In a time before the Prius, the custom conversion van ruled the roadways. Pushing the boundaries of the airbrush form, testing the limits of mobile interior design, featuring the latest in automatic pink leather bed, compact toaster, 8-track, and love machine technology, the 70s van was celebrated in song and cinema. You started with a factory model, new or used, and ended at a place limited onlyby your creativity, your budget, and your old lady's patience (NSFW). Ford could make you a man.If push came to shove, you could even live in your van. It was fantasy on wheels: van-tastic, man.
posted on Jul 18, 2008 - View this thread

Pocket Calculator Show. via: Beware of Blog
posted on Jul 7, 2008 - View this thread

Shaft was so cool that he had his own theme song. Shaft walked across the street whenever he wanted to. Shaft was a complicated man. But not all Blaxploitation heros were Private Dicks. They could be a Pimp, a Power-Hungry Criminal, a Coke Dealer, or a Male Prostitute. One was a Former Green Beret, one was a Bounty Hunter, and one was a Prize Fighter. Some were Foxy Ladies, such as Vigilante Nurses, US Special Agents, or Escaped Convicts. They might even be a Karate Master or a Vampire.
posted on May 24, 2008 - View this thread

The Doll Games emerged in Berkeley, California, at a time when race, gender, politics, and sexuality were fiercely and publicly debated... The Doll Games held up a funhouse mirror to their times, and what survives of them are historical documents of a wobbly, comical sort. But the Doll Games transcend their epoch. Intricate, obsessional, moral, violent and sexual, funny and tragic... Obedient to no rules except those its practitioners invented for themselves, completely collaborative, the Doll Games defined a truly interactive art form. In this theater of two, every audience member was a co-creator. [some text and pics NSFW]
posted on May 18, 2008 - View this thread

The Pointer Sisters rehearse.
posted on Apr 30, 2008 - View this thread

120 pages of old logos, scanned from a 1970s book called “World of Logotypes.”
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - View this thread

Gram Parsons fans take note - there's a recent new biography and a release of 90 minutes of vintage Flying Burrito Brothers. Some rare footage has also recently surfaced online: performing with FBB and duets with Emmylou Harris 1, 2, 3. Other items of note: Emmylou talks about Gram in 2000; British biographical sketch; Keith Richards on Gram in Rolling Stone; an interview with Manuel, the designer of the famous Nudie suit.
posted on Mar 7, 2008 - View this thread

Early Kraftwerk @ YouTube, from when they still had long hair—Ruckzuck live on WDR TV in 1970; Truckstop Gondolero (aka Rückstossgondoliere), a 1971 performance where the line-up is Florian with Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother, later of NEU!; Heavy Metal Kids (audio only), also from 1971; and a lovely version of Tanzmusik (1973).
posted on Feb 16, 2008 - View this thread

It's Telly Friday, baby.
posted on Dec 14, 2007 - View this thread

New York artist Ashley Hope's Ripeness is All exhibit at the Tilton Gallery recreates crime scene photographs of murdered women from the 1910s through the 1990s as oil paintings on huge 4' x 6' canvasses. [some nsfw art]
posted on Nov 30, 2007 - View this thread

"New York City 1968-1972" Some very compelling black and white street photography by Paul McDonough. via
posted on Oct 18, 2007 - View this thread

Playboy. Cowboy. Mandom. The late Charles Bronson and his perfect chest, in one of his finest early pre-Death-Wish roles. And look out for Percy Helton. Here's a shorter version with more horse. Via here.
posted on Sep 20, 2007 - View this thread

From hair styles and hotpants to bellbottoms and boots, this site has amassed a massive fashion photo collection of groovy celebrities and swingin' stars from the '60s and '70s.
posted on Sep 9, 2007 - View this thread

From the Golden Age of TV commercial jingles, variations on a lyric theme: Wonderbra ads from 1968 (#1), 1968 (#2), 1969, 1974, 1975, and 1979, all served up in the groovy pop aesthetic of those fabulous decades! It's a wonderful thing. [lyrics inside]
posted on Sep 4, 2007 - View this thread

Hold on to your talking magic flute, 70s kids... a new, animated H.R. Pufnstuf is on the island. Beatbox reworking of the original theme song included (Before/After). I'm dying to hear what they'll do with Mechanical Boy...
posted on May 7, 2007 - View this thread

Oh, Wicked Wanda. So very, very NSFW. But the artwork is nice. Full-color comics from Penthouse, circa 1970s. Background
posted on Mar 4, 2007 - View this thread

Jazz '71-'89 Dave Douglas posed the challenge: “Is there a writer who can take on the project of an unbiased overview of music since the end of the Vietnam War?” The Bad Plus answered (though not unbiased). The Guardian and NY Times weighed in. Suck it, haters. And ultimately, Behearer used a wiki to answer the call.
posted on Feb 15, 2007 - View this thread

Since April of this year, the blogger over at PlaidStallions has been dutifully scanning the most interesting/unique pages from 1970's department store catalogs (among other things) and posting the images online with commentary.
posted on Dec 1, 2006 - View this thread

