Sad fads…

[DownRound]

And yet so fun to play and everybody loves to hear it!

And...I was thinking as I wrote that, "but it made some guys a pretty good living."

I remember reading once something about someone from one of the bands from the era - I can't remember which one, maybe Kool & the gang - his wife explaining to his son about the band he was in, "your dad might not be much in your eyes now, but in his heyday"....

(But...technically I would call Kool & The Gang funk.)

 

[Passinwind]

Add to the list....New Age Religions.
The top two here are from my neck of the woods.
I used to run into lots of Rajneeshees back in the day.
They were all pretty nice, gotta say.
Just saw Oprah and Russell Brand listed on a website as two of the top 12 Spiritual Masters now living.
Listed their astrological signs, an important bit of reference for those shopping for a compatible teacher.
Russell is looking quite a bit like Rasputin here (there and everywhere?)

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These people lived in a big house in Seattle.
I met the Enlightened Master during the course of my work, years after the heyday.
They had pretty much been run out of town and had a farm up north, and a bakery/restaurant.
A really nice guy, like a used car salesman that you can't help but like.
He invited me up the new restaurant.

I think it's a good policy in general not to go full-in on a religion that's less than ten years old.

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A few guys from that crew were in my musical circle in mid 80s Seattle, two actually played in one of my bands for a time. The Love Family house band was quite good, actually.

Plenty of experience with the ‘ Neeshies around here too, the infamous food poisoning incident was only about twenty miles from where I’ve lived ever since I left Seattle in the lare 80s.

 

[DownRound]

A few guys from that crew were in my musical circle in mid 80s Seattle, two actually played in one of my bands for a time. The Love Family house band was quite good, actually.

Plenty of experience with the ‘ Neeshies around here too, the infamous food poisoning incident was only about twenty miles from where I’ve lived ever since I left Seattle in the lare 80s.

Wow, the house band was good!
That actually doesn't surprise me.
The house itself on Queen Anne hill was just a couple of blocks from the apartment where a friend of mine lived.
They all seemed pretty low key, and sincere, with their names like Patience Israel, Virtue Israel.
I think Steve Allen's son's name was Wisdom Israel.
I actually like Love when I talked with him, I'd say that he was sincere himself.

And again, all of the Rajneeshees I knew personally were pretty good people.
Always in those pastel colored clothes.
But the top management...hoo boy, a different story, I think.

Geez, I just remembered...didn't they have a disco in Portland called Zorba the Buddha?

 

[Passinwind]

Wow, the house band was good!
That actually doesn't surprise me.
The house itself on Queen Anne hill was just a couple of blocks from the apartment where a friend of mine lived.
They all seemed pretty low key, and sincere, with their names like Patience Israel, Virtue Israel.
I think Steve Allen's son's name was Wisdom Israel.
I actually like Love when I talked with him, I'd say that he was sincere himself.

I don’t think I ever met Love Israel, but I hung out in the QA house a few times and knew a few of the church elders pretty well. One of them founded the Seattle Peace Concerts and was an excellent guitarist and vocalist, and a pretty great guy in general. So my interactions with the Family were quite positive, all in all.

 

[DownRound]

I don’t think I ever met Love Israel, but I hung out in the QA house a few times and knew a few of the church elders pretty well. One of them founded the Seattle Peace Concerts and was an excellent guitarist and vocalist, and a pretty great guy in general. So my interactions with the Family were quite positive, all in all.

Of all of those charismatic leader groups, they seemed actually like they were actually living their ideals.
You just have to be the kind of person who wants to live with a father figure.
That always nixed it for me, but yeah, they were good people, from all that I saw.

 

[DownRound]

My mind was running back to that question, Disco versus Funk:
Without disco there probably would not have been a few years later what was sometimes called the Funk New Wave in the mid-eighties.
Bands like ConFunkshun, One Way, Zapp & Roger, The Gap Band, Cameo, (can we put Rick James in here?)

Again, it's like going down a spectrum, go far enough down the line and it changes from a difference in hue to a difference in color.
The river shifting direction, back to funk.

