What Golden Ages have you lived thru, and didn't realize it...?

[First Speaker]

...when I was a kid in the 60s, my Dad and older brother were huge jazz fans. We'd go to Newport, and hear everyone from Pops and Ellington to Coltrane and Archie Shepp--all living simultaneously with one another. Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, Basie, Gillespie, Miles, Monk, Rollins, Trane, Bill Evans, Mingus, Jones/Lewis...in retrospect, it seems fabulous, a time out of legend. We took it for granted. Another thing--Science Fiction/Fantasy. Asimov--though he was relatively absent in the 60s, he was *there*--Heinlein, Jack Williamson, Arthur Clarke, Sturgeon, Leiber, van Vogt, and coming along--Zelazny, Delany, le Guin, Frank Herbert...I didn't think twice about it. They were all just *there*, every generation since SF was invented as a genre in 1926, all still active. One last one--Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, making comics history every month, doing what no one else had ever done...with a little help from Steve Ditko. This was all just the background of my childhood and youth, and I took it all for granted, not realizing it wouldn't last forever. Has anyone else lived thru similar things? And what Golden Ages are being created today, without anyone, perhaps, realizing it?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Disco!

Also, at about the same time, the Golden Age of Fashion.

[First Speaker]

2. I quite literally have nightmares about 1970s clothes...

...and there exists a photo of me with one of those cheesy 1970s porno moustaches...

[Xipe Totec]

5. You ain't seen nothing

Picture me in the 1970's

Red & White plaid polyester pants (large print) with bell bottoms and cuffs.

Braided white leather belt.

Red White & Blue suede elevator shoes.

A red T-shirt with pocket.

A pack of red & white Marlboro cigarettes in said pocket.

A white lab coat (yes, I worked in a university chemistry lab)

A full beard & 6" Afro.

That's what I wore to my on-campus interview with Lockheed Aerospace.

And they still hired me.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Do you have a photo?

I'd really like to see that.

Maybe.

[Xipe Totec]

7. I'm still looking for it

Somewhere there is a picture, I'm sure of it.

[Skittles]

20. SCHEDULING XIPE TOTEC FOR LONG-OVERDUE ASS KICKING

*EGREGIOUS*

[Xipe Totec]

21. Zoolander and the fashion INTERPOL are still looking for me. nt

I'm on their Ten Least Wanted list.

[malthaussen]

23. Very patriotic! No wonder they hired you. n/t

[Xipe Totec]

25. Truth be told, the career counselor dragged me out of the lab to talk to them

I wasn't particularly interested in talking to them.

But something clicked. I walked out of the interview with a firm offer, a year before graduating.

[mackerel]

31. I cried when straight legs went out and they brought back that flaired shite.

I'm thanking everyday that skinny jeans are here on this planet.

[Aristus]

3. The Golden Age of live Saturday morning children's programming.

I mean, cartoons we all know about. But the live stuff, that was extra special.

[irisblue]

4. student loans & pell grants late 70s to mid 80$

Holy cow did times change

[NightWatcher]

8. The early 90's Golden Age of Grunge

Who knew those bands would kick ass 30 years later

[hack89]

9. We are presently in a golden age of beer. nt

[femmocrat]

10. Probably several "Golden Ages" of comedy.

Although I think those TV sitcoms from the 1970s were the best. You know the ones.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. Why, the birth of Rock and Roll. of course

"Rock Around the Clock"
Bill Haley & His Comets
1955

October 15 – Elvis Presley plays a concert in Lubbock, Texas. Opening act is local duo Buddy and Bob, Buddy being future rock star Buddy Holly.

I am talking about what was getting air play, selling records, etc as opposed to live venues of the time.

Except....of course, that one big historic venue:
January 14 – 1955 In New York City, Alan Freed produces the first rock and roll concert.

Before then, radio was AM and carried all genres of music....country, and "standards" like Frank Sinatra, the Four Aces, Mitch Miller, all being played in the same hour of radio.

Elvis hit radio big time in 1956 in my town, and our world changed.

Also....Blue jeans went from hard labor workers to everybody by the late 60's, and now are worn all over the globe.

[mainstreetonce]

12. The birth of TV

Lucy, Uncle Milty and Jack Benny.

[WinkyDink]

35. Ernie Kovacs! Bishop Sheen! Midnight the Cat! Your Hit Parade! My Little Margie! Oh, yes----

I was there at the Creation!

[mainstreetonce]

37. Only obe I don't know is Midnight the Cat

I Remember Mama. June Bride. Hopalong Cassidy Clarabell the Clown

[WinkyDink]

41. Andy Devine was the host, also with Froggy:

[mainstreetonce]

43. Nope don't remember that

Was it on cable? Or Netflix? We must have had the VCR set to something else.

