The 80's

[SR]

So, CNN has followed up their 60's serial doc with one on the 80's to premier at the end of the month. I am really looking forward to it as the 80's was the decade where I spent my life from the age of 14 to 24....very impressionable years to put it mildly. I know there are a few (very few) people here who spent the decade 'growing up....or down in my case, but these CNN ads have struck a nostalgic chord for me. I spent the decade immersed in music, drugs, literature, and never ending meanderings through the bowels of Los Angeles subculture. The CNN add has a snapshot of images diverse enough to attract interest....politics, music, art, etc.....the Robert Palmer vid with the hypnotic vixens caught my eye and happened to remind me that we were clobbered with slightly imaginative, if poppy music like the Plasmatics, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, etc that were unavoidable as a backdrop to essentially a kids life. U2, The Clash, RHCP, G&R, X, and eventually Jane's elevated the game and as the timeline went made me feel like I was evolving too as did the art/music.

Anyways, I post this as a reminder of the fluff and fun we were forced to endure and having just revisited it I must say that this is far sexier than any twerks orr wardrobe malfunction I've seen in the more recent past.

AARP members.....any thoughts/memories?

[Squee]

Yeah- SR count me in the AARP group lmao -
I was 13-23 during those times but was in San Francisco and spent my decade much the same as you completely immersed in it all

Obsessed with Iron Maiden in 1980, thrilled with Ozzy's release of BofOz & then truly Entranced with the MTV era...Madonna was fascinating & I enjoyed her shock factor on the older generation, Berlin was cool .... Journey videos galore ... so much to hear & be introduced to in a way never before ... everything in music was at all ends of the spectrum and all the fluff you mentioned ... then at 15 discovering the evolving sounds of the day up here in Northern California- metal underground...oh the memories...the cassette tape demos being passed around friend to friend prior to album releases were like GOLD!
I saw so much music history happening right before my very eyes at the clubs here for only a few dollars each - or added to "the list" to get in for free by friends in the bands.
Exodus, Metallica, Megadeth, Motley Crew, Vicious Rumors, Death Angel,Leagacy/Testament
And the parties afterwards- oh the parties! and Hell House -
Thank god for having an older brother who was part of the "scene" who let me tag along and a mother that did not know better!
Yes I get nostalgic for the 80's. A lot... getting turned onto Jane's by a metal musician I was dating was a life changing moment for me.
Ohhhhhhhhh the stories I could tell.

[SR]

The metal scene...how could I forget? And the cock rock set as well. In LA I stayed clear of the Sunset Strip when RATT and Poison were around.

The Cure, Prince, Michael Jackson, The Police, G&R, Public Enemy, NWA, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, Black Flag, DK, X, The Minutemen all hit in the 80's.....huge influences. And of course Bowie was still humming along. But film too....Raging Bull, The Elephant Man, Amadeus, and Gandhi were all released.....for me, still some of the best movies ever.

As for the parties, yup. Totally different time. I remember doing coke on the tables in Trader Vics without a concern. And the after hours clubs were just vulgar in decadence....anything went and porn stars came to life to visit them in the wee hours. I dated a couple....we were lost.

It's just crazy odd looking back....it feels like a different lifetime....SO long ago it was.

[Artemis]

Oh man, I had a long thing written but I got booted.

I too am an AARP member...13-23.

Okay, take two..


Music was a huge part of my life. I discovered a lot of really great music and went to many concerts in the 80s.
I grew up in Toronto(midtown) which had some diversity, but mostly it was a lot of rock. There was a pretty good little punk and alternative scene happening. This was before "alternative" became "alternative mainstream".

My early music..

