Early 80s: golden age of music on par with the 1960s circa The Beatles?

[Darren Dirt]

Early 80s: golden age of music on par with the 1960s circa The Beatles?

The early 80s is quite simply the golden age of pop/rock music since the Beatles revolution. New songs, new groups came up everyday; distinctive new styles - synth pop, new romanctics, reggae rock - arose; one-hit wonders abounded; MTV was born. The bassists and drummers played their instruments as if they were solo instruments (e.g. Mich Karn/Steve Jansen of Japan, Peter Hook/Stephen Morris of New Order, Adam Clayton/Larry Mullens Jr of U2). The guitarists invented new ways of playing (e.g. The Edge of U2, Andy Summers of Police) just when you thought Hendrix, Clapton, Page et al had exhausted all possibilities. Not to forget the deadpan singing (e.g. Phil Oakey of Human League, Tom Bailey of Thomson Twins, and, the ultimate, Ian Curtis of Joy Division). The New Wave styles were so pervasive that even the mainstream mega-artists joined in ("Owner of a Lonely Heart"; "Another Brick in the Wall, pt 2"; "Undercover of the Night", etc).

What made the 80s New Wave music so great is that, amid all the new styles, it possessed the two critical elements of all good music: a good melody and a good beat. The New Wave artists pushed the dance-beat to the absolute heights without forgetting the basis of a good melody. Their music was such a joy to listen to. During those years, there were so many hits and great albums coming out every week that it was impossible to take them all in. These days I've been searching for the albums of those 80s groups that somehow I didn't have the time to listen to, e.g. The Fixx, XTC, B52s, etc. More often than not, I have been pleasantly surprised. They were non-hits during their days, but they are still miles better than the junks these days. Whereas pop songs consisted of good singing and playing from the 50s to the 80s, they have now been reduced to talking and copying.

Thoughts?


(quote is from Amazon discussion)

[Mr. Analog]

Snappy bubble pop you can hum will stick out, it's what makes pop music work.

I mean, you can hum "Eye of the Tiger" and people will immediately pick up on it, just as they will for some 60s tunes (still!).

It kind of weirds me out that people find the 80s all retro and cool... now I know how my parents felt in the 90s when the 60s was "in".

[Tonnica]

Comparing up the 80's to to the phenomena of the Beatles is a bit of a sticky wicket but as the poster points out it introduced many new genres and hits. Music videos were technically introduced in the 70's but eh. MTV was known for it's run in the 80's back when it was watchable and played music videos.

"Eye of the Tiger"

AGH I've had that stuck in my head all week!

Some of the old stuff from the 80's never really goes away. I've recently been taking another look at Devo, Oingo Boingo, Art of Noise, and Technotronic. I was smacking my forehead over how much I had really passed over or forgotten about that's fantastic. I think I've listened to everything Devo ever put out over the past two days because coming back to it I found I like it more than ever before.

A few other people I know are looking up Devo too, but that's partly from the Dell commercial and partly from sideline conversations about 80's retro.

Check out the Dell ad that uses Devo's relatively new release Watch Us Work It. Years later and they still got it.

Or how about a blast to the past with Spin That Wheel. The particularly interesting thing with this song is there's drug references and swearing yet it could be considered one of the cleaner rap songs of it's time (the version used in the TMNT movie had the weed reference removed). There aren't many songs that come out these days that sound like this, huh? Or are there?

Listen to the beat and consider the use of samples. This is rap on top of what would become better known as house. It's not that there's a lack of good music these days. It seems to me that more consolidated genres in the 80's fragmented into more niche genres and it can be harder to spot what you like.

...I think I forgot actually make my main point. I think I was headed to "there's great music no matter what the era, and yes the 80's were pretty awesome amongst all the bad bits". Back to listening.

Everybody it's a good thing
Everybody wants a good thing
Everybody ain't it true that
Everybody's looking for the same thing
Ain't it true there's just no doubt
There's some things that you can't do without
And that's good!

