The thing you remember most about the year 1979 is...(humor me, it's for a project)

[BlueIris]

I'm doing a fiction piece set in '79. The year I was born. So, not a lot to draw from in my own memories. Hook me up, Loungers.

[rug]

1. Iran hostages.

[Courtesy Flush]

3. That's when I first learned that Muslims hated us for our freedom.

Honestly, I was naive, and didn't know about the tensions overseas before that. One semester I had a dormitory roommate from Baghdad. "Cool", I said. "Like the Arabian Nights and stuff." He was a nice guy who must have been frequently offended at my use of alcohol and pork products, but never said a word. I honestly had no idea what Muslims believed, like just about all my peers.

[rug]

8. Do you remember what sparked it?

The US gave asylum to the Shah (who in turn had been put in power by the CIA through a coup to secure an oil supply).

http://www.historyguy.com/iran-us_hostage_crisis.html

[Old Troop]

33. We had Iranian students at my college. Nearly every night one of them

received a call from their government telling them that a family member had been executed.

[sinkingfeeling]

80. Sorry, posted in wrong place.

[Taverner]

107. Holy shit!

tell me more

[vixengrl]

113. It's what I remember, too--

my first grade teacher would bring in the newspaper and kept us updated, which didn't seem as odd to me then, being a kid with not a lot of experience about what is and isn't first grade education, than it does now, as an adult, thinking back on how little six-or-seven year olds understand "bad people" and why they do what they do. (I'm tempted to think if a kid came home telling their folks "Oh, we discussed the hostage situation" these days, phones would ring.)

But actually, following a real current events issue, then, even if I was a kid, I think was very good. It gave me an early interest in international issues and made me want to ask "Why?" people did what they did a lot--as a result, I started reading the news early.

[thereismore]

2. The Clash released London Burning. nt

[taterguy]

12. Was that a collection of B-sides from London Calling?

[thereismore]

24. Hah! You got me. Silly me. nt

[MorningGlow]

4. Shitty fashions and feathered hair

[BlueIris]

5. Yikes! (And, yeah, the shitty fashion angle is well worked over in the story.)

Even the main characters hate their clothing.

[MorningGlow]

7. Caveat

I do not know any of those people in the first pic--I just nabbed it off the intertubes.

In all seriousness, the one thing I remember about the very late '70s and early '80s is the lack of any sort of style--in fashion, in music, in all sorts of culture. It was a fallow period between the world-altering '60s and the crazy '80s (for better or worse, that is--me, I loved the '80s, but I know a lot of people hated them--but what was important about that era was that the styles were very defined and dramatic, but in the late '70s, not so much). If that makes any sense--! :hi:

[Texasgal]

6. Thee mile island disaster.

[LiberalAndProud]

9. Shag carpeting was all the rage.

Avacado and Harvest Gold appliances - very chic.

Japanese autos with high MPG stickers (Honda, Toyota, Mitzubishi) ruled the road.

High inflation
High interest rates
Low unemployment rates

[Skittles]

65. and shagging on shag carpenting

yes INDEED :D

[taterguy]

10. Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street

From my window I'm staring while my coffee goes cold.

Is she really going out with him?

It was a time when the over-played songs on the radio were still great songs.

See also: Chuck E's in Love.

[Call Me Wesley]

13. W00T!

Don't forget we're talking to a youngster here ... ;) But we do look real smooth!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8PScDbLdeQ

[Crystal Clarity]

14. ...and Skyrockets in Flight

afternoon delight... same summer. I don't mind your earworm taterguy, but this one has GOT to go. :banghead:

[eShirl]

98. that was 1976

[suninvited]

11. I graduated high school in 1979

from a tiny town in north central Texas. I went to Hawaii and met my husband there shortly after graduation, so of course I remember all of that quite well.

But, what I remember most of all as far as current (current then) events was the Wichita Falls, Texas tornados in April of 1979. I remember driving up there a month or so after the tornados and seeing all the devastation. About fifty people were killed and some 20,000 lost their homes.

on edit: I also really remember Pink Floyd, The Wall being released near Christmas of 79.

[GoCubsGo]

45. Me, too.

Besides my graduation and heading off to college, I most remember the blizzard that January, with -48 degree wind chills and 75 inches of snow, all at once. I had frost on the inside of the inside windows in my bedroom, which also had a set of storm windows on the outside.

Also, American Airlines flight 191 crashed at O'Hare airport that spring. We drove under the smoke right after the crash. It was like nighttime. It was a DC-10. The engine fell off. That crash was the beginning of the end for that model of airplane.

