Random Thoughts

[telecode 101]

I really don't get the whole 80s retro revival obsession thing. It really was a shitty decade. All I remember was the shoulder pads and big hair. And Reagan.

 

 

[Wibbles]

21 minutes ago, telecode 101 said:

All I remember was the shoulder pads and big hair.

That was a tiny part of the 80s. It was a fantastic decade for music.

 

[telecode 101]

1 hour ago, Wibbles said:

That was a tiny part of the 80s. It was a fantastic decade for music.

 

I watched that BBC synth show. It's cool but I am not sure if they are maybe sensationalizing  a very niche music for a modern audience that is into 80s retro. I was there and I can tell you for a fact the Human League, Cure, New Order and Depeche Mode were not bands lots of people listened to. I think it's worth looking at the collection of songs on soundtrack compilations to get a better gauge of what mainstream culture was like back then and then look closely at how the collection of artists changes over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Officer_and_a_Gentleman#Track_Listing_(Original_Record)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashdance_(soundtrack)#Track_listing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gun_(soundtrack)#Track_listing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who's_That_Girl_(soundtrack)#Track_listing

(Note sure about the last one as that was basically a big Madonna promo vehicle. )

The  great bands and great albums that stood  the test of time were  far and between. As a little kid listening to pop music and popular culture in early to mid 80s .. what I remember was the adults (my parents) were still partying it up to lots of established acts that came out of the late 70s disco days.. as per below. So you were exposed to that sort of stuff as a kid... and of course MJ and other big mainstream culture bands. I think things changed with Live Aid as it catapulted a lot of old bands into the spotlight and into mainstream consciousness. I remember as a teen that being the first time I saw what members of the Rolling Stones, Who  and Led Zeppelin looked like and I was like  .." okay.. so what the big deal with these guys? What's so great about them -- I don't get it." And then Pete Townsend falls flat on his ***** on stage LOL!! 

It wasn't until a few years later when I started delving into their back catalog as the major record companies started re-releasing the old catalog that I figure it out.

For me a lot of 80s was big hair and shoulder pads

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by telecode 101

[Wibbles]

2 hours ago, telecode 101 said:

I was there and I can tell you for a fact the Human League, Cure, New Order and Depeche Mode were not bands lots of people listened to.

That's plain not true. Unless people bought their records and never played them. Or never turned on their radio. Or never watched Top of the Pops.

You're forgetting there is a world beyond the US.

Besides what is mainstream culture has no bearing on the quality of what is non-mainstream culture.

[telecode 101]

1 minute ago, Wibbles said:

That's plain not true. Unless people bought their records and never played them. Or never turned on their radio. Or never watched Top of the Pops.

You're forgetting there is a world beyond the US.

Besides what is mainstream culture has no bearing on the quality of what is non-mainstream culture.

I don't believe you can apply term "quality" to culture or music. Its all personal taste.

[craigb]

Well, there's only two kinds of music:  Good music and bad music, where good music is the stuff I like (quite a bit actually) and the rest is anything I don't like! 😁

I also had a LOT more fun in the 80's (and into the early 90's) than in the other five decades I've been alive. 😎

[Notes_Norton]

21 hours ago, craigb said:

Well, there's only two kinds of music:  Good music and bad music, where good music is the stuff I like (quite a bit actually) and the rest is anything I don't like! 😁

I also had a LOT more fun in the 80's (and into the early 90's) than in the other five decades I've been alive. 😎

I agree, but usually put it this way:

There are two kinds of music; Music I like and music made for someone else's ears.

And I don't know why I like what I like. I'm a rare sax player who doesn't care for almost all of what John Coltrane played. I can analyze it, and realize the absolute genius in what he did, but it just does not speak to me. I'm more of a Stan Getz or Stanley Turrentine appreciator.

Bach, Brahms and Mozart are the same. I can see the genius, and how they changed music, but most of what they wrote doesn't move me. But much of what Dvorak, Shastakovitch, Suk, Prokofief, De Falla, Saint-Saëns, and Tchaikovsky wrote thrills me.

I love Muddy Waters' music, but John Lee Hooker bores me.

I could go on in genre after genre. I tried to figure out why I like what I like, and why what I don't like doesn't hold my interest, but eventually I gave up. I just like what I like.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

[hockeyjx]

That decade produced so much memorable music that fashion doesn't matter. There are still so many 80's songs that still have legs today ...the test of time is the best test of all IMO.

