Question about the 1980s

yes and no, though the 2000s are looking set to rival in them...

It was a time of love, a time of hate....a time of Husker Du, a time of Rick Astley...

All things considered, I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that the 80s were even better than the 90s - which seemed to suffer from pre-millllennnnial angst for the last few years.

Once we've been through the next musical revolution (which we badly need at the moment), I have a feeling that the current outbreak of 80s-phobia will begin to fade.

being in my early 20s as well I have to say that I don't agree 'we have been led to believe' it was really awful. It was just that the really good bands didn't sell enough records , which pissed a lot of music writers, but that is no different from any other decade (see L. Bangs in 'Reactions and carburator dung' collection) but the music was always there.

You can make a case for just about any decade since the "rock 'n' roll era" began as either feast or famine on the worthy-music front. The '80s was all about insipid synth pop, cheeseball "AOR" corporate rock, the worst R&B since the birth of the genre, hair metal, and so on. It was also all about postpunk, the full flourishing of hip-hop, the birth of techno, and the Amer-indie explosion. I lived through it and hated a lot of it, but in retrospect I have to conclude "half full."

the 80's were brilliant for music.

this is why the association of 'cheese' and '80's', is so annoying. eg 'cheesy 80's nite for students'

(heh - feels really weird to say "I woz there" vis à vis the 80s)

Anyway, search: 1981, 1988. Destroy: 1985
In other words, there were good and bad things about the decade. That said, that Denim track really struck a chord with me.

Ambrose is King Of The Thread.

I went to high school in the 80's, and they were 'that bad.' But it was also a really exciting, hopeful time for some folks... there was something to lash out at, and punk and hip-hop flourished (as well as underground metal, I might add). The hair metal was bad, most of the synth pop was pretty crummy (sorry to the Howard Jones fans here, but I hated all that shit), 'Family Ties' was bad... but the underground was truly 'underground', and it felt like a cool secret club in some ways... so I don't feel cheated. Still, I was convinced that any day I would die in a fiery nuclear furnace, and that wasn't cool at all.. anybody remember "The Day After"?

Yeah, but I liked the synth and the underground stuff and more! Hating genres uncool -- hating *performers* all right. I mean, Andy, would you want people saying they didn't like punk because Blink 182 were shit? ;-)

True, Ned... but I don't think I liked any synth stuff, truly. I was even disheartened when an otherwise cool guitar band would add some cheesy synth line to sound 'current.' I don't think I was especially open-minded at that time.

1985 saw Psychocandy, so Search it.

Random Thoughts -The eighties for some rockists is a code word for synth-pop.

-During the eighties critics always dissed Depeche Mode and they still do by foolishly pretending the band no longer exists in the nineties.This is not to say that critics were cruel to the band far from it.

-I think it's broad statement to say that eighties were bad. There were alot of good bands from the eighties, The Cure, New Order, Cabaret Voltaire?, Clock DVA, DAF, and yes even Depeche Mode. Other bands like Black Flag, Minutemen, REM and Sonic Youth are excellent even though they aren't seen as eigties bands.It would be foolish to say the eighties was horrible decade for music just because hair metal and bad new wave like Dexy and the Midnight Runners were extremely popular.

I more-or-less dropped out of listening to commercial radio right before the beginning of the 80's. Partly this was based on wanting to simply equate being commercially oriented or commercially successful with poor quality; on the other hand, I really did hate a lot of the music that was popular in the beginning of the 80's. Punk, new wave, post-punk, early industrial were all exciting, but I don't find that I have much desire to listen to the vast majority of it now. I also remember blasting Philip Glass and Steve Reich when they came on the radio as much as I did that with, say, PiL or X. Avant-garde vocalists like Joan LaBarbara, Meredith Monk, and Diamanda Galas were doing things that intrigued me. I found plenty of contemporary music to listen to and get excited about (but I was listening across a lot of genres), partly because so much was still new to me.

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In response to some comments above:

Anyway, search: 1981, 1988. Destroy: 1985

Oddly enough, I think I can agree with this. (I might want to make that 1980/81, instead though.)

Still, I was convinced that any day I would die in a fiery nuclear furnace, and that wasn't cool at all..

I think I forget now how real the threat of nuclear war seemed to me when I was in high school.

Other bands like Black Flag, Minutemen, REM and Sonic Youth are excellent even though they aren't seen as eigties bands.

Music which isn't thought of as prototypically 80's was nevertheless made in the 80's. Fred Frith's relatively accessible "Gravity" and "Speechless" were both released in the early 80's and most tracks still sound good to me now.

