As our last Bank Holiday weekend is upon us, and the weather looks fine and warm for our "Grand Picnic" this afternoon [although a darn sight cooler than the searing heat we had for months this year], it's worth taking one last visit in our TARDIS to that other "long, hot summer" - 1976!
In a spookily similar way to the UK in 2022, 46 years ago we were struggling with not just a massive drought and hosepipe bans [which broke, with storms and floods this very week in '76], but also a lengthy contest for the position of Prime Minister after the departure of the incumbent [back then it was Harold Wilson who resigned], strikes, raging inflation [retail price inflation reached 27% per year in August 1976], economic meltdown thanks to a fuel crisis [although that one had actually begun three years earlier in 1973], cuts in public expenditure, riots and civil disobedience. All that's missing these days is the bloody IRA!
Even ABBA are back - albeit in "ABBAtar" form - but they were at their zenith this week in 1976, with this one at #1 [where it would remain until October]!
As I said on a previous occasion when I featured this song: "What queen, to this day, cannot sing every word to this one?"
46 years ago! Unbelievable. That was the year you were born, wasn’t it? (I was 3.)
ReplyDeleteFlatterer! I'd just turned thirteen... Jx
DeleteI was in London then! No, I'm not telling you my age! (My fourth decade, I think)
ReplyDeleteWere you not "Young and sweet, only seventeen", Dinah? Jx
DeleteI don't remember the heat (or the ladybirds), the fuel crisis, or the rise of Maggie (as I was only one), but I'm convinced that I must have heard 'Dancing Queen' and that it stayed with me until I was a little older and 'recognised' it.
ReplyDeleteI think this song must be embedded in the very DNA of we "gentlemen who are light in their loafers", alongside the likes of I Will Survive, Vogue, I Know Him So Well and Your Disco Needs You... Jx
DeleteI was 11! Was this the year that Richard Stilgo did the supermarket checkout on Nationwide to demonstrate which items had gone up each week? Or was that an earlier year? I will Google.
ReplyDeleteSx
I remember Richard Stilgoe's "amusing songs" from Nationwide, and he and Valerie Singleton did the "Consumer Unit" segment as well. Gosh, we are going back a few years. Val left the programme in 1978... Jx
DeleteI can remember 1976 very well so am able to say it all looks like a little bit of history repeating..
ReplyDeleteEven ABBA are back on tour ( virtually )
Hardly a tour, dear - they had an entire auditorium built out in Stratford, just for their show, but I don't believe they intend to take it on the road... Check the link in the post. Jx
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