[Iggo]

76. Me, too.

[Bucky]

15. Houston Texas. The first time I saw crazy ass hater Republicans in HS.

They had a YR booth set up for extra curricular day my first day in HS in 1979, with handouts describing how Jimmy Carter was a traitor for signing a treaty that would give control of the Panama Canal to the gov't of Panama.

Also pot was really easy to come by. One of my dealers was a Houston cop. That was the last year when it was fashionable for doods to have hair that totally covered their ears. Honestly, if you didn't have ears at all, no one would even suspect it until the following year. And then there was this band I first heard about named Devo...

[kentauros]

50. I remember when D-EVO came to town.

Did you go to the late, great Texas Opry House to see them, like we did? :D

That was my last year of HS, by the way...

[flvegan]

16. My mom and dad split

and my mom, brother and I moved to a new town.

Well, you asked.

[Sugarcoated]

17. That disco was torturing me

[LiberalAndProud]

19. Disco died that year - 7/12/1979. RIP.

http://promomagazine.com/news/disco_died/

[Sugarcoated]

20. Was it in 79?

I wasn't sure. Yay, to the kingdomites! I wish I could've gone to that rally.

[LiberalAndProud]

23. It was.

I was sitting in a bar on the last day of that year. It was a joyous moment when a "Disco is dead" chant broke out several minutes before we rang in the new year. The memory still brings a smile with it.

[Faygo Kid]

36. LOL I remember watching that doubleheader as a Tigers' fan.

TV announcer George Kell (RIP) had no clue about disco or anything else going on that night.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

54. Was a death certificate issued for that date? nt

[Old Troop]

35. Oh don't get me started about disco dancing......

[Sugarcoated]

79. Oh, please vent

[Call Me Wesley]

18. A new state born in Switzerland,

Ayatollah Khomeini and Margaret Thatcher start to rule countries. SALT II. Saddam Hussein president of Iraq. Cap Anamur starts to save the first Vietnamese boat people. Stephen Hawkings wiggles into Newton's chair. Three Mile Island ... wow, you got really lucky there.

Skylab's toast ...

[rug]

21. See here, she's trying for a broad audience, not a cafe niche.

[Call Me Wesley]

25. Cafe wasn't around in 1979.

And the broad was still looking like this:

[rug]

27. I got thrown out of two cafes in Manhattan in 1979.

Oh wait, you're in Switzerland. Yes, there were no cafes in 1979.

[Call Me Wesley]

29. LOL!

Actually, I had to travel to Vienna back then and visit the Café Sacher, and eat the tart. Then I was going to the Opera. But I didn't sing. :rofl:

[kentauros]

51. Other than graduating HS, seeing the movie "Alien"

at one of Houston's oldest theaters at the time: The Alabama Theatre :)

We were the first ones in a very long line, too :P

[AllenVanAllen]

68. That's where I saw it too!

I loved the Alabama Theatre. :(

[Sanity Claws]

22. Carter was President

Lots of dumb jokes about Carter's teeth and his brother who drank a lot of beer. His mother Lillian marched to her own drummer.

[carlyhippy]

26. Roller skating was still big in my town..

roller skating every Friday night to disco music, McArther Park, Ring My Bell, Bad Girls...The Village People and Donna Summer were on fire that year. That was a good year for music.

Let's see..what was in fashion back then...I was a freshman in HS...feathered hair, peasant shirts were still in, glittery, disco-ish clothing was still around, and you were cool if you sported a big comb in your back pocket. I had some hairpieces that were actually nothing more than alligator clips (or roach clips to some) with straps of leather and beads and feathers hanging from it. I wore concert tshirts (the baseball jersey kind) and really tight jeans to school, but every 3-4 days I would dress up and look pretty.

I remember the Walkman first came out, and no one I knew could afford one ha. CB radios were still popular, and they were around 150.00 for a decent one, which was pretty expensive. VCR's were outrageously priced, too back then. I do remember taking a secretarial type business machines class in HS. We learned how to use punch cards and key punch machines to enter data, we were also learning about disk storage of data, the concept was soo new and such a big deal back then, dictaphones, electric typewriters ha.

Gas was around 90 cents a gallon, and everyone was aghast at the price of gas.

Just my observation, smokers were everywhere, smoking was allowed in alot of public places you will not see smoking now.

[BlueIris]

28. Re: smoking. That's what always strikes me about entertainment,

including books, written in or about the '60s, '70s and '80s. Smokers everywhere. There's a scene in Oliver Stone's "JFK" where a courtroom is coming back into session and a judge is smoking on the way to the bench! Thanks for reminding me it was still going on in '79 as well.

