The Art of the 1970’s ….

It’s one of those decades that doesn’t always get a good press.

Floral tea tray, circa 1974

For some it is the time of loons, lava lamps, messy wars in the Far East, and “The Winter of Discontent”.

And maybe that explains the lack of an all defining title.

So, there are “The Swinging Sixties”, "The Roaring Twenties" and “The Gay Nineties” [1890s] to which the Great Depression and the build up to war has framed how we see the 1930s.

But the journalists and pundits with all their superficial and instant descriptive labels don’t seem to have bothered with the 1970s.

Now I am a child of the 60s but it was the following decade that marked out my passage from student to a young married man, with a job and mortgage, and a hot potch of a stereo, with a Pioneer deck, Wharfdale speakers and that iconic Sony receiver with its large single dial set in a wooden tower.

And I retain a fondness for that ten years and like others of my generation I have a soft spot for the ephemera, like this tray.

It was sold by Marks & Spencer’s and we bought ours sometime in 1974.  It travelled with me for the next thirty years from East Manchester out to Ashton-Under-Lyne and to Chorlton, before it finally gave up the ghost.

But it’s bright floral design and heavy yellow and brown colours bring it all back.

I can’t remember how much we paid for it was a lot less than the one I came across in pop boutique on Oldham Street.

Tasteless Chicken soup advert, 1979

At which point I could wax lyrical about the loons I bought from On The Eight Day, the larva lamps in the Pit and Nelson or that Sony receiver which was the only item we lost from a burglary in the 1990s.

But instead I chose that tasteful advert for Chicken Soup seen in Chorlton and a promotional song for Leicester called “It’s a Leicester Fiesta" which has it all.

Location; the 1970s

Picture; the tea tray circa 1974, courtesy of Sue Hampson, and Chicken soup advert, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*It's a Leicester Festival, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNUZIWce3cE

My city .... my song ........ or Song for Belper ....... on the wireless today*

Now being from London I grew up with a shedload of songs about my city, and because dad was from Newcastle Upon Tyne there were plenty to stand in contrast.

But Belper, and Leicester passed me by, so I was intrigued by a gentle progrmame on the wireless about those towns who went out and commissioned their own song.*

Of these my favourite has to be "It's a Leciester Fiesta" which is on You tube, and which I have played at least five times, sharing it along the way with our Josh and Polly who live there.

All of which leave me to share the programme notes and a link yo Song for Belper.

"Britain has a revered canon of Great Music inspired by particular places and composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Arnold Bax and others. Music performed live across the centuries and evoking parts of the British Isles in the imagination of millions around the world through recordings.

Then there’s the pop records released in the 1970s and 80s that were commissioned by town councils around Britain to promote the joys of the place and its people.

These are the small songs about places that were not created by great artists in the bliss of inspiration - but by the offer of hard cash, as an answer to critics, or as social engineering by a local council.

Bafta-winning writer and musician Jason Hazeley (Ladybird Books, Portishead) and producer Peter Curran enlist the help of legendary DJ Tony Blackburn, Emmy-winning James Bond and Sherlock composer David Arnold and contemporary architecture and social historian, John Grindrod. They are joined by town planner John Frankland and songwriters Tracey Wilkinson from the Rough Truffles Community Choir and The Rt Hon Sir Gregory Knight MP, composer of It’s a Leicester Fiesta.

A Foghorn Company production for BBC Radio 4"

Pictures; The Market Place, entry to the Market Place,  from a set of six, published in 1902, issued by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of TuckDB  http://tuckdb.org/history

*Song for Belper, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gk63

**It's a Leicester Festival, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNUZIWce3cE