Still, overall, I much prefer the music of the 70's (especially now that I have belatedly discovered 70's salsa) and probably the 60's.

being in my early 20s as well I have to say that I don't agree 'we have been led to believe' it was really awful. It was just that the really good bands didn't sell enough records , which pissed a lot of music writers, but that is no different from any other decade (see L. Bangs in 'Reactions and carburator dung' collection) but the music was always there.

i have to disagree i`m afraid...i`ve discovered through my own curiousity that there was good stuff around but much of this better quality material was marginalised and ignored by the mainstream (that`s nothing new). the attitude of the music press certainly didn`t aid in this realisation. the music press (and now i`m generalising) seem to beincapable of making the distinction between good 80s and bad 80s. is it cos most of the hacks are too young to remeber anything but the top 40 drivel of the time? and what`s so fucking bad about synth pop anyway, if that`s the root of all this anti-80sness..? its curious that a band like new order even now manage to get away with the synth pop reputation without any derision..

But I realize I am really only dealing with part of the 80's here.

My "college music" listening during the 80's was most heavily concentrated in the years when I was in high school (1980-1983). It seems to me that I was definitely more relaxed about listening to more purely pop oriented things when I was in college, though my preferences were still mostly outside of the mainstream. But I remember liking and dancing to R&B songs like "Electric Kingdom" (was that the title), and early rap like Run-DMC. My last year of college (1987) I became friends with someone who tended to keep me more in touch with popular pop music than I had been before. 1988 was a big year for hip-hop of course primarily because of "It Takes a Nation of Millions." Saw Psychic TV for the first time in 1988: as I've said elsewhere, acid house/techno seemed very promising at the time, too, but I didn't end up liking them (and their various offshoots) much at all. Transition into 1990/1991 pretty much more of the same, with at a couple dozen hip-hop acts on my radar.

hello young girl, great question. I've often wondered how today's young people see the decade when I became aware of music,

I'd go with the idea that there was both good and bad music in the '80s - both good/bad mainstream music and good/bad "alternative" as well. On the good side there was the acid house explosion, hip hop (I suppose), and the fact that any decade the Smiths released records in can't be all bad. On the bad side - well, there was a lot of mullet rock out there. And the '80s was the decade of the saxophone break. And there was all this style shite knocking around which had a big crossover into music.

What I'm wondering is if the '80s will suddenly become like the '60s were for us, a packaged era of musical nostalgia.

Anyway, search: 1981, 1988. Destroy: 1985
YEW FUEL, don't know you what you're saying? 1985 = home of:

• JaMC - Psychocandy
• Cure - The Head on the Door
• New Order - Low-life
• Husker Du - New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig
• Yello - Stella
• Replacements - Tim
• Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
• Einsturzende Neubauten - Halber Mensch

And that's just a start.

oh, the 80s were great for music. There was a lot of crap mainstream stuff but were hair metal and top40 synth pop (there was plenty of good synthpop that didn't hit the charts) worse than boy bands or rap-metal? I think not. And there was lots of good stuff that disappeared completely but is being rediscovered, search out all the reissues of the more obscure stuff from Factory Records etc. on LTM (http://www.ltmpub.freeserve.co.uk/ltmhome.html). Also, all the Sound CDs are now reissued on Renascent. In the US at least, this stuff was pretty obscure. And of course there was plenty of great more well known stuff, JAMC, New Order, Bauhaus, Echo, house music, madchester, SST Records, The Paisley Underground, Hardcore Punk, etc. etc. Any decade is as good or bad as any other since the idea of breaking things into even ten year chunks is pretty contrived. Politically the 80s were a mess tho, I spent much of the reagan years convinced we would all die in a big nuclear war. Now it doesn't seem so imminent, even with all the new problems we have. Or maybe I just don;t care any more? i dunno.

My hunch is that a large proportion of what was good "hit the charts" in the 80s in almost every genre bar indie and hip-hop. But as the Dirty Vicar suggests some of our perceptions are warped by this being the era we grew up in. I was 7-17 during the 80s, which is likely to have a huge effect on my perception of the era.

Freaky Trigger has been criticised, for instance, for being anti- indie and is has been suggested that 'we' view indie in the 80s with disdain. Quite the reverse - its my romanticising of 80s indie and what it achieved that leads me to my disgust with 90s and 00s indie, I fear.

Andy, I challenge you to pull out any of the Comsat Angels' first three albums and tell me they were just using the synth to "try to sound 'current'"--it's a textural device, just like ye olde geetarre.

Clarke -- I reckon you're addressing Lookout! Andy but this Andy needn't pull those records out as they're almost always in front of me hehe. It wasn't 'til rekkid number four that they were conscious about being current.

Indeed I was talking to Lookout! Andy... I seem to remember you having glowingly reviewed those first three LPs on AllMusic, Mr. K. ;- ) Is it just me, or are the CD reissues of those godheads absolutely ridiculously hard-to-find? I swear I'll find 'em... oneday.

You had to be there or something, Clarke. ;-) Worse comes to worse, someone can burn you copies, likely.