-Stones, Who, Doors, Hendrix,Talking Heads,Bowie, Bob Marley,The Cars, XTC, Gary Numan,Boomtown Rats,Bob Marley Sex Pistols, Clash,,Lene Lovich,Nina Hagen,Depeche Mode, Human Leaugue,OMD,Spandau Ballet,Echo and the Bunnymen, Billy Brag, The Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees,T Rex,Grace Jones,Roxy Music, Kate Bush, Simple Minds, China Crisis, This Mortal Coil, The Church, Prince,Violent Femmes,Tom Waites, The Cramps,The Cult, Laurie Anderson, plus many more- reggae and early rap. I loved Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five. When I heard The Message for the first time, I thought it was so powerful and cool. I bought the album immediately. None of my friends could stand it though. I never got into stuff like Bon Jovie, Journey, Poison, Def Leopard, etc.

-There was some interesting hair going on in the 80s. I had a few different styles and colours, as well as extensions and dreads( I grew my own after a bad perm. I wanted to have ringlets but it look more like a matted mess) I never had a mohawk or shaved head.

-In the early to mid 80s , I remember kids were into styles like mod, skinhead and punk. Goth wasn't a thing yet. They would have been under the punk group. Also, looking androgynous was a trend for awhile.

-How we listen to music was starting to change with the Sony Walkman. I had one. I think it was over $200, which was quite expensive then. Shortly after, CDs were starting to appear in more and more record shops. Speaking of record shops, I remember going to the independent stores to read the British music magazines and ask about the latest imports.

- People were really into vintage clothing and army surplus stuff. Most people had a World Famous bag too. Doc Martens were popular as well. D

-The decline of the pinball arcade was starting. Video games started to take over with Asteroids, Galaga(my fave) Pac Man, Mario Brothers, and whatever else was popular.

-Coffee culture was changing too. I had a part-time job at a Second Cup(Canadian version of Starbucks). There were 6 choices(decaf,flavour, strong, medium, mild), espresso, cappucino, and cafe latte. People also had to fix their own coffee. Usually the counter person would add the cream/milk and sugar for you when you ordered. It took awhile to convince people to spend more money for a cup of coffee.

-Ronald Reagan, Free Trade Agreement(CANAMEX),Acid Rain, AIDS, Africa,collapse of Communism, fall of Berlin Wall,Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,war on drugs,Ghetto blasters/boom boxes, break dancing, aerobics

-Movies- The Hunger,Diva,Blue Velvet,Betty Blue, Pretty in Pink,Breakfast Club,Heathers,Sixteen Candles, The Terminator,Labarynth,The Lost Boys,Fast Times at Ridgemount High, Rock N Roll High School. Nightmare on Elm Street,Halloween,Friday the 13th, Square Pegs (tv show)

-Like the others in the AARP club, I experiemnted with some drugs- weed,MDA,acid, pills, cocain. Oh, and drinking of course

I think the 80s was an interesting decade with a lot of change. Not just personal change, growing from a teenager to an adult, but world wide. Looking back on that time, I feel that I had a lot of freedom from my parents. My friends and I seemed to have few restrictions. It seemed that we took care of more things on our own than involving our parents.I guess our parents were really trusting and clueless.

So my post ended up being really long anyway..

A few concert stubs I still have from that decade..






The faded one is The Clash 1982







My friend and I- '84 or '85. I had a Laurie Anderson hairdo going on there.

[SR]

Nice, thanks. Detached from the thread and the 80's but extended from it.....I saw Prince's setlist from Toronto last night and both salivated and gagged. Amazing.

The walk-man.....yes, had one but also remember the cassettes we would record FM concerts on (Chrome I think). They were 90, 120 ,and 180 minute if I remember correctly.

And I am patiently waiting on my AARP invite....turn 50 in late May.

