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Posted: June 23 2011 at 00:06
You can't classify music styles via decades. When people say "80s music," they are likely thinking of stuff from around 77-78 to 86-87. (Much like "70s music" could be taken to mean stuff from 67-68 to about 76 and the advent of disco, punk and new wave. Musicians don't all just suddenly change as decades change: "Oh, it's January 1st, 1980. Let's abandon everything we've done up until now, and totally reinvent our music." It doesn't work that way.
In any case, I enjoyed LOTS of music made at that time. The 80s (my 20s) were very rich for me, musically. I found music to be quite diverse then: Cure, Smiths, Clash, The Damned, Fripp, Belew, Bowie, Crimson, Simple Minds, Steel Pulse, U2, Echo & The Bunnymen, XTC, REM, Devo, Stranglers, Jane Siberry, Talk Talk, Talking Heads, Madness, The Specials, English Beat, Ian Dury, The Jam, Psychedelic Furs, Chameleons UK, Police, Ultravox, Japan, Dire Straits, UB40, Cramps, The The, Joe Jackson, Los Lobos, Mental As Anything, Midnight Oil, Shriekback, Lloyd Cole, Robyn Hitchcock, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Elvis Costello, etc, etc, etc.
I vastly preferred all of that to the vacuous disco which predated it. The late 70s to early 80s saw an explosion of original new bands on the airwaves, and on record labels. We danced, partied, had fun, sang along, and grinned a lot.
No, as at any time, it wasn't all good -- but there was PLENTY of good to be found. Commercial radio or one person's mainstream collection does not even scratch the surface.
Edited by Peter - June 23 2011 at 00:43
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy.
Joined: March 08 2007
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Posted: June 22 2011 at 10:50
ExittheLemming wrote:
The 80's - a victory for style over content
I'd say that was the beginning. (And I wouldn't date the start until '83.) While I'm pontificating I'd say that the '90's (esp. later) pulled back from that, but we are once again in full style mode now.
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Posted: June 22 2011 at 10:34
ExittheLemming wrote:
I really meant that the entire mainstream entertainment industry during the 80's appeared to be particularly obsessed with appearance/surface at the expense of content. This manifest itself in cinema,TV and videos - a golden age of the poseur if you will
While it is true for the 80s, it is also true for the 90s and 00s. Nothing much has changed. We target the 80s because that was the big change but 90s being an amazing revival which dispensed of all the flaws of the 80s is a big myth. The obsession with looks remains to date. Refer Friends jokes about Metallica, for example. And what was the whole non descript flannels look about but style ultimately? Only, unlike 70s or 80s, the 90s lacked capacity to dream and impose its own personality. People sought refuge in being as far away from un-cool as possible and that unfortunately rubbed off on mainstream music with generic preferences, lifeless singing devoid of personality and a sore lack of oomph of any kind. Even if the 80s epoch is terribly dated especially in comparison to the decade immediately preceding it, it at least tried to have an epoch of its own, which is more than can be said of the 90s or the next two decades thereafter.
Totally, because every other decade was all about the content and not style/image?
Seriously, the 60's 70's 80's 90's and 2000's all had great bands and lots of trash and pop (and I used "pop" to mean anyone about "making it" or "being big" over music).
Besides the 80's had lots of great stuff! Just some here may not realize it since they can only listen to prog rock. If any decade really sucked it was the 2000s
The human race has really tapped the well dry by this point and ALL genres of music, metal, rap, punk, country are not true to themselves and have gone "pop". Hell even pop is worse now! 13 year olds with rich families are literally being made pop stars, being autotuned to hell and singing about stuff years away from em!
Fair comment and I would concede that as far as music goes there has been plenty of junk and riches in every decade. (It just seems that in some decades the good stuff is much harder to find? maybe I'm lazy)
I really meant that the entire mainstream entertainment industry during the 80's appeared to be particularly obsessed with appearance/surface at the expense of content. This manifest itself in cinema,TV and videos - a golden age of the poseur if you will
Just another point here to make about the 80's. I remember several times as I traveled with bands in the 80's pulling off a Weather Report, Jean Luc Ponty, or Brecker Brothers instrumental in front of a packed dance floor of 80's youth dressed in 80's fashion. They would just go crazy dancing to funky fusion instrumentals. The crowd would roar! They mostly enjoyed the mainstream "New Wave" hits played on the radio during that time, but if you played an instrumental swing dance tune like "Birdland" and played it well....these kids would scream and praise you all night. It was then obvious to me that the youth would welcome instrumental music with open arms! We would pack the dance floors as we played obscure funky instrumentals. The 80's crowds would follow us to the dressing rooms complimenting our talents as the owners of the venues stood by the dressing room door waiting to rip us to pieces. Young people were now determined to stay at the venue till closing, buying more drinks, and giving the owner the best business profit imaginable......while the owner would scream and threaten to fire us if we continued to play instrumentals in his club. It makes no sense at all does it? Clearly I got the message that the 80's youth were not the ones trying to sabatoge musician's music. It was the industry from the higher ups right down to the local club owners who changed the rules as a means to change the concept of how to do business in the 80's. Sometimes I am a little confused about who and why or what for? But it surely felt as if the music industry on all levels were ganging up on the musicians. lol!
