusic.org/pj1.jpg

Good thing that the 80's stands out from all of the other recent cookie cutter decades which had such non-distinctive fashion. :rolleyes:

Wasn't a big revival era? While everybody remembers the 80's for its own fads, actually in the 80's there was tons of nostalgia for the 60's. I know living near Woodstock at the time definitely meant I had a higher than average tie-dye quotient in my neighborhood, but that wasn't just a local thing, after being dead for a while, they definitely popped up again in the late 80's. The Grateful Dead had a major resurgence. The Who had a giant reunion tour.

Case in point? Two words: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKDk-mg1J9Q) Freedom Rock. So, umm, yeah, the 80's had just as big a revival era as any other recent decade.

Late 90's? You have a tremendous amount of SEVENTIES nostalgia, not 60's. Polly Esther's night clubs. That 70's Show. Clubs everywhere having Disco nights. Kiss (with make-up!) reunion.

So, yeah, pretty much everything you said is either wrong or pointless. Why do you even bother with your useless drivel?

-------------------

Anyway, 70's? Everyone remembers it for disco, or punk. People forget that there were tons of flashbacks to the 50's: Happy Days. Sha-na-na. Hell, the fucking Ramones were nothing but a throwback rock and roll group (Seriously, listen to SLUG, or any of their cover songs, and tell me they weren't trying to be a 50's rock band. Fuck, just look at their outfits that SCREAM 50's greasers).

People hit their 30's, remember their childhoods, and things get idealized and nostalgic. It's the same now as it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. We're going through reliving the 80's now. It'll pass. It wasn't that special, (though, the Police reunion definitely kicks Kiss's and The Who's collective ass) and jesus fuck, if I see one more pretentious jack-off running around the Lower East Side wearing a Members Only jacket with aviators, I'm going to fucking slap him.

All I know is that in about 5-10 years, there's going to be a sitcom set in 1990's Milwaukee about a bunch of teenagers wearing flannel shirts and dealing with their out of touch parents. And it'll be a hit. Just watch.

demagogue on 11/10/2007 at 16:28

---

I think the gap between the 60s and 80s feels much bigger than the 80s and 00s ... mostly because the social revolution of the late 60s was pretty total, in the way average people talk to each other, more than people realize I think.

I remember watching a documentary from the 70s, and despite being 30 years ago, people were basically talking normally. The fashion and hair is different -- although not that different for average people. But when they spoke their minds I could imagine a person from today saying exactly the same things verbatim.

But when you watch "normal" people talk from the early 60s, 50s, 40s... like on old news clips ... they just sound alien, like they aren't really speaking their mind but spouting out group-think, faux politeness, everything people now ridicule in 50s movies. And I can feel that difference in practically all of popular culture, music, movies, tv...

It feels like the gap between 1965 and 1975 is bigger than even the gap between 1975 and 2005. I don't feel like that is exaggerating. Anyway, that's why I (now 31 y.o.) suspect a kid today doesn't think about the 1980s as something radically foreign like I thought about the 1960s when I was a kid in the 80s.