The Notorious Phd's Guide to the Super Fly '70s: A Connoisseur's Journey Through the Fabulous Flix, Hip Sounds, and Cool Vibes That Defined a Decade - Softcover

Boyd, Todd

 
9780767921879: The Notorious Phd's Guide to the Super Fly '70s: A Connoisseur's Journey Through the Fabulous Flix, Hip Sounds, and Cool Vibes That Defined a Decade
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0767921879 ISBN 13: 9780767921879
Verlag: Crown, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

THIS RICHLY INFORMATIVE JOURNEY INTO THE 1970S CAPTURES THE EXPLOSIVE POWER OF THE BLACK PERFORMERS, MUSICIANS, FILMMAKERS, AND ATHLETES WHO IGNITED A CULTURAL REVOLUTION.

WHAT SINGER/SONGWRITER WAS THE FIRST WHITE PERFORMER TO APPEAR ON SOUL TRAIN?
WHAT PHILADELPHIA 76ER MADE NBA HISTORY WHEN, AGAINST THE KANSAS CITY KINGS, HIS TWO-HANDED DUNK SHATTERED THE BACKBOARD?
WHAT ROCK-AND-ROLL STAR WOULD BEGIN HIS CAREER PLAYING GUITAR FOR ARTISTS LITTLE RICHARD AND THE ISLEY BROTHERS?

Whether you’re a ’70s culture aficionado or these questions have you stumped, Todd Boyd’s exciting look at one of the most influential periods in popular culture will be a fun and exciting roller-coaster ride that you won’t want to miss.

Dr. Boyd (known as “The Notorious Ph.D.”) delves into the personalities, passions, and politics that swept America and the world in the ’70s and introduced a style and attitude that still reverberates today with the hip hop generation. From movies like Shaft, Super Fly, and Cleopatra Jones to Richard Pryor’s edgy routines on race to the rise of Dr. J and other sports superstars, The Notorious Ph.D.’s Guide to the Super Fly ’70s mixes social insight with an all-out celebration of the contributions of a wide variety of Black icons. Covering every aspect of Black culture from the period and including a quiz that you and your friends will love answering together, Dr. Boyd’s hip writing style will educate while it entertains.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

TODD BOYD, Ph.D. (aka The Notorious Ph.D.) is a critically acclaimed author and commentator who has appeared on CNN, NPR, Good Morning America, the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and other programs and has written pieces for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Dr. Boyd has done commentary for the DVDs Super Fly, Uptown Saturday Night and The Mack. He has also recorded an interview that will be part of the documentary feature on the 30th Anniversary DVD release of Roots. Dr. Boyd is a professor at the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television. He lives in Los Angeles.

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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SUPER FLY ’70S


PAID THE COST TO BE THE BOSS!

I am a child of the Super Fly ’70s. Being born in the six–four, the Year of the Dragon and Muhammad Ali’s historic ass whuppin’ of Sonny Liston, meant that I would be coming of age, or comin’ up, as it were, in the decade that lay ahead. I can’t imagine comin’ up at a better time.

The ’70s—I’ll get into the “Super Fly” part later—would coincide with my own tenth anniversary on the planet, and this meant that my experience would evolve right along with everything else. As the Black nation came to life, so would I. I would be growing up during the richest, most fertile period of Black culture ever. The ’70s would be the decade that set the tone for all the decades to follow.

Imagine a long, “money green” Cadillac Eldorado, the Biarritz version, a vinyl top of a contrasting color, let’s say gold or champagne, you know, “green for the money and gold for the honey,” some gangsta whitewalls, with the covered spare tire on the trunk. In my dreams, I’m wearing a great suit (a “slick vine”) topped off by a pimped–out Borsalino hat, which covers my smooth perm, also known as the “Lord Jesus.” As I’m driving, leaning to the side, my eyes level with the steering wheel, an aerosol can of “Money House Blessing” with the Native American head on the side ready to zap any lingering weed smells out of existence, I drive by a powder blue “deuce–and–a–quarter.” My eight–track tape player oozes out something laid–back, mellow, and chill. Curtis Mayfield comes to mind. Out of the tinted window, I see people wearing platform shoes, glass heels with dice inside, wild–ass butterfly collars, coke spoons around their necks, the whole nine, straight out of Flagg Brothers or Eleganza, the Black haute couture of the day. This is my fantasy of the era, not one I lived, mind you—back then I was just a li’l shortie myself—but one that I certainly wanted to live, because this was what was around me every day.

