Keeping alive the glorious spirit of 1976
. Us children of the 1970s may bore our kids into slumber with our tales of how great life was back in “our day”, but what was it that made our adolescence so special? There are literally hundreds of things that made that decade stand out amongst all the times in which to be growing […]
Continue ReadingIt cannot be denied, 1970s comedy can be a sticky subject. Society’s values have changed, and what was considered funny once may now be frowned upon as unacceptable and even downright offensive. Our perpetual quest for subtlety and nuance has also undoubtedly rendered much of it embarrassingly predictable. And yet in our desire always to […]
Continue ReadingIf the mid 1970s could be said to have thrown up a hero who truly reflected the mood of the age, it may well have been one Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, better known to those of us who were there as “The Fonz”. The Fonz was not a real-life person, but a TV character in a […]
Continue ReadingFor those of us to whom amassing our own personal collection of 45s was the teenage pursuit of the 1970s, the Chinnichap moniker always served to lend the latest 7-inch vinyl cut the ultimate seal of authenticity. Whether it came packaged in the stark orange of RCA Records or the pale blue colours of RAK, […]
Continue ReadingTo understand the unique place that 1976 holds in the annals of popular music and culture, it is first necessary to reflect awhile on what had gone immediately before. As the Summer of Love passed into the realms of ever more distant memory and the seemingly interminable 1960s – with its mods and rockers, beats […]
Continue ReadingThe 4th of July is always a special day in the United States, but 4th July1976 saw the party of a lifetime as the nation embarked upon the mother of all celebrations, to mark 200 years of independence. The US Bicentennial, as two centuries of freedom following the Declaration of Independence of the United States […]
Continue ReadingWhen we think back to our childhood and our early adolescence there are those certain simple things which define the whole experience in ways that mere words can never hope to. And what more defining experience could there be than a chocolate or candy bar, so luscious that we can almost taste it today? We […]
Continue ReadingTo those of us whose day it was, for so many years all human existence revolved around Thursday evenings and the thirty-minute broadcast on BBC1 which brought us news of all the latest movements from the UK singles’ charts. Whichever football team one supported, which school one went to – Top of the Pops was […]
Continue ReadingIt is pretty much unthinkable that anyone who remembers the 1970s would not recall the determined interventions of Mrs. Constance Mary Whitehouse, CBE, guardian of the nation’s conscience, which were frequent and resolute. An evangelical Christian and former sex education teacher, for the best part of three decades Mary Whitehouse and her much-feared letters of […]
Continue Reading1. Concorde enters service On January 21st 1976 a British Airways Concorde took off from London Heathrow airport with a full compliment of passengers destined for Bahrain, while at the exact same time Air France’s maiden Concorde flight left the runway at Paris’ Orly airport for Rio de Janeiro. After initially having been refused permission […]
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