Maybe because it had to follow the '60s, the decade when all the walls came down as creativity and hedonism both hurtled into the heart of the sunrise.
Nothing could really follow that.
We have a restaurant group of 10, avid Michelinists all, who trawl the city's eateries monthly, adhering to a loose line of value for money over money for value.
Occasionally we have theme parties at each other's houses.
Last Friday night it was our turn, and the theme was the '70s.
We are all the right age to chortle like chickens at the '70s.
Will there will be ham steaks, cried one. A salad with a boiled egg and pink mayonnaise? Everybody wanted a shrimp cocktail.
But my job was the music, and I have always vehemently defended the music of the '70s.
It was erratic and incongruous from go to whoa, but it wasn't the decade that taste forgot, it was often pretty good.
I made seven CDs to wallpaper the evening, beginning with the mellow and melancholy singer-songwriters who followed the explosions and dashed dreams of the '60s.
Then things toughened up with two CDs of Van Morrison, Little Feat, The Stones, Dylan and The Grateful Dead.
Only the sparkling raised fist of glitter and glam could come after these, a controversial choice for some of our group I thought, but I was not there to think.
Dr Ian Chapman of the Otago University music department put out an excellent book on this grand genre last year - Glory Days.
Kim Hill, a Joni Mitchell fan, indignantly asked Chapman on her show if he was saying style was more important than content.
Absolutely, yes, replied Dr Glam. But of course, David Bowie was both of these.
Another incongruous and erratic segue took us to progressive rock.
I liked prog rock.
I flew to Australia to write about Yes for Rolling Stone, rode in their limo, and met Sydney's leading groupie who told me the precise size of Mick Jagger's thingee.
But sadly, I struggled to find much Yes I wanted to hear over dinner in 2010, though Genesis' Supper's Ready still glowed warmly.
And while patriotism may well be the last refuge of the scoundrel, I slipped Titus by Split Enz in there too.
CD Five was an erratic and incongruous mix of just good songs - John Cale, Judee Sill, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young - and then with a sense of true historical irony, came a CD of '70s anthems and cliches: Stairway To Heaven, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Joker et al.
I even added the dreadful, Listen To The Music, which filled beer barn dancefloors with flailing arms and poppy eyes every time it started up in the '70s.
Which seemed to be every 20 minutes.
Punk and new wave closed the collection, the return to short sharp exciting songs, a very long way from James Taylor and Genesis.
We dined off brown and orange floral Crown Lynn , placing our drinks on coasters showing posters of the decade's 10 Oscar-winning films.
We rested the dishes on mats with images of long-haired protesters Halting All Racist Tours as they were hauled off rugby grounds by high-helmeted bobbies, and the rapacious grinning Pythonesque visage that was Rob Muldoon.
I fitted seamlessly into the brown velvet suit I was married in 35 years ago, and a $5.90 wig of long brown hair turned me into a chilling replica of the badly-assembled hippie I was back then.
I found a pen and a $5 note in the jacket pocket.
Why on earth did I think I would need a pen on my wedding night? That is the erratic and incongruous '70s right there.
The food was wonderful.
Shrimp cocktail, French onion soup, sole mornay, coq au vin, goulash, trifle, chocolate fondue and ice cream.
Nobody tapped fingers or feet to Listen To The Music.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
