Have a Nice Decade: The ’70s Pop Culture Box
At the time my mother’s reaction puzzled me. I assumed “Have a nice day” was just a long-standing substitute for “Good morning.” And not until last month, when Rhino released the elaborate seven-CD set Have a Nice Decade: The ’70s Pop Culture Box, did I learn how it actually seeped into the vernacular. In the late 1960s University Federal Savings of Seattle launched a PR campaign using the slogan “Have a happy day” and the yellow smiley face that most recently came out of retirement to shill for that great bulldozer of small-town America, Wal-Mart. But the bank failed to attain exclusive rights to them, and soon other local businesses were handing out buttons bearing the same words and image. Tellingly, as the fad spread across the nation “happy” got toned down to “nice,” as if to wish one’s fellow men actual happiness were too extravagant. An essay by Lisa Sutton in the liner notes to Have a Nice Decade claims, “Overnight society stopped wearing natural fibers, hippie-influenced tie-dyes, and psychedelics and zoned in on polyesters and wash-and-wear.”
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This joyous confusion is the truest reflection of the spirit of the 70s. Sure, there was plenty of nice music, as evidenced on the box set by such treacle as the Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight,” Sammy Davis Jr.’s smash “The Candy Man,” and “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” by Dawn, or the hits that used premasticated melodies from the classical canon, including Apollo 100’s “Joy,” which slaughtered Bach, and Marvin Hamlisch’s Grammy-winning bastardization of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.” But these songs didn’t paint the entire pop picture.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): vintage photos: Sister Sledge, Ides of March, Gary Wright, Doobie Brothers, Carly Simon, Spinners, Chic, James Taylor, Norman Greenbaum, and Bellamy Brothers.