[kv]

Yep I too am an olden....too much to type...the era where fake IDs worked was a bonus for my 80's since I turned 20 in 1990. (That and any asain grocery or liquor store)

[Artemis]

Yep I too am an olden....too much to type...the era where fake IDs worked was a bonus for my 80's since I turned 20 in 1990. (That and any asain grocery or liquor store)

hahaha...fake IDs. When I WAS 17 I had a summer job at a "head shop" (drug paraphenalia) and we sold fake IDs. In addition to that, there was a sex counter where we sold Spanish Fly, Emotion lotion, and Nipple Lick'ems. We also sold a lot of Spandex pants to men who were trying to emulate David Lee Roth and other musicians who wore similar clothing at the time. Funny story about the head shop: I worked with a visually mismatched couple,Dean and Lynn. They were both receiving government benefits and worked at the shop "under the table" for cash. Dean was under 5 feet tall, and his wife, Lynn was like 5'11 or 6 foot. She looked totally square with big glasses and jeans that looked like what we call "mom jeans" today. Dean was a biker guy who wore leathers and had some hard-core biker dudes visit him at the shop fairly regularly. Anyway, he and Lynne were really nice people and really into reggae. They introduced me to stuff like Gregory Isaacs, Jimmy Cliff, Sugar Minott and other reggae artists. That's all good, but the part I haven't mentioned is that they were swingers! They invited me and another girl who worked there,Debbie, to join them at parties they went to. I always declined as did Debbie.

[Pandemonium]

I could write a book about the 80's. Eleventy Billion Pages long. This will be shorter, but not by much.

This was MY decade. I turned 20 on April 19th, 1980 and turned 30 ten years later in '90. IMO, that's the age you work towards your getting life on the path towards a financial and responsible course leading to spouse and family ........or to just enjoy the fuck outta it and worry about little more then holding your job, fast food, pussy and a roof over your head. I... erm, kinda chose the latter. During that time I basically had one fairly well paying job the entire decade in the aerospace industry and had a decent amount of money to burn on concerts, records, cds, movies, stereo gear, partying, dating, doing whatever the fuck I wanted with almost zero sense of responsibility or thought of the future.

In High School, I started keeping a weekly journal at first for no good reason, and later just out of habit. Fortunately, I still have a solid long term memory especially for minutia. Shit like what show did Bono get in a fight with a fan over a white flag? What show did one of my friends get a blow job in the bleachers (Wendy O'Williams, opening for Motorhead, Santa Monica Civic, 1985)? And on and on.

I rented the same big loft apartment most of that decade in a really nice complex that had huge pools and indoor racquetball courts. We'd spend off days getting loaded, grab this expensive VHS camera I had (if it was today, it'd be an iPhone), bring some music gear and boxes (no one had a real drum set) and anything else we thought would be fun to use making "music videos" and go at it 'til most of us puked or passed out. We'd do like 4 or 5 songs in a night, everybody picks one song they like, everyone switches instruments or films every song. We'd play the song on the ghetto blaster and re-sync it better on my 25lb VCR editing deck. This goofy as fuck silent montage video sums up those parties and for me wraps up the 80's in one tidy clip:



The decade pretty much from start to finish was about having fun despite the diminishing threat of nuclear way and the occasional geo-political skirmishes. Despite the beginning whispers of the AIDs epidemic by mid decade, unrestrained, unprotected sex was still the rule of the day. By '88, I kind of lost it and was banging 3-5 different girls a week I'd pick up (or get picked up by), usually at this bar in Newport Beach called ...The Beach Ball.

The 80's is when a *lot* of stuff especially in music and other entertainment kind of peaked, started inbreeding and spawning retarded bastard children and splitting off into all sorts of weird, mutant sub-genres by the end of the decade. During the first few years of the 80's, I kind of refined and recognized distinct things in rock music that I like and didn't like that could be found in equal doses in say, Van Halen's "Mean Street" or The Cramps' "Garbage Man." Around early '81, two friends I rented a huge house and became basically a frat house for all our disparate friends, co-workers, neighbors and soon, major drug dealers. I lasted 6 months before leaving, getting my own loft apt for the next 8+ years.

