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80's Music: The Good, the Stars and the not so much

Hair bands ruled the 80's





lol...yeah. I forgot about the hair. Dating exposed me to far too much of that. Rat, Motley Crue, Def Lep...gawd, I hated most of it.

The chick bands were OK though. Bangles, Salt-n-Pepa als, Benatar, Joan Jett, to name a few. The Latin thing was pop too--Miami Sound Machine. What the hell was her name? Oh yeah, Estefan.

Speaking of girl jams, for some reason, I really dug this song back then, liking it a lot.

 
Among my favorite 80's bands were The Replacements and the Beat Farmers, the latter being one of the best live acts ever to grace a college dive bar.

The new wave and hair band thing was definitely not my idea of fun and when Van Halen came out with "Jump" I just flat out turned away from anything associated with metal.
 
And, who didn't find this tune catchy?



Not to mention have the hots for the lead singer :)
 
Among my favorite 80's bands were The Replacements and the Beat Farmers, the latter being one of the best live acts ever to grace a college dive bar.

The new wave and hair band thing was definitely not my idea of fun and when Van Halen came out with "Jump" I just flat out turned away from anything associated with metal.

The only 1980's song from VH that I liked other than "Hot for Teacher" was "Mean Street." But, I was pretty much done with them after VH II
 
Among my favorite 80's bands were The Replacements and the Beat Farmers, the latter being one of the best live acts ever to grace a college dive bar.

The new wave and hair band thing was definitely not my idea of fun and when Van Halen came out with "Jump" I just flat out turned away from anything associated with metal.
Beat Farmers were seriously underrated.

The day that Eddie Van Halen laid his hands on a keyboard is the day Van Halen died as a legit band.
 
The only 1980's song from VH that I liked other than "Hot for Teacher" was "Mean Street." But, I was pretty much done with them after VH II
I liked their first three albums, and Diver Down. Never got into Fair Warning, or whatever it was called. Diver Down was subtle, and as such very underrated.
 
Kind of like how disco of the 70's morphed into Hip Hop during the 80's, the alt-music thing kind of gelled from punk rock during the 80's too. Some of those acts went big league, their seeds now dominating the current genre from Rap to Biker Jams.

Perhaps the first hip hop song ever, 1979 (close enough to the 80's):
 
Best record of the 1980s-though it was at the very beginning

LONDON CALLING.

best band for the entire 80s--U2, runner up REM
 
With the advent of MTV, the 80's were extremely transformative, but not always in a good way. There were plenty of one-hit wonders and Milli Vanilli like flameouts. Of course, the biggest dumpster fire was Michael Jackson. Little did we know just how sadly that story would end back then. The Moonwalking Dude owned the industry for almost that entire decade. I suspect Thriller is still the biggest thing to ever happen to music since Beethoven wrote the 9th (I jest, but not by much).

Personally, I'm a hard rock guy. So, for me icons of the decade like Janet Jackson, Madonna and George Michael, although absolute stars who I grew to love as time went on, didn't really catch my ear right away. In fact, if it were not for the fact that I hit 21 and started hanging out at dance clubs in the mid-80's, I might have missed much of the new stuff from Bobbi Brown to Prince. But, a lot of that stuff was some pretty good ****.

To start off this thread, if I had to name the acts that grabbed my ear right off the bat, I would start that list with U2. Although technically a 70's band, I first heard them in the early 80's. And, on that day, I went, "Holy ****! That band is ****ing Great!!" Definitel honorable mentions for top ear grabbers on day one are Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana and Jane's Addiction. Guns and Roses would and should probably be in that list, if not even probably ranking above U2, but the meltdown after album 3 or 4 renders them kind of in the Pete Burns category: Great for a while, but WTF happened to YOU?

At least decades like the 50s through the 90s had a distinctive soundtrack that was comprised of some very talented artist.

Now music, with some exceptions is gutless corporate generated trash. Movies too.

Following some formula that tries to gurantee profit at the expense of creativity and talent.
 
At least decades like the 50s through the 90s had a distinctive soundtrack that was comprised of some very talented artist.

Now music, with some exceptions is gutless corporate generated trash. Movies too.

Following some formula that tries to gurantee profit at the expense of creativity and talent.

I can't argue. I am hard pressed to find anything worthwhile that is new today. Maybe The Pretty Reckless, since they at least have a hot chick with some stage presence to go along with her raspy voice and the fairly decent band playing behind her.

 
At least decades like the 50s through the 90s had a distinctive soundtrack that was comprised of some very talented artist.

Now music, with some exceptions is gutless corporate generated trash. Movies too.

Following some formula that tries to gurantee profit at the expense of creativity and talent.
You're now officially old.
 
You're now officially old.

Lol !

I guess your'e right. My two daughters keep me somewhat hip, and have turned me on to artist like the 21 pilots and Chaos Chaos.
 
You're now officially old.

I found these people a few months ago. They are the exact opposite of the hard edge heard in The Pretty Reckless, but still not bad at all.

 
Of course there are. Living in the past will get you nowhere.

Why do you think that the highest grossing tours today are all old fogey bands like the Stones and AC/DC? Most of the audience paying to see them are anywhere from teens to 20's to 30's. The other highest grossing acts are pop stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
 
Why do you think that the highest grossing tours today are all old fogey bands like the Stones and AC/DC? Most of the audience paying to see them are anywhere from teens to 20's to 30's. The other highest grossing acts are pop stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.

Glitz and glam is what gets promoted. Good music by itself doesn't get much ink today.

I've been listening to this with good headphones for about 1/2 hour now while working. It's possible that we will hear more from them in the future. But, if we do, it will probably be the singer who gets most of the attention. He's got the "it" that they are looking for.

 
Now, this here's some live new music with a killer edge to it.
 
Why do you think that the highest grossing tours today are all old fogey bands like the Stones and AC/DC? Most of the audience paying to see them are anywhere from teens to 20's to 30's. The other highest grossing acts are pop stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.

Because people are more comfortable with what they're used to, and as they age, they tend to have more disposable income to pay the insane ticket prices for bands like them.

The demographic of who goes to the Stone is not primarily 20-30.
 
Because people are more comfortable with what they're used to, and as they age, they tend to have more disposable income to pay the insane ticket prices for bands like them.

The demographic of who goes to the Stone is not primarily 20-30.

Well 20-30 is the age of most people at the shows I've gone to, and I mostly see older bands, with some younger ones.
 
For the most part I'm not either. I prefer music from a generation above mine. It still stands as a general rule, though.

There's no Kurt Cobain or John Lennon of this generation. That's something that's missing.
 
There's no Kurt Cobain or John Lennon of this generation. That's something that's missing.
Kurt Cobain is overrated. It was the youthful tragic life/death aura that boosted his legacy. Had he lived I believe he would have been relegated to just another rock star, though maybe somewhat above average, just not extraordinary.
 
Kurt Cobain is overrated. It was the youthful tragic life/death aura that boosted his legacy. Had he lived I believe he would have been relegated to just another rock star, though maybe somewhat above average, just not extraordinary.

You're definitely in the minority there. He was very gifted at taking simple chord progressions and turning them into iconic songs that millions of people relate to. There's a very tiny amount of songwriters throughout history who've been able to do that.
 
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