[Mr. Analog]

I think a big part of the early 80s sound was how dominant certain things were. You had the post-punk rock n' roll sounds of the 50s mingling with new and affordable technology coming over from Japan. The heavy orchestration of the 70s sound was replaced by a much more raw sound (usually supported by the Yamaha DX-7, but that's another story).

[Darren Dirt]

To me, the 1980s (and to a lesser extent, the first quarter of the 1990s) was the LAST era of the music industry where it was possible to have mainstream success and still be "experimenting" to some degree. Sure, it was a product, and the mainstream audience was basically told what to listen to via the "rotation", but perhaps due to the increased power in technology, the overall positive attitude in the TV/Film culture (i.e. "A Very Special..." on basically every sitcom, American-Hero-Saves-The-Day in basically every movie) the music seemed to be uplifting and goofy and just FUN. And it SOLD. So it kept coming out, creative modifications of the previous month's creative mashups of genres that had previously been isolated and so... music was whatever the musicians and the audience wanted it to be.

Sure we got "Boy Bands" out of that free and too-upbeat-to-last-forever culture, but the South Park "Finger Bang" episode balanced out that evil imo ... just barely.

Oh, and the music of today is kinda coming back that way, the mid-1990s to basically last year or so was (overall) bright neon suckage that all sounded the same and was so clearly a PRODUCT that I would frequently recall a certain line of dialogue spoken by Ed Begley Jr. in "She-Devil" ... but perhaps because of Obamamania, perhaps in retaliation for Bush hatred and recession fear, the creative artists are willing to be... creative again. And selling it directly to the audience thru the internets, no less -- I'm hoping for another 80s avalanche of FUN again!

[Mr. Analog]

I guess it depends on what you consider big commercial success, I mean I'm really anticipating the Beastie Boys upcoming release (Tadlock's Glasses). The band is calling it "experimental" and when they say stuff like that you usually get an instant classic (Paul's Boutique).

Recently I purchased The Mix Up, which is a brilliant post-Funk jazz offering, not what you'd expect from a band that made it's money off of catchy bull@%&#.

I think there's innovation, just it's not in the spotlight right now (which is a shame).

[Lazybones]

"Eye of the Tiger" ha, Rocky III was on TV a few nights ago and that song was in it.

There are lots of songs from the 80s that are easy to listen to even today, were others are VERY dated. I go with the theory that there are HITS and GREAT songs made all the time, along with varying amounts of filler. Sometimes people just remember the filler.

As much of a FREAK Michael Jackson turned out to be you have to admit he released some amazing music in the 80s that is still great, however you may feel dirty for admitting it these days.

[Darren Dirt]

Recently I purchased The Mix Up, which is a brilliant post-Funk jazz offering, not what you'd expect from a band that made it's money off of catchy bull@%&#.

Hey! Don't knocked the Futurama regs.





seriously, cool...

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Having long since shed their image as hip-hop's clown princes, the Beastie Boys now bring what feels like their emeritus recording, a celebratory instrumental memoir of all of the influences (except punk) that brought them to their secure place among hip-hop's fickle elite. The party opens with the aptly titled "B for My Name," its plodding bounce staking claim to the mid-tempo path the album treads almost throughout. "14th St. Break" picks up the pace, especially in the auxiliary percussion breakdown, complete with rally whistle. Then, beginning with "Suco de Tangerina," the album drops into a deep groove cut from dub- and dancehall-tinged ostinati that carry through a full third of its tracks. Among these, "The Gala Event" suffers from a lack of developmental motion that characterizes many of these tracks, but highlights still abound. "Off the Grid," for example, departs from the otherwise unbreakable chill and rips the proceedings wide open, blooming again and again in a series of pulsing riffs that celebrate the very institution of the instrumental groove. More than 20 years since Licensed to Ill took a long, irreverent piss into the mainstream, it seems you can still fight for your right to party.