[myrna minx]

32. It was still going on in the late 80's too.

I was in HS in the late 80's and you could smoke anywhere in the common areas of the shopping mall and even in the hospital! I smoked as a teen as was allowed to smoke in my hospital room in 1987. I was a teen allowed to smoke in my hospital room in 1987. :wow: What a different world, huh?

[HopeHoops]

30. Fuck - I was in high school. So, 1979 - well, probably just getting laid.

Of course, that's definitely going to percolate to the top of the "what you remember" pile regardless of the year.

[myrna minx]

31. Iran hostage crisis interrupted my Saturday morning cartoons.

I wore satin shorts, striped tube socks and loved roller skating. I was going to marry Mork from Ork on the Love Boat or Fantasy island - unless it was a Fantasy island episode when Roddy McDowell was the devil.

[madinmaryland]

34. Toto, the band.

[blue neen]

37. The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII.

They then went on to repeat as Super Bowl Champions in 1980. Those were the days of the Steel Curtain. Watching those games was a lot of fun! :)

[mtnester]

38. Walkman's were new; The Who concert (hubs was at that one)

Pink Floyd "The Wall"

Post Its

Kent State settlement to the families of those killed in the National Guard killings

John Wayne died

Pirates won the series

Blondie (thank GOD)

The Knack - My Sharona (may have been the single that actually killed disco)

Cheap Trick, live at Budokan

I was such a music junkie

[trackfan]

90. Interesting take on My Sharona.

I felt that it was such a relief to have a song hit the top of the charts that was neither disco, nor "soft rock", nor slow; instead, it was somewhat representative of a high energy music that had been percolating below the surface of general popularity for several years.

[Chan790]

39. Nothing.

I'm the same age as you, probably slightly younger as I missed being born in the 1980s by a whole 2 1/2 weeks.

Good luck though.

[MilesColtrane]

40. See the movie "Dazed and Confused".

It is set in '76 but it captures the flavor of the 70's in general.

It is certainly the most accurate depiction of what I was doing then. (serving my time in High School)

[carlyhippy]

43. agreed n/t

Love that movie.

[BlueIris]

74. Oh, I've seen Dazed and Confused bunches of times.

I'm a huge Adam Goldberg/Anthony Rapp fan.

[Iggo]

77. Plus a hundred.

That movie got it as close to right as you can get it.

[WolverineDG]

41. tear gas dumped into my school's ventilation system as a senior prank

on the last day of school for seniors. Right at lunch time too....entire school evacuated, we stood outside in the sun for hours, then most of us left....officially we were playing "hooky" because that school day was in session until 10:30 the next morning. (Yes, they made us go to our 4th-6th period classes so they could finish off the school day & avoid the wrath of the state Education Board that turned down the district's emergency waiver).

dg

[PJPhreak]

42. These,They were everywhere...

[Generic Brad]

44. Favorite shows were "Soap" and "Taxi"

[elana i am]

46. i can't seem to find a decent image that will load

but jordache jeans hit big that year. and i think calvin klein tried competing with them by hiring brooke shields for their ads. and then sassoon jeans jumped in the fray. it was the year of the blue jeans rumble.

i remember sassoon clothing being a big deal. i had a sassoon sweatshirt that i wore nearly every single day because i loved the giant sassoon logo printed diagonally across the front of it.

looking back at it i was 5 at the time and it was a fracking ugly logo.

[1gobluedem]

47. Designer jeans

I was a freshman in college and saved all semester to buy a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. They were $40, a fortune in those days.

[Iggo]

78. Come on and Live in Brittania.

Those fit good. Decent size bell and I could get that whole Robert Plant thing goin', know'm say'n?

[Curmudgeoness]

48. Gasoline shortage, with rationing.

You could only get gas every other day, depending on whether your license plate ended in an even number or an odd number. If you could afford it. Long lines at gas stations, many had no gas.

I was living in Houston, and word was that there was no shortage, that it was all manufactured. I heard that every storage tank in the country was full and there were tanker ships waiting to unload with no place for it to go. I was not working in the industry, so I don't know the fact or fiction of it.

[redwitch]

49. My first trip to Europe.

Went to the Netherlands on the last DC10 to leave the US before they were all grounded due to possible mechanical problems. This was after a DC10 crash in Chicago??? I think. I went with a Dutch college classmate. Stayed with her family. I remember watching the news in Dutch, with friend's mom who spoke no English. There was a news item about Idi Amin. I spoke one of the 3 or so words I knew in Dutch which meant "delicious" and we both cracked up. :-)

[The Midway Rebel]

52. The Gong Show

And shows called, Make Me Laugh Dukes of Hazard and Saturday Night Live, a magazine called Hustler, a band called Cheap Trick, tube socks to the knee, terry-cloth shorts, Britannia brand jeans, some pot we called Acapulco Gold, Panama Red and Sensimillia.

