The Long Seventies Podcast

3:32pm. May 9, 1980. Norco, Ca. Security Pacific Bank. 5 men. 2 shotguns. 3 handguns. 4 high powered semi auto rifles. Homemade grenades. Molotov cocktails. Incendiary diversion device. 1 katana. 1 hostage. 1 stolen van. Dozens of police officers. 2 police helicopters. 25 miles later…. 30+ damaged cop cars. 1 dead deputy. 2 dead robbers. 8 wounded officers. 46 felonies.

We talk John Hughes' most famous film and explore why this 1985 teen comedy resonated so much with viewers. At some point we might even mess with the bull and get the horns. The Brain. The Athlete. The Basketcase. The Princess. The Criminal. All Jung's Suburban archetypes.

1985. Bret Easton Ellis' debut novel. Los Angeles. Mtv. Drugs. Narcissism. Hip to be numb. Absent parents. Disaffected youth. A dead body. Punk rock. Palm Springs. Matt offers an insane interpretation involving an Aztec god of chaos. Stay tuned to the end for a special coda where we revise our initial thoughts on the book after new information comes to our attention.

We talk about 1985's Brat Pack coming-of-age-social-commentary drama St. Elmo's Fire and what unique problems the youngest Baby Boomers might have faced upon entering the adult world at the end of The Long Seventies. Also, the Yamaha DX7.

You talk about Jay McInerney's 1984 debut novel "Bright Lights, Big City" in an effort to explore the transition from the Long Seventies to the Eighties and what liminal properties you can pinpoint about this unique time period.

We talk about UFO religions in general and then get into what is considered by sociologists to be the most successful UFO religion, Raelism.

Mind melting venereal parasites. Creepy murderous mutant kids in red snow suits. We explore the early years of Canada's master of body horror David Cronenberg's body of work focusing on two movies, Shivers (1975) and The Brood (1979).

We talk about the big picture of country music during the Long Seventies and why it assumed the role of counter-counterculture music and became popular not just in the rural areas it was born, but in far away urban centers and suburbs.

Long Seventies EXCLUSIVE! This week we do a little investigative history and dig the story of SF Bay Area radical group The Tribal Thumb out of newspaper archives. The Tribal Thumb is still a mysterious group. The membership is not well known and it seems to have been connected to a number of other SF Bay Area militant radical groups. You won't find this story anywhere else!

We talk about 70s science fiction literature and film and how in a general sense it is distinct from other periods but also a continuation of the new wave that started a decade earlier.