When I think about the Super Fly ’70s, what always comes to mind is the culture itself: the flix, television shows, fashion, sports, and overall attitude that grows from all of these things. I grew up surrounded by this at every turn. It seeped through every aspect of my life, every pore of my being. I lived it, I ate it, I drank it, I smoked it, and I snorted it. The music was like the sound track, the movies and TV shows provided the visuals, and sports offered the opportunity to see greatness and the never–ending quest to reach a higher level constantly on display.

As a kid, surrounded by all these images of Black culture in the first full decade of a free Black nation, I simply took for granted that it would be this way forever. Things started to change in the late ’70s/early ’80s; I watched the TV show Diff’rent Strokes, heard disco music, and watched Richard Pryor in The Toy, and I was suddenly slapped into the reality that all good things unfortunately come to an end.

The early to mid–’70s was the era when Black popular culture exploded in America, a watershed moment when the culture moved from the segregated spaces that it had been forced into, out into the open, now available for a full public viewing.

Black popular culture is no longer confined or segregated as it was back then, but rather it’s very much an integral part of mainstream culture in America. There was a time when Jet magazine used to list every appearance of every Black person who would be on television for the entire week. To try to do something like this now would require an entire magazine all by itself. We live in a world where Black celebrities host major award shows like the Oscars and the Grammys—often taking home a number of the awards themselves as well. Black celebrities appear on elite mainstream magazine covers, are investors in professional sports teams, head major record labels and flagship fashion outlets on Fifth Avenue, just to name a few things.

Hip hop music dominates the music business in general, while Black athletes have become the norm, providing the standard by which all other athletes are measured. The language of hip hop has entered into the popular lexicon, and hip hop artists, moguls, and NBA players define what it means to be rich and famous for the nation as a whole.

So first and foremost, this book will, like Nas and (his father) Olu Dara, help to bridge the gap between the present and the past. Hip hop didn’t just come up out of nowhere on its own. Like all culture, it grew out of what came before it. This book will help you understand how the ’70s set the table for the hip hop explosion and how deeply indebted hip hop is to Black culture from that pivotal decade.

The ’70s were, of course, significant in their own right long before hip hop came along. Poised between the militant politics of the late ’60s and the emergence of the conservative Reagan ’80s, the ’70s stand as a decade full of any– and everything. Because it was so new, there was a freshness to the culture that came forward, a sense of liberation, a statement of self–determination on the part of all those people who felt that they were no longer going to try to appease mainstream taste. Instead, they were emboldened in their commitment to being as Black as they wanted to be: in style, taste, and overall action. The Blacker, the better. When I was a young kid in the ’70s, my aunt bought me a T–shirt with a picture of James Brown rockin’ his perfect Afro. This T–shirt said it best: SAY IT LOUD. I’M BLACK AND I’M PROUD.

In one sense, the ’70s stands out because there was very little that came before it in terms of consistent mainstream Black entertainment. There was a limited Black presence on television, and a generally stereotypical presence at that. The representation in film wasn’t any better, save for Sidney Poitier, who, though highly relevant at one time, eventually wore out his welcome because he was represented as being so perfect that he started to look like a figment of some White liberal’s imagination as opposed to a real Black person. While I can most certainly appreciate all his pride and dignity now, there came a time in the late ’60s when Poitier just wasn’t what was needed anymore. Even Poitier himself realized this when he changed his image in the mid–’70s, teaming up with Bill Cosby in Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Let’s Do It Again (1975), and A Piece of the Action (1977).

The ’70s represented something bold, something striking, something so far out of the box as to never have been seen or contemplated before for Black culture. The incredible creative energy that emerged from the politics and rebellion of Black America in the late ’60s was now being channeled into the music that people listened to, along with the movies and television shows that they watched and the fashions that they wore. There was now a completely different outlook on life that grew out of this newly liberated state of being. The people had thrown off the mental shackles of times past and were embracing the changes that were coursing through the veins of the culture. This was the “brand–new bag” that James Brown had been talking about in his song, and it was also what the Philadelphia group McFadden and Whitehead meant when they sang their anthem “Ain't No Stoppin’ Us Now” in 1979. When Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band...

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Verlag
Crown
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0767921879
ISBN 13 
9780767921879
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
222
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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gpsr@libri.de

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