It was before the Drug War, before HIV/AIDs, there was no draft, there were jobs a plenty, easy and cheap student loans to go to college and there were strong Unions. As a 17 year old, there was much to look forward to. By the time I got to age 21, all that was going away or already gone.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

53. I remember I was born in '79, just like you. nt

[jobycom]

55. My first good kiss, and arguing about which rock bands would dominate the 80s.

I was fourteen. The kissing was on my grandmother's sleeper sofa with the "girl next door," whom my parents mistakenly thought wanted to spend the night with my sister instead of me. If I'd ever seen a cable show at that age, it would have been more than our first kiss. :) Somehow we figured out the art of Frenching all on our own, but stopped just short of figuring out the clasps on each other's clothing. Sigh. I still judge every kiss by that one. :)

The rock bands--we used to sit around a table in biology arguing about music. I remember predicting that the Talking Heads and Blondie would be big in the 80s, and being laughed at. Ha! On the other hand, one of my friends said Michael Jackson, and the rest of us disagreed. We all loved "Off the Wall," but thought it was the last gasp of an aging child star who would never again achieve success. You win some, you lose some. There were a lot of other bands--we talked more about rock than disco or soul (which is the closest us white Mississippians could come to identifying MJ's style :) )--Van Halen, Queen (I was a huge Queen fan), Pink Floyd, Yes... A lot of bands I've forgotten, those are just the ones that pop into my head now.

Oh yeah, and in that biology class, we got to learn about Evolution without a single disclaimer being issued. There were people upset about it, but so far, in Harrison County in Mississippi, even though it was a hot topic of discussion, science still won. :)

[Awsi Dooger]

56. Spectacular Bid blowing the Triple Crown with stunning loss to Coastal in the Belmont Stakes

Bid was an overwhelming favorite. The Triple Crown was becoming ho hum easy, based on 3 winners in the previous 6 years including the two most recent years. Articles were already being written on how Bid compared to Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed.

Young unproven jockey Ronnie Franklin chased a hopeless 100-1 longshot and tired down the long Belmont stretch. Bid took the lead before Coastal, a classic lurker who had passed on the Derby and Preakness, and a wise guy special, roared past Bid to win the race with Golden Act also closing late to push Bid back to third.

Quickly attention turned to Bid's foot and a debate whether he stepped on a safety pin that morning, compromising his chances. Trainer Bud Delp claimed he pulled a safety pin from the hoof after being alerted by a groom.

I always believed the story. Bid ran an inexplicably poor race. Of all the near Triple Crown misses in the past 30+ years, only Spectacular Bid was a truly great horse. He's remembered now but that will slowly fade. No one has managed the Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978.

[Aristus]

57. Big Mac overalls, painter's pants, and white jeans.

B-)

[RandomThoughts]

58. I remember books I read, and even books read in class.

Back when I was in school the teacher would read books to his students to get them interested in reading.


I remember Mouse and The Motorcycle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt2PnrXyvYs Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-guTTzeNcRg Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYeEeZkrLuA Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE6tBvr2p5Q Part 4


Just found the film on youtube, I wonder if it is a good adaptation of that book.

Funny thing, I was reading Asimov, Hg Wells, Orwell, and many other books my father gave me back then, but I still remember that story also, and the teacher reading the book in class.

[Petrushka]

59. Selected from "The Timetables of History - Third Revised Edition"

Daily Life

Pittsburgh Steelers defeat Dallas Cowboys, 35-71, to win football's Super Bowl.

Patty Hearst, Amer. heiress, is released from prison.

Pittsburgh Pirates defeat Baltimore Orioles, 4 games to 3, to win World Series.

273 persons die in America's worst aviation disaster when an engine falls off a DC-10 on take-off at Chicago Airport; 257 die when another DC-10 crashes into a mountain in Antarctica.

Barbara Hutton, Amer. Woolworth heiressd known as the "poor little rich girl," died. (b.1912)

A. Phillip Randolph, Amer. black civil rights leader, died. (b. 1889)

Karen Silkwood is posthumously awarded $10,500,000 damages for negligent exposure to atomic contamination in 1974.

Ku Klux Klan stages 50-mile "white rights" march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Hurricanes Frederick and David hit Mobile, Alabama and southern Florida; estimated $45 million damage.


Visual Arts

Academy Awards (for 1978)---best picture: The Deer Hunter; best actor: John Voight (Coming Home); best actress: Jane Fonda (Coming Home).

