Things I Remember: The 1970s (Cont'd)
1. In the 1970s, the Miami TV station now known as CBS4 (call letters WFOR) used to be Channel Six (call letters WCIX) and was the big independent station in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale market. It was on Channel Six that I watched such vintage shows as I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Hogan’s Heroes, Family Affair and – in the late 1970s once I got into it – Star Trek: The Original Series. (Channel Six, in its last year as an independent station, also aired the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.)
It was also on Channel Six where I first watched many of the older movies I’ve reviewed online at Amazon, Epinions and Viewpoints. Before cable and videocassette recorders took off in the 1980s and changed the way Americans watched movies at home, the only way most of us were able to see older theatrical releases on the “boob tube” was by watching edited-for-TV editions of films which were no less than two or three years old on the three major networks’ “night at the movies” shows; older – and thus cheaper for “indies” to acquire – flicks along the lines of 1933’s King Kong, 1953’s Titanic, John Wayne war movies from the 1940s and ‘50s and dubbed-to-English Japanese sci-fi creature features along the lines of Godzilla, Gamera and Rodan.
2. The Bicentennial year: 1976 was not only the year in which I turned 13, but it was also the United States’ 200th birthday. There were many celebrations and ceremonies leading up to the Big Day on July 4, including a flag raising that I, as a Boy Scout of Troop 396, was involved with. There also were the cool Bicentennial quarters, lots of red-white-and-blue commemorative items – including custom-made license plates you could buy at the Division of Motor Vehicles – and a Burger King ad jingle that began with the line “Two hundred million people/no two are quite the same….”
3.
Disco. I never did like disco, but from around 1975 till 1980 it was as pervasive a musical genre as hip hop now seems to be. Disco groups and singers not only performed original music intended more for the dance floor than for casual listeners, but they also “adapted” classical music and movie themes by taking the basic melodies and adding the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa beat associated with disco. (My high school chorus teacher, Ms. Owen, didn’t think too highly of disco; she used to call the pulsating bass rhythm the “rabbit foot” and said it was monotonous to listen to.)
It was also on Channel Six where I first watched many of the older movies I’ve reviewed online at Amazon, Epinions and Viewpoints. Before cable and videocassette recorders took off in the 1980s and changed the way Americans watched movies at home, the only way most of us were able to see older theatrical releases on the “boob tube” was by watching edited-for-TV editions of films which were no less than two or three years old on the three major networks’ “night at the movies” shows; older – and thus cheaper for “indies” to acquire – flicks along the lines of 1933’s King Kong, 1953’s Titanic, John Wayne war movies from the 1940s and ‘50s and dubbed-to-English Japanese sci-fi creature features along the lines of Godzilla, Gamera and Rodan.
2. The Bicentennial year: 1976 was not only the year in which I turned 13, but it was also the United States’ 200th birthday. There were many celebrations and ceremonies leading up to the Big Day on July 4, including a flag raising that I, as a Boy Scout of Troop 396, was involved with. There also were the cool Bicentennial quarters, lots of red-white-and-blue commemorative items – including custom-made license plates you could buy at the Division of Motor Vehicles – and a Burger King ad jingle that began with the line “Two hundred million people/no two are quite the same….”
3.
Disco. I never did like disco, but from around 1975 till 1980 it was as pervasive a musical genre as hip hop now seems to be. Disco groups and singers not only performed original music intended more for the dance floor than for casual listeners, but they also “adapted” classical music and movie themes by taking the basic melodies and adding the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa beat associated with disco. (My high school chorus teacher, Ms. Owen, didn’t think too highly of disco; she used to call the pulsating bass rhythm the “rabbit foot” and said it was monotonous to listen to.)
© 2012 Alex Diaz-Granados. All Rights Reserved
enjoyed this way back machine post... remember those times well too.
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