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by hockeyjx

[Rain]

On 12/21/2022 at 4:26 AM, telecode 101 said:

I really don't get the whole 80s retro revival obsession thing.

Back in the 70's and  80's, people looked back on the 50's.
In the 90's and 00's, the 60's and 70's were in.
Now it's the 80's and 90's turn (you may have heard that they're doing a That 90's Show).

Just the usual - 40-50 something looking back on their golden years and making them fashionable.  For a lot of people I guess, tastes are settled by the time they reach their early 20's.

Personally, I'm fond on the 70's and very early 80's (the previous decade always lingers for a few years into the next). But I find lots of things that I like musically in every decade, although not as much in the late 10' and 20's. I am an old grumpy man, now.

My reflex would be to say that I am not a huge fan of the 80's globally, although time has made a lot of things more palatable. I had no taste for mainstream music back then - for me it was about Metallica, Celtic Frost, Slayer, Voivod, and all those guys. And the only movies I cared about were horror movies, so I'd never seen most of the big popular movies of the 80's until very recently - things like The Breakfast Club, The Goonies, Ferris Bueler and all that commercial stuff...

I already thought fashion sucked back then so I dressed all black and wore black jeans and t-shirts or shirts.  Some things like simplicity and the colour black never go out of fashion. 

Still, after all these years, even through the mainstream culture, I can get a glimpse and a taste of the things that I enjoyed during those years.

One thing I do remember is that movies and tv shows always gave a very poor representation of "alternative" cultures. So if Hollywood made a movie with some youth listening to heavy metal or punk (usually a caricature of them), they typically* didn't secure the rights to actual metal music we liked. They'd pay some guy to write a generic approximation that sucked hard.

That's one of the reasons I was so blown away when I watched The Crow and heard the soundtrack the first time - these were bands that I loved, like Nine Inch Nails, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Cure.  No generic copies. Things had started to change.

 

 

*There were rare exceptions of course.

Edited December 24, 2022 by Rain

[pwal³]

[Notes_Norton]

I recall reading that in the early days, the Catholic church decided anything with a Tritone interval was "The Devil's Music". So that not only made diminished chords illegal, but also dominant 7ths.

In my big sister's era, any form of Rock 'n Roll was "The Devil's Music."

So I guess each generation decides which new genre is the devil's music. Is the Devil in the details?

 

Notes ♫

[pwal³]

yeah the (any) church is always about controlling stuff, the devil - and god - is always in the deets... dominant 7ths mmmmm

[telecode 101]

6 hours ago, Rain said:

Back in the 70's and  80's, people looked back on the 50's.
In the 90's and 00's, the 60's and 70's were in.
Now it's the 80's and 90's turn (you may have heard that they're doing a That 90's Show).

Just the usual - 40-50 something looking back on their golden years and making them fashionable.  For a lot of people I guess, tastes are settled by the time they reach their early 20's.

Personally, I'm fond on the 70's and very early 80's (the previous decade always lingers for a few years into the next). But I find lots of things that I like musically in every decade, although not as much in the late 10' and 20's. I am an old grumpy man, now.

My reflex would be to say that I am not a huge fan of the 80's globally, although time has made a lot of things more palatable. I had no taste for mainstream music back then - for me it was about Metallica, Celtic Frost, Slayer, Voivod, and all those guys. And the only movies I cared about were horror movies, so I'd never seen most of the big popular movies of the 80's until very recently - things like The Breakfast Club, The Goonies, Ferris Bueler and all that commercial stuff...

I already thought fashion sucked back then so I dressed all black and wore black jeans and t-shirts or shirts.  Some things like simplicity and the colour black never go out of fashion. 

Still, after all these years, even through the mainstream culture, I can get a glimpse and a taste of the things that I enjoyed during those years.

One thing I do remember is that movies and tv shows always gave a very poor representation of "alternative" cultures. So if Hollywood made a movie with some youth listening to heavy metal or punk (usually a caricature of them), they typically* didn't secure the rights to actual metal music we liked. They'd pay some guy to write a generic approximation that sucked hard.

That's one of the reasons I was so blown away when I watched The Crow and heard the soundtrack the first time - these were bands that I loved, like Nine Inch Nails, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Cure.  No generic copies. Things had started to change.