Films: "Manhattan" (Woody Allen); "Apocalypse Now" (Francis Coppola); "Kramer vs. Kramer" (Robert Benton); "Being There" (Hal Ashby).


Science, Technology, Growth

Discovery of ring around Jupiter by Voyager I Spacecraft.

Nuclear disaster is narrowly averted at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania; reactor building is badly contaminated.

Two Soviet cosmonauts in orbitn Salyut 6 space station return to earth after record-breaking 175 days in space.


Religion, Philosophy, Learning

Pope John Paul II becomes first Pope to visit a Communist country when he visits his native Poland; subsequently he tours the U.S. and with U.S. President Jimmy Carter calls for universal peace.

Gunman seize the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia; Saudi troops recapture it after bloody battle.

Nobel Peace Prize: Mother Teresa.


Literature, Theater

William Styron: "Sophie's Choice, novel.

Kurt Vonnegut: "Jailbird," novel.

Norman Mailer: "The Executioner's Song," biography.

Henry Miller: "Letter to Anais Nin," autobiography,

John Cheever: "The Stories of John Cheever," Pulitzer Prize fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award.

Robert Penn Warren: "Now and Then: Poems, 1976-1978," Pulitzer Prize poietry.

SamShepard: "Buried Child," Pulitzer Prize drama.

Bernard Pomerance: "The Elephant Man," play, New York Drama Critics and Tony awards.

Peter Shaffer: "Amadeau", play.

Stephen Sondheim: "Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street," musical.

Neil Simon, Marvin Hamlisch, and Carole Bayer Sager: "They're Playing Our Song," musical.

Nobel Prize for Literature: Odysseus Elytis (Greece).


History, Politics

Shah of Iran is forced into exile and is replaced as Iranian leader by Ayatollah Khomeini, who heads Islamic fundamentalist government; nearly 100 U.S. Embassy staff and Marines are taken hostage.

Vietnamese army invades Cambodia and installs new government under Heng Samrin; Chinese forces attack Vietnam; mass graves of up to 3 million victims of Khmer Rouge discovered.

Idi Amin, President of Uganda,is overthrown by Tanzanian-backed rebels; new Presdient is Yusuf Lule.

U. S. President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Premier Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadad agree on Camp David peace treaty; Egypt is expelled from Arab League.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Palistan, is hanged after international pleas for mercy are ignored by General Zia; mobs attack the U. S. Embassy and other U. S. posts in Islamabad.

U. S. President Jimmy Carter and U.S.S.R. President Leonid Brezhnev sign SALT-2 arms limitation treaty in Vienna; Carter calls it a "victory in the battle for peace" but faces Congressional opposition.

Direct elections to the European Parliament held for the first time.

Margaret Thatcher becomes Conservative Prime Minister of Britain following "Winter of Discontent," and rejection of Labour Party's devolution plans for Scotland and Wales.

Ignatius Acheampong, former President of Ghana, is executed.

Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, ends his term when Joe Clark of the Progressive Conservative Party is elected new Prime Minister.

General Alexander Haig, Chief of Allied Forces in Europe, survives terrorist assasination attempt.

Earl Mountbatten of Burma, cousin of Queen Elizabeth II of England, is murdered in continuing I.R.A. bombing campaign; another bomb kills prominent Conservative politician Airey Neave; large arms shipment sent by U.S. sympathizers of the I.R.A. is seized by security forces in Ireland.

President Park Chung Hee of South Korea is shot dead, allegedly by accident, by his Chief of Intelligence.

U.S. Embassy in Tripoli is attacked by mob.

Charles Haughey is elected Prime Minister of Ireland, replacing Jack Lynch.

Adolph Dubs, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, is kidnapped by Muslim terroirists and killed in gun battle; Soviet army invades Afghanistan on Christmas Eve; new President is Babrak Karmal.


Also: Check out the following link for more ideas ---> http://archer2000.tripod.com/1979.html

[Common Sense Party]

60. Pink Floyd, "The Wall." AC/DC, "Highway to Hell."

Supertramp, "Breakfast in America." Cheap Trick, "Live at Budokan."

Alien. Life of Brian. The first Star Trek movie. Apocalypse Now. Mad Max. Kramer vs. Kramer.

[Brother Buzz]

61. I was issued a pager - pretty heady technology in its day

The first pagers I saw appeared around 1974 and seemed to be used almost exclusively by doctors on call. Five years later, EVERYONE had one, and a pocket full of quarters to feed the pay phones.

[murielm99]

62. I had my first child that year, so I was not paying

as much attention to popular culture as I would have been otherwise. I did pay attention to politics, though. The Iranian hostage crisis and Three Mile Island scared the bejesus out of me.

