The Wonder of Wonder Woman

As buxom saviour of the free world Wonder Woman was the stuff of dreams for many young boys in the late 1970s, but how many of us knew back then that actress Lynda Carter was also a talented singer with her own show on US network television? Here we strip away the star-spangled hot pants (stop sniggering at the back) and take a brief look at Lynda Carter’s career away from her bullet deflecting bracelets, golden lasso and invisible plane.

In Concert - Keith Moon Introducing Stevie Wonder

Finding rare concert footage from the Seventies of Stevie Wonder is always going to be a pleasure. However, when you've got the notorious drummer of The Who Keith Moon dressed up as a circus ringmaster introducing Mr Wonder, that's a big bonus.

The 1972 Coliseum concert took place in California. And along with Stevie and Keith, other artists who performed included The Four Seasons, The Bee Gees and Sha-na-na.

His set clocks in at just over twenty minutes, so take a seat and enjoy an interview, a Temptations cover, Some classic Stevie tunes, the underrated "Love having you around" and some mean harmonica and vocoder action from the genius that is Stevie Wonder.

The Art of Bob Peak

If you've ever cast your eyes over the film posters of Apocalypse Now, Superman, My Fair Lady, Rollerball, Star Trek and The Spy Who Loved Me - to name a few, then you've already seen the artwork of American illustrator Bob Peak.

The Denver born artist was known as "The Father of The Modern Hollywood Movie Poster".However he applied his design skills to other projects including adverts, postage stamps and magazines, such as Time, Sports illustrated and TV guides.

Kym Marsh Goes Acid Jazz With Mother Earth

There's film footage.It's not just Hearsay - see what we did there? Before she was winning singing reality shows and treading the cobbles on British soap opera Coronation street, Kym Marsh paid her dues as a backing singer.

This clip is from a 1993 episode of the channel Four show The Word. Onstage are Acid Jazz Funk-Rockers Mother Earth performing their single "Find it", with singer Matt Deighton being accompanied by a pony-tailed Kym.

Acid Jazz trainspotters may also notice Simon Bartholomew from The Brand New Heavies on guitar, and Ben Addison from Corduroy hitting the bongos.

Baby You Can Drive my Car

Whilst we’re not by any means petrolheads (we think that’s what they call car fanatics) here at VoEA we do appreciate classic car advertisements done well. Here we take a look back to what must be the golden age of car ownership. A time before global warming or as it’s now known climate change was invented and when petrol was cheaper than water.

These American and Canadian illustrated ads from the late sixties into the 1970s take their cues from flower power, spy movies, court jesters and the great outdoors. Must go, I’ve got to answer the call of the Mustang.

1970s Music Billboards on Sunset Boulevard

Recently we came across an amazing advertising billboard for Stevie Wonder's classic 70s album Songs in the key of life, which we posted as a one-off on our Tumblr page.

Then we thought, are there anymore blog worthy billboards from the 1970s - well the answer is Yes. Originally we were going to post various ones from the Seventies until we found this astounding set of photos on flickr.

These music billboards were photographed on Sunset Boulevard in California between 1974 and 1975. We've chosen a few our favourites, however if you want to see all 104 in glorious technicolour take a trip over to Flickr and check out Larry's complete set.

Blaxploitation B-Movie Posters

It has to be said that the majority of films in the Blaxploitation genre from the 1970s are not very good. These days they are better known for their soul and funk-filled soundtracks, rather than the acting or the story.

The term Blaxploitation was made-up in the early 1970s by the head of the Los Angeles National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People - Junius Griffin.The group were also partly responsible for the demise of the genre, as many of the films were seen to be stereotyping Black people.

In this post we've swerved all the major players of the Blaxploitation films, so there's no Shaft or Super fly on the list. We've also excluded The Hit man (Get Carter remake) and swapped the horror movie Blacula for Black Frankenstein.These posters are for films which had much lower budgets, commonly known as B-Movies, and we assume that most of these would of made films such as Dolemite look like Citizen Kane.

Psychedelic Snack - Retro Recipes and Cookbooks

Now, for those expecting to see recipes involving magic mushrooms and marijuana, we don't mean that sort of Psychedelic Snack -The title refers to the groovy gourmet related covers (also it was a good chance to use some Motown wordplay courtesy of The Temptations)

There are a couple of interesting cookbooks within our choices. Firstly is "Teen Cuisine - A Beginner's Guide To French Cooking" this one has well-known psychedelic graphic artist Peter Max adding his unique style of illustration to the book. The second book of interest is "Moogs Musical Eatery" as you may have guessed by the name, this 1978 book was written by Shirleigh Moog, wife of the inventor of the 'Moog synthesizer' Robert Moog.

We hope you enjoy our selection, now tuck in...

Buddy Rich and MJQ on What's My Line?

While we're on a Jazz tip here at Voices of East Anglia, we thought we'd unleash a couple of clips from the archives of long running American Television show What's my line?

For those not familiar with What’s My Line? it was a guessing game show. Each week Four panelists were blindfolded, then given the opportunity to ask "Yes" or "No" questions to find out the occupation of that weeks guest.


In the first clip we have jazz connoisseurs of cool The Modern Jazz Quartet or MJQ to their friends. The second mystery guest is gum chewing Jazz drummer Buddy Rich, who's hot-footed it straight to the studio from his Karate lesson in his Harrington jacket. We guess as Buddy was a Black belt in the martial art, he wasn't reprimanded for turning up late in his casual attire.

The Incredible Jimmy Smith - 1965 Documentary

Channel 4 recently devoted a weekend to jazz through the airing of a few documentaries, and compilation programmes. The highlight had to be Sonny Rollins 1974 Ronnie Scott gig, with Rufus Harley resplendant on bagpipes.

Our contribution to the cause, comes in the form of a Jimmy Smith documentary of considerable weight, which only starts to paint the picture of the great jazz keyboardist. Most well known for his hammond grooves, Jimmy Smith recorded for the best jazz labels on the block including Blue Note and Verve, his purple patch being the early to mid 60's where he recorded a bunch of fine albums most notably for Blue Note.

His funky style of playing has seen him hailed as one of the greats, and his records have been sampled by numerous modern artists, mainly in the hip hop genre, the Beastie Boys being one example.