Thanks to The Miracle of the Internets, I have been re-enjoying the silly, bouncy music videos of my semi-youth all day. I arrived in NYC in 1981, back when there was a new club opening every week, and I looked like a girl in a Robert Palmer video. (Now I look like one of Samantha’s aunts on Bewitched.)
Cinch-waisted floppy pants, poodle hair, rock-candy makeup, shoulderpads like linebackers . . . it was one of the great eras of intentionally (sometimes) funny pop music, along with the 1920s and '60s. Whip It; Hey Mickey; Rock Me, Amadeus; Strip; Mr. Roboto; Turning Japanese; She Blinded Me with Science; Girls Just Want to Have Fun . . . And the videos–especially the “serious” ones–are laff-out-loud funny now. I would love to do a karaoke parody of Total Eclipse of the Heart, complete with flashlights over my eyes, three wigs on, throat spray . . .
Anyone else here the right age to recall dolling up, going dancing and helling around in the late '70s, '80s?
I never went all-out clothing-wise a la 80s, but for a time I tried to copy Madonna’s BoyToy look with the wild hair and earrings (I was too chicken to actually dress like her nor wear a “BoyToy” belt buckle).
I did, however, do the ripped-sweatshirt-and-legging “Flashdance” look during college. I have a few photos from back then ::shudder::
What amazes me is what we considered as the most technologically-advanced back then is so old fashioned now, particularly in the filming. Take “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”, for example. It’s always been one of my favorite videos, but if you notice the lighting, the choppiness of the editing, and the “flatness” (I don’t know how else to describe it) of the overall video, you just want to cringe at actually how bad it is.
And the directing! Hall and Oates probably had the worst director imaginable. I think they tended to ham up the agony as time went on, but still…::shudder::
I still love much of the music for brainless fun [can be great driving music on a long overnight - you sing along at the top of your voice and stay awake=)]
I somehow missed the clothing and makeup thang - I tended to wear blue jeans or black cords, a mans silk dress shirt [french cuffs, rolled up] and matching oxblood red leather belt and what at the time we jokingly called italian pimp shoes - no clue now who made them but they looked sort of like these
I picked them up in italy, and they were fantastic, leather lined with fabric.
I have some wonderful photos (which none of you will ever see) of me in my mid-20s, in the early '80s, all Robert Palmer Girl/Annie Lennox: slicked-back hair, shiny ruby-red lipstick, racoon eye make-up, a gold-lame bolero jacket, a red extension cord as a necklace, bracelets made out of black duct tape, and a satin fried egg hat.
Jeez, but I had Style. The seas parted for me at the doors of Palladium and Limelight.
A couple weeks ago, my 25yo galpal & I were watching Pat Benatar’s “Love is A Battlefield” video on YouTube. Ah, the glorious story of a young runaway-turned-hooker, um, “dance girl” leading her fellow hookers, um, “dance girls” into breaking free of their pimp, um, “dance manager” through using, what else?, the power of DANCE! Especially dance in which they shake their chests at him! Go, go Gadget Boobs!
From then on, I went to Pat’s rendition of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”, Kate’s own first video for it, a great home-made rendition by a British girl named Hattie, Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus”, and Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” in both English and German.
Coming to America in my teens, MTV was huge for me and still somehow I managed to completely miss the original videos of I like Chopin, Bette Davis Eyes and Weird Science. Until now.
My son and I have been discovering these YouTube delights. Hey Mickey is one of his favourites. He’s also displaying a penchant for the camp classics: 70s Abba and 80s Queen.
I think I lived in a parallel universe in the 80s. I remember all the music but definitely did not do the hair, makeup or shoulderpads.
Thank goodness, I escaped the big, poofy poodle hair, as my hair was down past my hips. I usually did the severe slicked-back-into-a-chignon look, or wore it down and got it caught in car doors, men’s suit pockets, and lit on fire by cigarettes.
I remember hanging out in dance clubs wearing scuffed combat boots, improbably tight Levi 501’s with a knee torn out, studded belt, sleeveless band tour t-shirts, leather motorcycle jacket, wayfarer sunglasses, hair styled into a pompodour with the sides moussed tight to my head and the bangs falling forward onto my forehead. My prey was 17-22 year old girls with black raccoon eyeliner: either big-haired with shoulderpads & gaudy oversized accessories, thrift-store punkers in military jackets, stirrup pants & bowling shoes, goth girls with 4-buckle, pointy-toed fluevog shoes, long black skirts, silver bangles and dyed black hair or metal chicks with HUGE hair, bright red lipstick, motorcycle jackets, leather miniskirts, fishnet stockings and 3 inch heels.
I didn’t care if they were playing rockabilly, punk, goth, metal or synth-pop, I could dance to it all.
Later in 88 I got into the oversized, unconstructed suits with a tshirt underneath and industrial music, grew my hair out long and slicked it back into a ponytail. Man, I loved the music, the clothes and the girls of the 80s. Mostly the girls.
Ah, back when MTV was fun and played videos. I picked up a tape at the dollar store a while back that’s a compilation of many of MTV’s early promos and filler material. Fun to pop in every so often for a nostalgia fix. No Stevis Washington, but YouTube comes through again.