[Capn Sunshine]

63. Rampant disco - but AC/DC debuted

This little ditty, and rock was saved
My investment group opened a disco, and it was REALLY popular.
BMWs were very cool. Porsches always were. But I had one of these:

I had a bunch of three piece suits like the catalog above. And feathered hair.
Computers, the kind you used for business applications like the stock market, were still pretty large and had their own rooms with non static floors.

[Skittles]

64. my military enlistment was over

:D

[Yeshuah Ben Joseph]

66. Get The Knack

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LjsOoO0VdM

[Jamastiene]

67. Blondie music

That was the year I officially went nuts over Blondie music and wanted to get every album...this was back when vinyl was the main way to listen to music, still.

[Tripper11]

69. Our first Betamax VCR!

We were about to move to South Korea for 3 years and the company my Dad worked for advised us to buy a vcr because there wasn't much in the way of tv, and they would be recording Canadian television and shipping tapes over.
I remember the machine, very similar to the one below having a corded remote(which was amazing!) and the very first movie we saw on it was Alien. Scared the living shit out of my brother and I!
What was even more fun though, was hitting rewind or fast forward, we would laugh for fucking hours. The alien would pop out, pop back in...out, in, out in.....

[HEyHEY]

70. Hey! When's your birthday?

I was born in 79 too

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

85. 79ers are cool! nt

[HughBeaumont]

71. Porn came in magazines, photos were stored in "albums" and "albums" were the music.

Journalists delivered news, not opinion.

Only a few million people had this new thing available to them called "Cable". Most just had HBO, WTBS. CSPAN, Nickelodeon, The Movie Channel and ESPN would follow later in the year.

There was no "downloading". You taped music off the radio via cassettes that were attached.

Hip-hop was a mere cultural niche on the coasts. Here and there, it flowed to the midwest, with Sugar Hill Gang having a then-minor top 40 hit "Rapper's Delight". Not ubiquitous like it is today.

We had a president in the White House who wasn't in the business of telling you what you wanted to hear. Naturally, he only lasted one term.

Pinball was still in vogue, with these newfangled niche things called "Video Games" making a play for it's dominance. Space Invaders, Asteroids & Galaxian made their way alongside their pinball counterparts, but the next year would see a Japanese import named here as Pac-Man usher in a new day.

[tk2kewl]

72. .

[velvet]

73. My Grand Tour of Europe

With feathered head and leopard-skin sleeping-bag.



Bombs lurked in briefcases. In airports and train stations there were notices everywhere about reporting suspicious luggage.

In Amsterdam you could smoke a joint by the lake on a sunny afternoon in the Vondelpark without fear of retribution. Like redwitch upthread, they taught me to say "lecker". Wonderful word. They also told me smack was turning that lovely town mean.

In Prague the grocery shops were almost empty, except for long queues of people waiting to buy what little produce was for sale.

Punk was in its late glory on London streets.

Talking Heads played at the Edinburgh Festival, Van Morrison played the same gig along with The Chieftains. Here's some of the audience:

[joeybee12]

75. Bad Girls...released in June of 1979...n/t

[sinkingfeeling]

81. Moved to Raleigh, NC from Miami, FL. The Iran hostage situation. And going out to dance

every Tuesday evening.

[BlueIris]

82. Special note to teachers--if you were teaching in a public school system

at that time, (late seventies, okay, even if it wasn't '79 specifically) please post about the environment. What was the climate like, how were classroom teachers treated, (versus administrators, for instance) how did students behave? Any thoughts welcome.

[CBHagman]

114. I was a student teacher.

It was a surburban school in the Southeast. The kids were basically nice if a bit cheeky at times.

Football was a big deal. Students were allowed to smoke at school -- with permission from their parents, of course.

[LSdemocrat]

83. Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister

Note: I wasn't alive in 1979, but that's what first popped into my head.

[denbot]

84. Being in the Navy and getting the news the Iranian Embassy was taken.

Thinking shit, I'm going to war. Sure enough the Guided Missile Destroyer I was stationed on did a quick refit and off to the Persian Gulf we went. Just about every one on board thought that the balloon would go up while we were within spitting range of the Iranian coast, cruising the Straights of Hormuz. Good times..

[Tsiyu]

86. I had twins

so I was distracted, but I remember Disco clubs where you played endless games of backgammon (board game) and Spades (card game) were still big in Atlanta. Concerts with J Geils and everyone else who came to the Fox that year.

Kinney's shoes and Arthur Treacher's and Molsen beer.