Product Description
The Mix-Up is Beastie Boys' first-ever full album of all-new instrumental material. The follow-up to 2004's To The 5 Boroughs, The Mix-Up features Diamond, Horovitz and Yauch back on drums, guitar and bass, with able assistance from Keyboard Money Mark and percussionist Alfredo Ortiz, on 12 brand new wordless, sample-less, scratchless originals. Sure to please fans of the instrumental cuts from Check Your Head and Ill Communication and the cult hit compilation album made up largely of those tracks, The In Sound From Way Out!, The Mix-Up finds NYC's favorite sons drawing on one of their arsenal's primary strengths and pushing it into bold new directions.

[Darren Dirt]

"VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders"
http://gunny93.blogspot.com/2008/02/that-techno-rock-you-guys-listen-to-is.html


Enjoy your personal trip down Wish-I-don't-remember-most-of-these Lane.

[Mr. Analog]

Recently I purchased The Mix Up, which is a brilliant post-Funk jazz offering, not what you'd expect from a band that made it's money off of catchy bull@%&#.

Hey! Don't knocked the Futurama regs.

An quote from MCA

@%&# "Brass Monkey"! None of that fast-rapping commercial @%&#!

Licensed to Ill is a great album no doubt, but the band had so much more to explore than just one-hit-wonder type top 40 crap.

My favourite album is Hello Nasty which is a great combination of catchy tunes and way out instrumentals.

It's got a funky beat and I can BUG OUT to it

[Thorin]

So I read a news article on the CBC website and then went to click an interesting link on the side and missed.  I ended up at a music news article discussing bouncy pop music.  They were nice enough to link to YouTube videos of the artists they were discussing.

Suffice it to say that I now have downloaded both Lily Allen albums and am listening to them.  It's definitely bouncy pop music with, at times, rather jarring lyrics.  Not at all what I'd normally listen to, but catchy and with mostly interesting little stories in the lyrics.  And not at all like Beastie Boys

Anyway, my thought on the matter of "good music" is that as we get older we spend less time looking for good music while at the same time becoming more jaded (having "heard it all before"), therefore we naturally tend to think that music from x years ago was better than it is these days.

[Tonnica]

Anyway, my thought on the matter of "good music" is that as we get older we spend less time looking for good music while at the same time becoming more jaded (having "heard it all before"), therefore we naturally tend to think that music from x years ago was better than it is these days.

This is why I wish Pandora was still available or will become available again soon in Canada. It was a great way to discover newer music and re-ignite the love of exploring genres.

My solution to the stagnation of my music collection is to share what I like between friends using Half Life DJ. I'll hear all sorts of new and old music while playing games. This is probably breaking all sorts of copyright rule but it also has me buying music. It's got me in to Phenomonauts, Mindless Self Indulgence, The Killers, Dropkick Murphys, and Chromeo. It's also got me back in to Max Raabe, Joe Satriani, Muse, and all the older stuff I used to listen to. My world has been a lot less silent lately.

[Darren Dirt]

This is why I wish Pandora was still available or will become available again soon in Canada. It was a great way to discover newer music and re-ignite the love of exploring genres.

years ago, the website* "http://www.newmusiccanada.com/" got me checking out the various sub-genres within "Electronica". Via that I found out sometimes I'm actually in the mood for the complexities of IDM, but rarely Jungle... and eventually I found http://di.fm/ for my variety-but-familiarity need. http://www.somafm.com/ sometimes as well.



*NMC's new URL (which does an annoying redirect thus losing your querystring parameters )
http://radio3.cbc.ca/nmc/genre.aspx?genreid=28

[Lazybones]

I use last.fm on and off to look for new stuff, but most NEW music I get into these days are local bands features on the radio.

You have Sonic in Edmonton and out here there is a Victoria radio station called TheZone that has the same format. Modern Rock with lots of local music in the mix.

iTunes also has a recommendation engine in it now that is yet another source of finding new music.

[Darren Dirt]

You have Sonic in Edmonton and out here there is a Victoria radio station called TheZone that has the same format. Modern Rock with lots of local music in the mix.

The other day I was hit with the realization that at least 2 or 3 songs I like hearing on the air are from "Ten Second Epic", once a Sonic "band of the month". Local music scene, encouraging to see it encouraged by the local radio stations...