I propose a very dangerous question: How do you get your 80s fix?
Back then, I was ages 3 - 12, and I remember things very distinctly:
[ul]
[li]Episodes of Airwolf with Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine on cheezy plots.[/li][li]Z100 in New York City playing Duran-Duran, Devo, and heavy metal ballads.[/li][li]Weird stuff about a country named “Libya” and a old guy named “Reagan”.[/li][/ul]
That’s okay. I live them old times by:
[ul]
[li]Railing against the Communists and Soviet Bloc. . .[/li][li]Listening to Duran-Duran, Devo, and an assortment of heavy metal ballads like Poison, Motley Crue, and VanHalen (DLR stuff)[/li][li]Watching Knight Rider and The A-Team[/li][/ul]
Oh I’ve got more, but I don’t want to appear as some total 80s freak or something. I’ve moved on (or so I think). . .
I watch Pretty In Pink, The Breakfast Club, Top Gun. . . listen to Poison, Guns N’ Roses, and some other hair bands. . . then I tease my hair and wear blue eyeshadow and leg warmers while I clean my apartment.
Oh my, I was 12 - 22 in the 80s. Some would say, in my prime. They would be mistaken, but I do love the 80s.
How do I get my fix?
Best of Crowded House in my CD player.
Dance clubs that play “oldies” like New Order and Siouxie and the Banshees. (These are becoming harder to find in Boston - suggestions welcomed!)
John Hughes films, and anything with John Cusack.
Playing Trivial Pursuit.
Devo? I’ve got them filed under the '70s, along with Taklking Heads, Elvis Costello the Sex Pistols and the Ramones.
So, I passed that era as a 26-36 year old. Geez. I can’t fire up the ‘80s Houston Oilers (knockin’ on that door), but I can spin a Van Halen LP on the turntable. I’ve even missed the Soviet punching bag (but not all that much).
The spread of pubs in the U.S. is associated with that period. I don’t care to get another flash of '80s credit card use and abuse.
Today I was riding down the Beltway to a meeting, talking with a broker and a co-worker about said co-worker’s 16 year old daughter’'s burgeoning singing career, and it led me to think that all my exes are 45-50 year old women.
Well, they were babes in the '80s (well, I thought so, anyway; at least for a while).
I mean, the Classic Rock stations go all the way up to the 1980s. And the soft/contemporary stations in my area, like Mix 107.3, play stuff going back as far as the 1980s. For instance, I can count on hearing at least one U2 song from the 1980s on the radio every day, usually two or three. And I don’t listen to the radio at work or at home, just in the car.
This was exactly what I was going to say. Seems like every radio station around has “80’s Lunchtime” or “80’s Friday Night” or “80’s Flashback Sunday Morning” or…
So music is NO PROBLEM.
Lots of those “Where are they Now” type shows are good for reliving those days and seeing old clips of how ridiculous we all looked.
For your listening/viewing amusement, I submit the song “19 Something” by Mark Wills. It’s a country song, but it’s a kind of list of how things used to be in the 70’s-80’s. The video itself is funny because there are clips of kids with spiked hair, parachute pants, etc. Looking ridiculous. And there’s a line in the song “looking back now I can see me, oh, man did I look cheezy”.