Margaret Thatcher elected PM

Asteroids

Lots of Iranian kids at college...

Sandinistas in Nicaragua

ABBA

Saturday Night Live, National Lampoon Magazine, Life Of Brian, lots of sick humor

Walkman came out?

Good luck with your writing

[applegrove]

87. I used to hang out at the department store and buy lollipops and lipsmakers.

[ElboRuum]

88. December 31, 11:59:59.999999 PM

The beginning of the end of reasonable political discourse in this country.

[ArnoldLayne]

89. I remember buying Pink Floyd The Wall the day it was released

couldn't wait to get home to play it. Wow what an album I played it over and over.

[The Flaming Red Head]

91. Quaalude's

oops you said things I remember

edited to add ludes may have been off the market by then, but they were making bath tub ludes. I was dating a guy named kirk and we called him the captain because he specialized in some very special stuff. I lived just off the LSU campus and hung out at the late and great club called The Bayou, so much better than the Chimes and I was like 14 years old and on my own, fake ID, Liquor License and i even bartended.

[The Flaming Red Head]

93. Wait , maybe a lid was 10 dollars

that was all the pot they could pack into a small paper bag.

[Throd]

92. They started to phase out pull tabs on beer cans

[Kali]

94. first year of college

hell if I remember much of it - must have been fun!:P :toast: :smoke: :beer: :hangover: :woohoo: :party: :bounce:

[RadicalTexan]

95. I as born, but I don't remember it

HA

[TheManInTheMac]

96. Something personal from around that time...

This guy who was a member of our church was having a yard sale. The reason for this: He was six months away from retiring from his job after thirty years. His company laid him off, pulling his pension out from under him, so he needed to raise money. In those days, you weren't automatically vested after 5 years, and that practice was not uncommon.

It was not a particularly happy time.

[eShirl]

97. STAR TREK FIRST CAME TO THE BIG SCREEN

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079945/

[LynneSin]

99. I wrote a paper for my music class claiming that the Knack was the next great superband

Boy was I wrong!

[frogmarch]

100. I remember no internets

Whenever I needed information on something, and the public library didn't have it, I had to request it from the state library. What a nuisance that was. It took a week to get the book or book containing the info, and then I had to return the book or books within a week.

I love the internets.

[bikebloke]

101. Norway

I went to Norway to work on a farm tacked onto the side of a fjord.

[mnhtnbb]

102. Getting divorced. Kind of overwhelmed everything else.

Moved out of the house we'd bought to an apartment. Had to find
a new job to support myself with a regular income (I'd been selling real estate--and
not long enough to have built up a client base and name).

Never looked back--after 7 years of marriage--especially when I told him I wanted
a divorce and his reaction was, "Well, maybe that's for the best."

A$$hole. I discovered (while going through his financial records as advised by
my attorney BEFORE I told him I wanted a divorce),that he'd been squirreling
away money in his own name--while I'd been using my money to pay our bills.
We had a postnup that allowed him to do that and if an account was in his own
name it didn't have to be shared. Boy, I was young and naive. The day he brought
home that postnup was the day I should have filed for divorce and saved myself
almost 7 years of wasting my time with him.

[The empressof all]

103. I ate a lot of Indian food and perogies in 1979

I dated a guy who lived close to the Hell's Angels, I went to CBGBs at least weekly, I practically worshiped Talking Heads and the Dead Kennedy's, I had purple hair and I met my husband.

[tigereye]

104. seeing a milion punk and post-punk bands...

You could still smoke cigarettes everywhere, buying lots of vinyl records at my favorite record store, going to NYC to hang out with my sister and visiting CBGBS and St. Mark's Place. Being able to drink legally! :D


and yes, some of the hair was awful, but it was a very exciting time to love music. Great albums- London Calling, Talking Heads Fear of Music, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Elvis Costello's Armed Forces, The B-52s, Marianne Faithful's Broken English, The Raincoats, the Slit's Cut - so many great records and bands!

[The empressof all]

105. The Ramones at the Palledium on 14th street

And Elvis Costello....love him still.... We spent a lot of time at a bar on St Marks I think it was called the Dugout...I don't remember the details..... I remember eating at the Cloisters (not the museum...the restaurant in the East Village) and that funky little health food joint on 6th before you got to the Indian Restaurants. I preferred Leshko's to the Kiev but either was good for a cheap meal

[tigereye]

108. I didn't see the Ramones in New York until much later- at Danceteria

I never lived there (alas) but I used to visit a college friend quite a bit in the 80s.



:hi: Empress! My sister took me to a cool cafe called Adam and Eve? when she went to NYU - and agood Mexican restaurant whose name I have forgotten.