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Posted: June 21 2011 at 20:14
And yet, King Crimson could still make Discipline in the 80s with Master Fripp STILL preferring to seat himself on a stool, thick spectacles intact. Sure, Discipline was not a blockbuster success but they did quite well themselves. Rush did well in the first half of the 80s. Yes adapted well with 90125. Music culture always changes, that's one thing that hasn't changed. Prog rock bands who started in the 70s were caught unawares by the sweeping changes of the 80s and couldn't adapt. Talking Heads would fizzle out over the 80s but they opened it with arguably their best album, Remain in Light. I don't know that you could really ask for so much more in terms of intrigue than Remain in Light as far as commercial successes go.
Totally, because every other decade was all about the content and not style/image?
Seriously, the 60's 70's 80's 90's and 2000's all had great bands and lots of trash and pop (and I used "pop" to mean anyone about "making it" or "being big" over music).
Besides the 80's had lots of great stuff! Just some here may not realize it since they can only listen to prog rock. If any decade really sucked it was the 2000s
The human race has really tapped the well dry by this point and ALL genres of music, metal, rap, punk, country are not true to themselves and have gone "pop". Hell even pop is worse now! 13 year olds with rich families are literally being made pop stars, being autotuned to hell and singing about stuff years away from em!
Come On! Really! Some eighties pop sucked like 70s pop and 90s and 00s some pop sucks (Its made for kids mainly and so someof it is lazy derivative bullsh*t). If you look around the eighties there's loads of good stuff ! Even Marillion? Cocteaus, Sisters, Play Dead, Japan, Dead Can Dance, Cabaret Voltaire, Talk Talk, The Cramps, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Siouxsie, Throwing Muses etc blah blah blah blah Style yes but substance too I would argue. And much of this was original stuff (Might not argue about the Cramps but heh I like rabid Psychobilly Rock.).
I guess if you were around at the time and you only listened to the stuff in the charts then you would think it was all rubbish?
This is all very true. I have admiration for the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the early Shadowfax which was really just instrumental progressive music that sold well because it was pasted with the new 80's term called "New Age" . The meaning behind 80's marketing of "New Age" music with the healing process concepts was rather misleading because the early W.H. releases offered true creative musical journeys. Peter Gabriel was in the mainstream limelight through the 80's and had a style that was progressive, but in the songwriting vain. Where Dead Can Dance felt and sounded underground. Progressive musicians who had been touring the road since the mid 70's were struggling. Unless you personally knew Brian Eno of the Editions label or anyone from another label you were defeated. It was a task getting signed simply as a "Progressive Rock Band" in the 80's
. Peter Gabriel wanted to make Happy the Man his backing band to record and tour with him. Happy the Man decided in the end that it would be best to remain who they are and continue their career. The timing was bad for these guys....as I said before the bitter end of traveling Prog bands in venues during the late 70's. Anyone who wanted to play progressive had to end up like Univers Zero and Art Zoyd. Univers Zero were distributed through an American label in Maryland and Steve F. did an excellent job at helping these bands out. The first year of wipe out for these bands was 1980. I mean that realization slapping you in the face. The real label dropping of the more progressive bands.....and if you didn't see them a few years later on a low budget label then they vanished. Marketing tactics were different in the 80's. and there was no call for artists who were progressive unless they were lucky like Univers Zero to be promoted by an independent vendor. The scene was still stronger in Europe than in America. Maybe in America you could see Gong or Bruford"s band playing a small venue, but the over-crowded excitement that once packed the theatres for prog was phasing out. Everything went far to the underground by then and today you have excellent prog bands from Mexico performing at picnics. So you have to sleep on a couch and eat PBJ sandwiches and suffer to be an independent prog artist?. Which is what some of the guys are seen doing on the "Progressive Warriors" DVD. So man ...what is the point? There needs to be more money invested into Prog. We need some people with money who actually believe in the art and are willing to push some of these bands a bit more to the front line so that more people in society will adapt to different kinds of music. Some of these European prog bands can't even afford to play in America. What's up with that?
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Posted: June 21 2011 at 13:59
Come On! Really! Some eighties pop sucked like 70s pop and 90s and 00s some pop sucks (Its made for kids mainly and so someof it is lazy derivative bullsh*t). If you look around the eighties there's loads of good stuff ! Even Marillion? Cocteaus, Sisters, Play Dead, Japan, Dead Can Dance, Cabaret Voltaire, Talk Talk, The Cramps, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Siouxsie, Throwing Muses etc blah blah blah blah Style yes but substance too I would argue. And much of this was original stuff (Might not argue about the Cramps but heh I like rabid Psychobilly Rock.).