1970s toy commercials. From an era when things were more fun, cool, and fresh. Whether you were a hipster or a genius type, there was some creative and smart toy to be had. Many toys were educational and prepared you for the vicissitudes of adulthood. (YouTube alert!)
posted on Sep 10, 2006 - View this thread

That's Punksploitation!! Can punk rock episodes of old TV shows kill? Check out punk episodes from Quincy, CHiPs (Part 1 and Part 2), 21 Jump Street (Part 1 and Part 2), as well as the appearance of the Dickies on the Don Rickles sitcom, CPO Sharkey. Other prime vintage examples of media cluelessness on punk rock include a fashion show and a scaremongering Time magazine article, although a recent cookie commercial may revive the punksploitation genre.
posted on Aug 30, 2006 - View this thread

Japanese leftists seize plane with samurai swords. AWOL Marine sets record by hijacking plane from Fresno to Rome. Female Palestinian hijacker becomes radical chic pin-up. D.B. Cooper parachutes from 727 with $200,000 in unmarked bills. Have airplane bombings made us nostalgic for old-school skyjackers who just wanted money or a trip to Cuba? Academic papers analyze skyjacking in the 60s & 70s according to contagion and rational choice models. Check out a prescient pre-9/11 documentary on the subject with great archival clips.
posted on Aug 18, 2006 - View this thread

Mah num ah num (Google Video) - The Muppets debut their first music video in 1976.
posted on Aug 17, 2006 - View this thread

The 1970s Russian main street was filled with small, grimy stores stocked with ethnic food and kept by unfriendly laconic storekeepers. However, since then this "closed world, one full of sour looks, suspicion, and hopelessly outdated fashion" has disappeared. [more inside]
posted on Apr 23, 2006 - View this thread

8 X 10 glossies of a bygone era. Stacks of professionally taken promotional photos of early 1970s performers (mostly from the cocktail lounge circuit, it appears) were found in an alley and rescued. You can almost hear the tinkly piano music in the background as you look at these hopeful showbiz faces. (via Sharpeworld)
posted on Mar 17, 2006 - View this thread

60s/70s psych, crossover, beat, and a go-go from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam with band/music scene histories, streaming audio, cover art, etc. Part of a large site devoted to 60s/70s progressive music around the world.
posted on Dec 8, 2005 - View this thread

Photoset: DC in the 1970s. Washingtonians, take a look. Some things haven't changed at all, other things are subtly different, still other things are no longer there.
posted on Dec 3, 2005 - View this thread

Punk Rock Scrapbook. J Neo Marvin carried an instamatic camera to a lot of gigs way back when, and he has posted them on his band's website. The Clash, X, The Ramones and more.
posted on Mar 8, 2005 - View this thread

My lost city: Low Life author Luc Sante reminisces about a youth spent in the ruins of 1970s New York:

"... when I was a student at Columbia, my windows gave out onto the plaza of the School of International Affairs, where on winter nights troops of feral dogs would arrive to bed down on the heating grates. Since then the city had lapsed even further ... if you walked east on Houston Street from the Bowery on a summer night, the jungle growth of vacant blocks gave a foretaste of the impending wilderness, when lianas would engird the skyscrapers and mushrooms would cover Times Square."

Sante talked about the period a bit more in a 2004 interview with The Believer.
posted on Feb 16, 2005 - View this thread

I LOVE YOU I WANNA LOVE YOU TENDER . You could be my only sweet surrender. I would never bring you any kind of sorrow. (38 Mb QT)
posted on Jan 13, 2005 - View this thread

Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific! Yes, back in the 70s it was all right to say this to unsuspecting strangers here in the US. We live in different times now, but the product is once again available, imported from the Phillipines by The Vermont Country Store, also selling all manner of odd products from yesteryear. (Midget joke not included)
posted on Aug 31, 2004 - View this thread

Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s (dis|cuss|discuss).
posted on Jul 1, 2004 - View this thread

Bill Owens has a fascinating series of photographs depicting suburban life in the 1960s and '70s.
posted on May 26, 2004 - View this thread

The Futuro House - designed in 1968 by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen, this funky place is an example of space age utopian architecture. Made largely of plastic, the oil crisis nipped the design in the bud. Should you decide to build along these lines, here's some ideas for '70s decor.
posted on Dec 22, 2003 - View this thread

Happiness is a Dream of Fisher-Price
posted on Oct 15, 2003 - View this thread

Sesame Seventies is an informational website about the three disco-related Muppets/Sesame Street records released in the 1970s. It makes for a good argument in favor of file-sharing, it reveals some of the stranger children's music of the past twenty or so years, and it's cute. (warning, some flash)
posted on Jun 24, 2003 - View this thread

Avocado Memories. It's more than a photo collection and group of essays about his parents' failures with interior decoration; it's a nostalgic website brought about by Wes Clark's impulse to let his children know what it was like growing up during a more innocent age.
posted on Jun 17, 2003 - View this thread