[The empressof all]

109. I bet that Mexican joint was Panchito's

My first experience with Mexican food. It wasn't really popular in NY back then at all..Amazing it's still there. There were no Teriyaki joints then either. Falafel was just starting to get popular

I don't remember Adam & Eve's. We use to go to a piano bar around Christopher called Arthurs to listen to Jazz. Most of the time we stayed east of 5th and West of B. We were young and that was our territory.

[tigereye]

111. yeah, my sister worked there, I knew it was something that started with a p...

We used to swill sangria there. I also remember going to one of those under- stairs bars in the Village that reeked of the Baat era - don't remember what that was. And getting a bagel with a shmear (not common anywhere else.) And people walking around near Wash Square with beers in little brown bags- that was so cool.


My band once got to play at The Knitting Factory years later - that was pretty cool, too.

[The empressof all]

115. I had my first Margarita there.

In retrospect the food was pretty awful actually. At the time it was exotic and something different. Imagine that....Enchilada's as cutting edge. We didn't have taco bells on the east coast back then and ordering Moo Goo Gai Pan at a Chinese Restaurant was pretty "gourmet" :rofl:

I remember the tourist traps in Time Square that served all the Sangria or beer you can drink with your meals. When we had money we spent the 10 or 12 bucks and ate cheap Italian food and drank lots of cheap wine.

[tigereye]

122. isn't that funny - people are so sophisticated now- it's hard to imagine that

food in NYC was that "simple" at one time! :rofl:

[Taverner]

106. How much everyone hated Disco

I was a nine year old kid and even I knew there was anger at disco

[The empressof all]

116. By 79 Disco was pretty much dead....

There were still a few clubs but they were mostly just fronts for people to indulge their cocaine habits. No body went there for the music...

[Taverner]

121. Hence the hate

It was the butt of everyone's jokes

[wishlist]

110. Mortgage interest was about 12% and prices were skyrocketing

Stagflation- despite a slow economy and poor job opportunities, property and everything else was getting expensive

[valerief]

112. Everyone LOVED disco - except the teabagger types in the Midwest. nt

[kwassa]

117. The first year I ever went to Trader Joes.

The same year I moved to California. These two things go together. Now TJs has spread across the country.

There was still a punk scene in LA.

The first rap music hit. "Rappers Delight" by the Sugerhill Gang.

[pitohui]

118. no sex threads

what are you serious? for the leather individual let's just say we hit lucky and were born in the best possible ever year of all time



leather leather leather even if you weren't into it fucking posueurs pretended they were it was our day in the sun

[RandomThoughts]

119. Dude, you are so right.

The song just posted is also the story of mouse and the motorcycle.

Eric Clapton- Wonderful Tonight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwprrAEL9-E


Now just have to figure out what it is about. What is it trying to say...

The love part is obvious, always been there. There is more there.


:loveya: That must be it.


Rachel, Sorry, I was in a bad mood, not your fault. You are beautiful.

[BlueCollar]

120. Soviet Union "invaded" Afghanistan

I was in the Navy at the time.....

I believe it was Christmas Eve.

[eleny]

123. We bought our house

And we're still here. :D

[doc03]

124. That was the year they temporarily shut down the cold rolling mill

at the steel mill I worked in due to steel imports, it never ran again.

[zanana1]

125. I got married. nt

[cheneyschernobyl]

126. The last time my local NBA team...

the Washington Bullets...made it to the NBA Finals.

[Tikki]

127. None of the friends we knew from the early 70's....

Good Luck with your story...sounds grand..

...could understand our total move into the direction of Punk
and the LA music scene.

Every time they might come over to visit we felt we had to put AOR music on the
stereo.
Playing music in the background was everything about socializing in '79.

We would start out the evening with like a Jethro Tull album spinning and so on
then maybe 4 albums into the gathering we would slip on
'maybe' a Talking Heads album. And lo and behold someone from our guests near the turn table
would get up and change the record to one like the Eagles.

The earliest song on the cusp that any of them would listen to was from the Police..That stupid song
"Roxanne". Not too much later Tom Petty became more than acceptable and then some others.

Not one in that particular group of friends ever went to a Black Flag show or even the RAMONES.
We were all in our mid to late twenties..

I would say that 1979 was a true time of music transition for many, but not all.



Tikki

[BlueIris]

130. Heh. Thanks so much for this.

I can't believe your friends "left" you because of Talking Heads!

[woo me with science]

128. Iran hostages and revolution. Release of the movie, "Hair." nt

[ThatsMyBarack]

129. Village People!

That and "The Pina Colada" song. ;)