I guess if you were around at the time and you only listened to the stuff in the charts then you would think it was all rubbish?
When auditoning for a simple "Top 40" cover band from the New England states down to the coast of Florida in the 70's,... you just weren't asked to play a "Top 40" hit. You were asked to display other diverse aspects to your playing. Bands would ask you questions like...."Can you play the Blues?" or "Lets hear your Jazz chops?" "Can you play fingerpicking Folk style?" etc. This was clearly not a reality in the 80's. Your audition depended more on your dress code equals fashion. Band leaders would say...."I couldn't care less about your ability in Jazz/Fusion". You are only being hired for 2 things. "To play 3 or 4 chord songs and to dress according to fashion". So in the 70's when you were a musician looking to make money..... fashion was a concern, however you had to be diverse on your instrument or you wouldn't get the gig. Simple as that!
That's what sucked about the 80's. That mentality! Either dress like us and play the simplistic moronic hits or forget your between 500 to a thousand a week.There were many times when a working band would hire a professional schooled guitarist in their 30's to play 80's Van Halen because they knew for them it was easy. It was easy and he was like a cartoon character but what else did they have to offer? Anything truly interesting enough to captivate the musician as they made their money? The answer was no. The 80's was a decade where you had to play crap to make money. You needed to make good money so you could afford the recording studio. It was the best way to make contacts then and playing out every week helped as well. But the music was like....blah! yuk! So they wanted people with less talent. So by being talented and schooled with diversity you became a less desirable choice and the musician who knew no more than 8 chords was made senior vice president.. Not so much with the "Metal" bands , but the "New Wave". For a musician.....that is what sucked about the 80's.
During the late mid to late 70's I traveled with many Prog Rock cover bands and some original ones as well. It was very extreme in America. Venues were packed and you couldn't even make your way to the dressing room. You could then....play "Thick as a Brick" , "Watcher of the Skies" to a full house which would be packed to the walls on 3 of the 6 nights you were booked every week of the year. One day we were informed by managers and agents of every kind that we were no longer allowed to play Progressive Rock on a weekly basis. The money was just sky rocketing beyond. Back in 1978 I was making a thousand dollars a week playing Prog covers. The day they broke the bad news to us occured in 1980. Only a selective amount of bands were allowed to continue playing prog covers. A total of 5 bands out of the original 20 to 25 played prog and the rest of us had to tow the line and play 80's music or exit the business. In the early 80's I traveled with a ridiculous show band opening for some of the more well known prog acts of the 70's like Renaissance, Steve Hackett during the Cured tour etc...It was obvious to see then from a business point of view that these bands were right at the edge of falling by the wayside. Although they still had a following....they were not packing the venues. In some strange way from being in that business for so long,....it did feel as if pressure was put upon musicians to disregard playing musician's music, but at that time it was the people's music too and that is the sad aspect to the whole depressing event. It was like America waving goodbye to Prog because as I said before....the money was there along with the respect for the musicianship. Everyone was happy and that was how you made your living.
I use to think....why wipe Prog completely clean of promotion? Why couldn't it be placed in rotation with everything else? Clearly there was still an audience for it. The industry could have if they wanted to ...kept Prog going and still made a decent profit, however we were forced to not give up our on going profit by playing Blondie and The Police. So I was about 23 years old witnessing Progressive artists 10 years older than me getting burnt by the business. During that time it was more and more difficult to find underground prog albums or even the more established prog band's albums in most record shops. You either found a specialty shop or? I can see most of the costumes that Gabriel, Wakeman, Emerson, and Anderson wore looking a bit ridiculous to people , but the industry could have taken steps to assemble festivals and hall concerts to promote bands like Conventum, Harmonium, and others just as they did when they signed Jazz/Fusion bands to huge labels like Columbia. For some reason the 80's "New Wave" became the main source for the record industry's profit and also "Heavy Metal" and disregard for Prog seemed a law then.
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Posted: June 20 2011 at 18:05
Sean Trane wrote:
CPicard wrote:
The 70's were atrocious: ABBA, Rubettes, Bee Gees, disco music, country, French singers (go to hell, Michel Sardou!), the Carpenters... And some dare to say the 80's sucked?
Well, if you're going to compare from the bottomside, I can easily quintuple amount of suckish album of the 80's to the 70's, despite the names yopu mentuion.... (milli Vanilli, Wham, Culture Club, etc... need I add more?)
And what is the problem with Culture Club, exactly? CULTURE CLUB DIDN'T SUCK!
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Why the 80's did suck!
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You can't classify music styles via decades. When people say "80s music," they are likely thinking of stuff from around 77-78 to 86-87. (Much like "70s music" could be taken to mean stuff from 67-68 to about 76 and the advent of disco, punk and new wave. Musicians don't all just suddenly change as decades change: "Oh, it's January 1st, 1980. Let's abandon everything we've done up until now, and totally reinvent our music." It doesn't work that way.
ExittheLemming wrote:
Yes we need someone to carry the torch..
) 