[NV Whino]

13. The golden age of advertising—the 60s

Yeah, Mad Men got it right.

[First Speaker]

14. I'm going to get crucified for saying this, but I miss cigarette ads...

..."Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should"..."what do you want, good grammar or good taste"..."a silly millimeter longer"...I don't feel the world is a better place without them, and I don't smoke. I'm not a capital-L "Libertarian", but I've always felt a legal product should be permitted to advertise...

[Aristus]

15. All the while, we medical providers are trying to keep our patients away from cigarettes with a whip

and a chair. I shudder to think how many more of my patients would be smoking if cigarette commercials were still on the air.

Advertising works; it wouldn't be a billion-dollar industry if it didn't.

I've got 400-pound patients with their teeth rotting out of their heads and going blind from diabetic retinopathy because they drink Gatorade like it's going out of style. TV markets it as a health drink, and it's not. It's really bad for you. But people see toned, healthy marathon runners drinking it on TV, and think it's something they need in their nutrition plan.

Whatever the artistic or nostalgic benefits of having cigarette commercials on TV (and I'm dubious; crudely animated Flintstones in black and white isn't my idea of stellar advertising...), it's a good thing that they're gone from the airwaves.

[NV Whino]

16. You've come a long way, Baby.

Cigarettes are nasty filthy things, but the advertising slogans, in spite of bad grammar, were top notch.

Think small was my favorite slogan for any product, any time.

[goldent]

29. Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!

[trof]

33. Show us your Larks!

I'd walk a mile for a Camel.
Chesterfield, not a cough in a carload.
Willy the Penguin says "Smoke Kools!"
LS/MFT: Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco!
Lucky Strike: So round, so firm, so fully packed.

[WinkyDink]

36. "Over, under, around, and through." "Call for Phillip Mor-ri-is!" "I'd walk a mile for a Camel." (I

have never smoked; I just know lots of commercials!)

[sakabatou]

17. Golden age of anime dubbing in the US

It started, I believe in the 90s.

[Kaleva]

18. DU2

[Skittles]

19. pre-Reagan / pre-Walmart

yes indeed

[malthaussen]

22. Arguably, every Golden Age that occurred in the 60's...

... I was too young to appreciate what was going on around me.

-- Mal

[RebelOne]

24. All of them. Of course, because I was born in 1939. n/t

[Florencenj2point0]

26. The Golden Age Of Abba Songs

I didn't appreciate them then but I do now!

"Dancing Queen, young and clean only seventeen"

[Texasgal]

42. "Young and CLEAN"?

[mike in raleigh]

27. The seventies

Was a golden age on multiple levels. You could go to college without your parents taking out a second mortgage; a state university cost $2000 a year in the mid seventies and a prestige school like Harvard, Stanford or Duke cost $5-6000 a year.
Housing was cheap, heck, some places had 1 bedrooms for less than $100 a month.
Popular music took off in all kinds of different directions; Progressive rock, Jazz fusion, Funk, Disco, etc.
Hi-fi became mainstream and everybody bought fancy stereo systems, vinyl was king and when you bought your new belt or direct-drive turntable, you learned the difference between elliptical and Shibata styluses.
Sex was free and easy, and we didn't worry about anything that Penicillin couldn't cure (though in retrospect, maybe we should have).

[KentuckyWoman]

39. I made $4.16 an hour before taxes in 1978.

Living independent from my parents then required someone else living with me making at least a similar wage as is still does.

Looking back.... I do wish I'd made more of that "free and easy sex" but unfortunately there were not offers.

[lunatica]

28. The Golden age of the bellbottoms!!

They were so cool that no one could even imagine them ever going out of style.

and before that the hair teasing dos for women. Beehives!!

[FSogol]

30. I grew up in the DC HarDCore Punk scene. I feel sorry for everyone who didn't

This is also the golden age for beer drinkers, the fans of comic book movies, and Sherlock Holmes.

[mackerel]

32. Yeah all that 'cept that Sherlock Holmes shite.

[Yavin4]

34. The PCs era of the 1980s. The dawning of the internet in the middle 90s.

Missed out on both of them. Regret it to this day.

[KentuckyWoman]

38. The golden age of Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

and his "rasslin" show.

And I wish that were not so....... but can't divorce a good man just because he likes WWE.

[nilesobek]

40. The Golden Age of little league Punic Wars. The concussions, the parental infighting...

[meow2u3]

44. The beginnings of color TV

...in the '60's.

The heyday of the sitcom in the '70's. All in the Family, Maude, the Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, etc. They all were hysterically funny and dead on.

[Recursion]

45. Hip Hop (nt)