The cowboy hats aren't just an affectation.
The history we weren't told: one out of five cowboys in the old west were black.
After the civil war, it was a job they could get...seeking opportunities to make a living.
.....
And, in my sartorial defense, I just want to clarify that I only wore that shirt and shoes, ONCE, at that wedding reception.
And I felt like a complete idiot.
Still hurts to think about, though.

 

[Major Seven]

When I was a kid, only service vets, longshoremen, and Merchant Marine sailors had tattoos. People get these things then wonder why they can't get hired. Happily, I'm old enough to where nothing needs to make sense any more, but I gotta say, if I'd have thought years ago that really beautiful women would today be covered in tattoos and wear Doc Martens and be considered beautiful, I'd have killed myself back then.

What a CFW.

and short skirts but with combat boots.

 

[SDC1-ClickClack]

Blue, pink, and purple dyed hair are another fad that does not appeal to me, but if that's what some people need in order to feel unique or rebellious, fine — even though it's hardly that unusual any more and has been around for decades. (See the front cover of Todd Rundgren's 1974 solo album TODD.)

 

[wncBass]

Or steaking perhaps.

I might do some steaking this weekend.

 

[Stranger Danger]

Thankfully Hater threads never get old

 

[Stewie26]

Photo I took of my GF with her "Bell Bottoms" back in 1971. That is one fad which I would no mind seeing coming back.

 

[DownRound]

Photo I took of my GF with her "Bell Bottoms" back in 1971. That is one fad which I would no mind seeing coming back.
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I think it was starting to come back a few years ago.
My called my attention to it.
But it didn't catch.

 

[Akami]

I might do some steaking this weekend.

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Even though I just finished dinner that picture is making me hungry all over again!

 

[darev]

Pickleball

 

[FilterFunk]

Case in point 2.

The Trammps. Disco Inferno.

1) Disco is in the name, and in sound, but....but the vocals are kind of funky. Even gutsy.
2) Platform shoes are clearly in evidence (maybe that's why the name? They make that tramping sound when you step?)

From the video: Trammp shoes.
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And below, actual disco shoes and shirt (right) clown shoes and detail of clown shirt (left).


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Now I'm having a flashback too, a bad one.
That shirt and shoes....they look just the ones that I had. Oh man, I feel terrible now.
.....Kenny was right at the Colleen's wedding reception...the future is going to laugh at us...it's Ginny's fault, she's the one who liked this stuff.
And then she dumps me.

I'm going back to the first theory of group madness.
But the vocals...pretty darn good on this.

"Disco Inferno" - Music? Disco. Vocals? Soul.

The vocals elevated the music, IMO.

 

[FilterFunk]

Case in point.
George McCrae: Rock Your Baby. 1974.
On the same K-Tel compilation as Be Thankful for What You've Got.
The dilemma: disco or R&B?
It topped the Billboard R&B chart.
But....written and produced by Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch of KC and the Sunshine Band.
And that sound, gotta go with the disco call on this one.
The embryo stage.
McCrae was great on this.



Close in sound and feel to this one, two years later, Rose Royce.
Soul. Not disco.

Agreed on all points.

 

[FilterFunk]

My mind was running back to that question, Disco versus Funk:
Without disco there probably would not have been a few years later what was sometimes called the Funk New Wave in the mid-eighties.
Bands like ConFunkshun, One Way, Zapp & Roger, The Gap Band, Cameo, (can we put Rick James in here?)

I think all of those bands were more influenced by P-Funk than disco.

 

[DownRound]

Pickleball

Holy cow....that's IT, so big, right there, and no one else saw it. (!!??)
And it's still going on!!
(But like yoga on paddleboards, it might have crested. Hopefully.)

 

[hrodbert696]

Some fads have been observed in animals. There's a thing of Orcas wearing dead salmon as hats for some reason. Some chimps took to wearing grass stems in their ears.

I also think social media distorts our notion of what fads are even happening. I don't think eating Tide Pods was ever actually a fad. POSTING online about people eating Tide Pods was a fad. Actually doing it wasn't.

 

[DownRound]

Holy cow (2)!
I remember reading about that, in an article about learned culture in animals.
But, it never occurred to me that it's an animal fad. Nothing practical about it.
Glad to know it's not just us (humans).

It did remind me, though, of the shoehats in Gilliam's Brazil.
Kind of a break-even deal.