I feel like there was three distinct eras in the 80's - from pre-1980 through 1983, there was a lot of edgy bands out there pioneering new ground in punk, metal, new wave, etc. The 70's arena rawk dinosaurs like Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, The Eagles, Styx, etc replaced at the beginning of the new decade by Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Prince, the big New Wave Of British Metal Bands, etc by mid-decade. New Wave and "skinny Tie" punkpop from the likes of The Knack, The Cars, Pretenders, Motels, up to more substantial bands like The Clash and U2 made names for themselves.

The old Gods like The Stones and Bowie merely reinvented themselves or traded on their impervious legacy to hold their own and achieve even more success. Meanwhile all sorts of local cult-level genres were popping up with club level bands especially here in SoCal with punkers like X, The Germs, Fear, Social Distortion, Agent Orange and exotic bands from the East Coast and The UK like Bauhaus, The Cramps and Killing Joke all caught my attention.

Around the end of 1983, something I caught on to especially at the '83 US Festival was mainstream rock music was starting again to fall in rote patterns - every guitarist wanted to play guitar like Eddie Van Halen, everyone wanted the cred of a Bruce Springsteen, dance like Michael Jackson and EVERYONE had to make a fucking music video thanks to MTV. Hair got bigger, pants became parachutes, headbands became vogue and cans of hairspray for both men and woman.

The big deal in '85 was Van Halen breaking up and hiring Sammy Hagar and going even more in a pop direction while Dave burned bright for a year and fizzled away. Soon Judas Priest was using drum machines and synth guitars and 3rd gen hair metal bands like Motley Crue led the way for the whole Hollywood glam metal scene to florish. Hard Rock/Metal was turning to shit while giving birth to Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer. Around '86, I was spending a lot of time hanging out and seeing Stiv Bator and his band The Lords Of The New Church who were living in LA and had lost their record deal with Miles Copeland's IRS Records. They would play any and every dive shithole in SoCal and especially Stiv was very accessible (if almost always irresponsibly trashed).

Around this time was when Janes and Guns n' Roses started making themselves known. By '87, U2 became *The* band with the Joshua Tree album and tour and all these bands I used to see in clubs were playing big venues, arenas and even stadium festivals and just losing me in the process. I started making an effort to see more shows at small places like The Roxy and The Whiskey. The Hollywood Palladium and the nearly Palace (now called The Avalon) were my go-to places in the late 80's. I liked clubs so much and getting hammered playing pool I started hanging out (aka trolling for women) every weekend at this hard rock club called The Marquee in Garden Grove (it's now a "Gentlemen's Club") to the point I was asked occasionally to DJ when their regular guy often was a no show.

1989 ended on New Year's Eve when I took this gorgeous stripper out on a double date with my best friend and his wife( who fought a lot) to go see The Cult play the Long Beach Arena. The problem was, my date got so fucked up on my buddy's pot, by the time we pulled into the parking lot, she was barely conscious and didn't want to leave the car. We left her ticket with her and made her cozy in the car and we went in to the show, Before The Cult even came on, my buddy got thrown out of the arena for losing his ticket trying to get us sodas. So his wife and I went through the show together not having a good time. When we finally got back to the car, my date had vomited over the entire interior, my buddy sitting on the hood , no way he wanted to be in there with her. I had to drive that disaster back home in super dense fog doing 10mph on the 405 freeway, all the windows down due to the stench.

1990 was going to be VERY different.

[SR]

Speaking of a good memory for minutia, I remember the events described in your penultimate paragraph. You described them years ago in another thread.

And Stiv....that is funny. The Dead Boys all went in their own direction and seemed to always maintain that "cred" of punk rock. The geo-political climates were very conservative as you allude to. Thatcher, JPII, Reagan, and the softer stance of the Eastern bloc countries combined with the "star wars" and tech boom in military capabilities were just a backdrop for me that old people spoke about incessantly. My thoughts centered around just how stupid all these leaders were as they discussed weapons that were apocalyptic.

I always thought that the politics and the greed of wall st helped usher in bands like Jane's 1.0 as a social revolt.....The Clinton years were close as well.

[SR]

Like visiting a twin brother I haven't seen in decades...