 

 

*There were rare exceptions of course.

I agree for the most part. Though in my case I don't think my tastes settled by my 20s. Due to the early 90s recession and record stores going out of business, I wound up going around and buying up 1,000s of tapes and LPs that they were all getting rid of and selling for $1 for 4,  and as a result greatly expanded by musical vocabulary. I started getting into things like Mahavishnu orchestra and Weather Report and so on in the early 90s and thing went on from there. But there are some artists whom captured by tastes when I was 15 or 16 and I have remained a life long fan of them -- Ry Cooder and Rolling Stones and so on.  A lot of the "pop" acts that I was eposed to in my teens I avoid. Queen was one. They had just gotten on the charts with The Works and were all over Radio .. and I remained a fan thru to the  The Miracle record .. and to today I get mental jerks when I hear their music. It just  reminds me of my 15 year old self and cheese 80s rock. Same with Bon Jovi and others. But not AC/DC for some reason.

I too am a much bigger fan of 70s rock music and styles even thought I wasn't exposed to it until much later in life. But  my parents didn't think to the 70s bands I got into .. they mostly listened to crappy disco and shit Ferrari band. In the 90s I was a fake alternative goth. I mostly was in it because my friends were hard core Ministry and NIN fans.. but I would go home and play Todd Rundgren and Utopia records all day long. 

There was this forgotten 80s movie which depicted an alternative club and that stayed with me forever. I even think a lot of the alternative clubs I used to go to in Toronto in the 90s looked exactly like this. There are no alternative clubs in Toronto anymore. Just a crappy retro 80s goth night at this swanky restaurant place that happens once every other month. Toronto is all coffee shops and over priced millennial swanky restaurants with Drake raptors fans now.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by telecode 101

[Rain]

20 hours ago, telecode 101 said:

I agree for the most part. Though in my case I don't think my tastes settled by my 20s. Due to the early 90s recession and record stores going out of business, I wound up going around and buying up 1,000s of tapes and LPs that they were all getting rid of and selling for $1 for 4,  and as a result greatly expanded by musical vocabulary. I started getting into things like Mahavishnu orchestra and Weather Report and so on in the early 90s and thing went on from there. But there are some artists whom captured by tastes when I was 15 or 16 and I have remained a life long fan of them -- Ry Cooder and Rolling Stones and so on.  A lot of the "pop" acts that I was eposed to in my teens I avoid. Queen was one. They had just gotten on the charts with The Works and were all over Radio .. and I remained a fan thru to the  The Miracle record .. and to today I get mental jerks when I hear their music. It just  reminds me of my 15 year old self and cheese 80s rock. Same with Bon Jovi and others. But not AC/DC for some reason.

I too am a much bigger fan of 70s rock music and styles even thought I wasn't exposed to it until much later in life. But  my parents didn't think to the 70s bands I got into .. they mostly listened to crappy disco and shit Ferrari band. In the 90s I was a fake alternative goth. I mostly was in it because my friends were hard core Ministry and NIN fans.. but I would go home and play Todd Rundgren and Utopia records all day long. 

There was this forgotten 80s movie which depicted an alternative club and that stayed with me forever. I even think a lot of the alternative clubs I used to go to in Toronto in the 90s looked exactly like this. There are no alternative clubs in Toronto anymore. Just a crappy retro 80s goth night at this swanky restaurant place that happens once every other month. Toronto is all coffee shops and over priced millennial swanky restaurants with Drake raptors fans now.

 

 

 

 

 

Never had a chance to visit Toronto, unfortunately. As a Leafs fan, I would very much like to, but I guess what I would actually like to see would be the old Maple Leafs Garden and the city the way it used to be. The vision I get through tv shows filmed in Toronto leaves me with an impression that matches your description of it.

I guess a lot of places went though a similar process in recent decades. When I arrived in Quebec City in 2001, there were always punks and goths hanging at Square D'Youville, and there were all those cool bars down on St-Jean. Within a few years, it lost all its grit and slowly became a very sterile place. By the time I left in 2010, it had been completely gentrified, with the occasional goth night organized by old timers in location with no real vibe at all. From what I heard, one of them actually takes place in a tiny restaurant, too... Weird.

So I completely get what you mean.