[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Severian

I think the point of suggesting the book is not to inform you about the '80s itself, but to give you an idea of what many of us think about when we think of that decade. That is, the American indie underground, and what was happening in California, the Midwest, Seattle, Boston, NYC and DC in the clubs and basements, and how ideas were swapped back and forth between struggling U.S. Bands and their UK/Irish/Scottish counterparts.

Maybe this is a part of the '80s that you didn't experience first hand, because of geographic limitations... Of for whatever reason.

living in a 3rd world dictatorship with government owned media i had almost no access to that scene or any music scene for that matter, only mostly pop shit, but when i came to the us in the 90s i connected to that current pretty soon-- i remember i had only 2 cassettes in my car-- one was evol the other was the VU. i couldn't afford to buy much but those were completely new to me in the 90s. i loved them.

i think it's unfair to show that video w/ the eurythmics cover of lou reed. i like annie lennox voice sometimes but eurythmics was horrible. conversely one could show devo's cover of satisfaction or siouxie's cover of dear prudence-- both great covers and for my taste an improvement on the original on some aspects. yes both covers are 70s things to be specific but both bands reached their height of popularity in the 80s. there were good popular bands like talking heads or b-52s or even REM (not my taste but hey deserve respect).

let's not forget that for all the good rock the 70s had to offer it also engendered atrocities like disco which may have had its gems but it was mostly empty boring shit--plastic drums and all manner of loops were used heavily then, and only appropriated by "new wave" pop-rock later.

i think it's nice morte likes geetar rock but in the 80s technology was exploding-- it could not romantically be avoided forever though, just like the prerafaelites couldn't stop the industrial revolutio by painting fairies.

rock itself was the product of technology-- without electric instruments it wouldnt' have existed--and dylan eventually got there in '65 to much controversy. similarly, electronics had to be embraced by popular music as the computer age took over. even 70s heros had to adapt or die.

ex-genesis peter gabriel (who lorded over the most pastoral era of the band before phil collins turned it into musical feces) ended up doing synthpop shit like his video with the dancing chicken. queen which proudly would stamp "made without synthesizers" in their 70s record covers ended up using them in the late 70s/early 80s and recording with bowie. yes after their late-70s collapse reformed by incorporating the "video killed the radio star" huy & put out one last good record. rockers that wanted to remain true to their history just got more bloated and irrelevant (hair bands) though they were still hugely popular. meanwhile someone like laurie anderson crossed from minimalism into popular music with a record like "big science." i love that record-- the ones that followed not so much. but it really sort of announced the territory the 80s had to conquer & experiment with. i didn't actually hear that until the 90s but i can place it in its historical context.

rock was already in exhaustion mode in the 80s. it refreshed itself by going back-- to rockabilly, to simpler rhythms, to pop blends like new wave, to extremes of speed and intensity of things already in existence-- or by blending with electronic music like devo-- but the era of great innovation and experimentation was over. it had to be.

on the other hand, it was a great era of innovation for all things techno. kraftwerk is a 70s band but they reach their apex in the 80s. joy division evolved into new order-- which maybe was a bit crap overall but had some great songs (we've had a thread about it already).

detroit techno developed in that era too-- there was this famous dj who'd play the whole of kraftwerk's autobahn over & over in his show-- there's a nice documentary about him on youtube-- and apparently he single-handedly inspired a whole bunch of 13 year old kids with such an act. (this is impossible in radio today unless you're talking college stations).

the 80s was also the era when hiphop exploded. i am no big expert so i'll let others talk of that. hiphop of course took a big bite off the "rock" market.

still in spite of the reduction/retreat/drive underground, the 80s gave us some great rock-- yes it wasn't part of the mainstream anymore but it was there in a pretty busy underground & college scene that yes, maybe it was not being exported that much, but it kept exploiting what could be exploited and you can look at it in retrospective without having to have lived there & then, just like you can get interested in bebop even if you weren't alive in the 50s.

love of the 90s is a bunch of nostalgia because it was the LAST youth movement for which rock was the soundtrack. in terms of innovation it brought practically nothing-- it was either the explosion of things that were being developed in the 80s (e.g. melvins --> nirvana, or sonic youth playing on the radio), or vestigial forms of arena rock, etc. things just got recycled in a nice package and then that was it. math rock brought back some treaks in prog rock. thinking fellers channeled zappa. mars volta did rush. there aren't really many more places to go in rock. the last frontier was noise-- after noise, all that's left is silence.

[ eta:80s- napalm death >>> metallica ]

rock is on its way to becoming a conservatory art like jazz or classical or tap dancing. some children now go to real-life "school of rock" where they learn to jump around on stage. the form will continue forever, as a tradition-- just like i like to listen to new orleans bands still playing "the sheik of araby" like it is the 1920s. but let's not expect that the great next musical revolution is going to come out of a geetarr and rock drums. actually i don't know what the fuck is going to happen and that's the funnest part of it all. morte, keep your ears open & don't calcify.

lolol my rant. i'm reading this and laughing.

==

ps- my favorite 90s band i mean the stuff i can listen to no problem and probably all day is stereolab. it does borrow elements from rock but is it even "rock"?