Didn't realize the value of those RPM editions until I e*a*'d dupe copies when the missus and I merged our collections. Shazam! Something tells me those will be reissued again with more better sound within the not-so-distant future. But who really knows really? After all, I'm still waiting for that package from the Netherlands with my fucking Sound reissues.

Allegedly those would have been shipped this week. At least that's what I heard about mine...

And for the hell of it, just did a compare/contrast with the Comsats original and the Silkworm remake of "Our Secret." Good stuff both, I say.

Wow, Andy, that would really pump my nads. The vinyl really does sound wonderful - my copies are all in pretty great shape, and the bass is HUGE, warm, endlessly listenable. Still, I'd like a portable version that I don't have to treat like crystal, and more importantly, I'd like those extra tracks! I've been told to be patient with reissues - that more often than not records *do* get reissued in time. Maybe what with this post-punk revival and all...

Those Comsats RPM CDs DO turn up from time to time - check Gemm, e- bay, Netsounds etc. The prices don't seem too bad either.

Yeah, yeah, Sean - 1985 was also the year of "Be Yourself Tonight", "Songs From The Big Chair" and "Cupid & Psyche", not to mention "White Wedding", "We Close Our Eyes", "Cloudbusting", "Into The Groove", "You Spin Me Round", "West End Girls", etc, etc. Wonderful records all. Still pop's worst year ever tho'.

Freaky Trigger has been criticised, for instance, for being anti- indie and is has been suggested that 'we' view indie in the 80s with disdain. Quite the reverse - its my romanticising of 80s indie and what it achieved that leads me to my disgust with 90s and 00s indie, I fear.

this line is funny, as it's basically what ageing hippies say about the sixties - man, we did rock music way better back then, yeah.

I'm not saying your opinions are incorrect, but it does suggest that the 1980s are becoming the 1960s.

Yeah but all the aging indie kids 'got into drum and bass' in the 90s whereas all the aging hippies 'got into capitalism' in the 80s. Maybe these are the same thing though. It's particularly self-defeating, my attitude, because I wasn't even listening to indie for 9/10 of the 80s.

hey, i'm waiting for those Sound re-issues too. But I just ordered them. Is Renascent in the UK or elsewhere. I thought there was a chance they might d comsat reissues too. But then I have the first 3 LPS already...

Renascent, the label that has put them out, is in the UK, but I ordered mine from the Red Sun shop in the Netherlands. I probably should have gone through Renascent, but I think it was Red Sun who had the pre-order setup earlier. I can't completely remember because it WAS OH SO LONG AGO.

Speaking of '85, that was also the year of the Sound's Heads and Hearts, the Volcano Suns' Bright Orange Years, some Propaganda things (I thinX0r), Prince's Around the World in a Day, Sheila E.'s Romance 1600 ("A Love Bizarre" -- YEAAAAH!!!!), Savage Republic's Ceremonial, Shriekback's Oil and Gold, Effigies' Fly on a Wire, Naked Raygun's All Rise, and let's not 4get the almighty (cough) Power Station. Of course I listened to the last one and Prince the most then.

Word on the Sound re-issues is that they're finally available, so should be with you soon.

It was a great era for: record labels (Factory, ztt, Def-Jam, Tommy Boy, Rough Trade, Mute, Rhythm King, DJ International, ffrr); producers: (Bobby Orlando, Arthur Baker, Patrik Cowley, Stock Aitken Waterman, Rick Rubin, Martin Rushent, Shep Pettibone, Jam & Lewis, Todd Terry); plus sparks of genius in: sleeve design (Peter Saville), management (Tom Watkins), costume (Gaultier's conical bra for Madonna), sleeve notes (Paul Morley). compilation albums (streetsounds' 'electro' series; the 'Now that's...' series - if you're old enough to remember their predecessors - the 'Top of the Pops' series you'll know what I mean).

To be fundamental, it was: 12" singles not LPs; remixes not radio versions; clubs not gigs; glossy magazines not inkie weeklies.

It was a crap era for boys with guitars but who gave a fuck about them!

Yeah but all the aging indie kids 'got into drum and bass' in the 90s whereas all the aging hippies 'got into capitalism' in the 80s.

I always knew people who 'got into drum and bass' in the 90s were scum, but to learn that they are indie traitors as well - this disgusts me.

Back to the original point - it does seem a bit that when people talk about '80s music' they essentially mean the new romantics and what Americans call haircut bands. They don't really mean Public Enemy or Spacemen 3.

But then, the kind of people who go to '80s nostalgia nights aren't really going to remember Public Enemy or Spacemen 3. However - and here is a further question - do '80s nostalgia nights sell to people who remember the 80s or to people who have a manufactured memory of them?

Young girl's e-mail address is whacked, by the way.

Random Thoughts From an American perspective I think the label New Romantic has relevence only in Britain. Creators of house and techno have said that synth-pop bands were a major influence on their music a point that seems to be overlooked by those claiming that these musical genres were the best of that time period.

My Sound CDs showed up today! They look great...