Remember the Eighties

I remember the 1880s.

Originally Posted by Rome

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The 90s gave us grunge, alt-rock, rap-rock, and ushered the transition from rock as the dominant music to rap. I cant forgive the 80s for hair metal. I would have to say the 70 seemed like a more "crunkier" decade, the exhaustion of social consciousness, fashion, punk, and disco at their arguable heights, plus people forget what the knowledge of AIDS did the 80s so called fun attitude.

The 90s also gave you Snow, Technotronic, Milli Vanilli, Vanilla Ice, the boybands, Spice Girls and that group that sings the "Friends" theme. Good Lord Almighty!!! The 80s on the other hand gave us Joy Divison, New Order, David Byrne, The Cure, Bruce Springsteen at his prime, Prince and the Revolution, Thomas Dolby....

I don't get this comparison by decade thing actually. The hair band was not popular because it was the 80s. It was popular because people bought Bon Jovi's records.

I find people who pass judgement on decades with sweeping statements ("70s was all disco", "80s killed punk rock"...) as those who were probably too young, too naive, or too cooped up in their parents' house to actually live those years.

Originally Posted by Augustus Medici

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A friend of mine during lunch set forth this theory on what the eighties must've been like:

Everybody was doing so much drugs, making so much money, and having so much sex that they just didn't care what their music sounded like. They didn't care what their clothes look like, or their hair, or anything else. It was a decade of extremes because it was, quite simply, the crunkest decade of all.

For the people that actually lived through it, was it really like that? Were the eighties seriously that crazy?? Everybody just ballin outta control?

I grew up in the 1980's.
Growing up in New York was kind of crazy i remember those crazy days when crack hit the street and crazy murder rates sky rocketing in New York. The Heavy Metal days also drove people to extremes like abuse of liquor and drugs. But then hay if it wasn't for the 1980's we would never had great music like Police, KRS-1 etc....

Originally Posted by acidicboy

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The 80s on the other hand gave us Joy Divison, New Order....

I find people who pass judgement on decades with sweeping statements ("70s was all disco", "80s killed punk rock"...) as those who were probably too young, too naive, or too cooped up in their parents' house to actually live those years.

To further Acidboy's argument, I will note that the 70s actually brought us Joy Division and the 80s New Order. [for those in the dark, NO = JD without Ian Curtis and plus Gillian Gilbert, plus some more recent permutations if you can believe what they say to the press.]

And the 70s gave us Post-punk which led directly to the 80s continuation of that and it morphing into the New Romantics (Adam and the Ants), New Wave (you name it), Art Rock (Talking Heads), etc. Scritti Politti is a perfect example of a band that started as a crazy post-punk marxist collective and ended up as an almost pure 80s pop band (their 2005 release White Bread Black Beer is brilliant btw). Some people hate them from moving on to a pop/northern soul sound and some (like me) love them for it.

There's no "decade X was better than decade Y." It makes no sense.

b

I think that it depends where you were. In the 80s Los Angeles was a great place to be, as was New York. Washington DC was hit so hard by the crack epidemic and San Francisco by AIDS that they felt like a completely different world than NY and DC.

The music was very good, not so good compared to the 60s and 70s, but excellent compared to the 90s. Unfortunately, Milli Vanilli was from the 80s rather than the 90s, but that is just a random black mark.

The '80s also gave us The Police, U2, and R.E.M. (though U2 and The Police were actually formed in the late '70s). Every decade has it's good and bad music, as has been pointed out above.

As for what the culture was like, if Bright Lights, Big City is to be believed, everyone in New York was spending ludicrous amounts of money on cocaine and staying up to all hours in the middle of the week.

Originally Posted by iammatt

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dude, you call yourself GQgeek and we are supposed to believe that you have no embarrassing pictures? Good luck.

Heh. I'm a geek on the inside but not on the outside. And if I could take GQ out of my name I would. I stopped reading that crappy magazine at the same time the forum was created. When I was a teen I wore slightly baggy jeans and skater t-shirts, but nothing too embarassing. I was in uniform most of the time anyway.

The 80s were a good time, but out of it came a cynicism that we as a society have a difficult time reconciling with our apple-pie and blue-skies view of the world. We "defeated" communism, returned the hostages home, and went about our prosperous lives. Yet, we were no longer at ease. We were responsible for bad **** happening around the world (Central America, World Bank loans crippling economies) and couldn't control the bad **** happening here (crack, crime, teen pregnancy rates, the spread of HIV). The gulf between those with and those without grew. More people were getting high just to function and while none questioned Grandpa Ronnie Reagan, no one quite believed he was in charge. Besides, it wasn't the government's problem if your schools sucked and the water was filled with contaminants? Lots of good music: Public Enemy, U2, the Police, Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, Prince, Michael Jackson (before he lost his mind and his soul), Fishbone, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Living Colour, (giving the devil his due) Guns and Roses, the Clash (and all of the spin-off bands, like Big Audio Dynamite, the Pogues, etc.), Talking Heads, . Lots of embarrassing photos, too, like the hi-top fade, white, pink, and baby blue "letterman's" sweater, and Travel Fox shoes. Yeah!

The '70s was by far the greatest decade in terms of music, crazy styles, and overall general debauchery. There was major sixties carryover in the early part of the decade, leading to the greatest rock bands ever (e.g. Zeppelin). Fashion ranged from hippie **** (early seventies) to crazy disco Studio 54 synthetic fabric leisure suit looks. The seventies blew the eighties away in terms of category changing film. The AIDS thing hadn't hit yet so everyone was swinging.

The eighties by contrast are generally recognized as a much more conservative decade. Reagan was in office. Evangelical Chrisitanity was taking off. Alex P Keaton and Wall Street were hot . Yes, there was cocaine culture, but by and large the '80s were a conservative reaction to the '70s, the craziest decade since the '20s.

Originally Posted by montecristo#4

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The '70s was by far the greatest decade in terms of music, crazy styles, and overall general debauchery. There was major sixties carryover in the early part of the decade, leading to the greatest rock bands ever (e.g. Zeppelin). Fashion ranged from hippie **** (early seventies) to crazy disco Studio 54 synthetic fabric leisure suit looks. The seventies blew the eighties away in terms of category changing film. The AIDS thing hadn't hit yet so everyone was swinging.

The eighties by contrast are generally recognized as a much more conservative decade. Reagan was in office. Evangelical Chrisitanity was taking off. Alex P Keaton and Wall Street were hot . Yes, there was cocaine culture, but by and large the '80s were a conservative reaction to the '70s, the craziest decade since the '20s.
I agree, the 70s were definitely the crunkest decade.

Originally Posted by montecristo#4

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The '70s was by far the greatest decade in terms of music, crazy styles, and overall general debauchery. There was major sixties carryover in the early part of the decade, leading to the greatest rock bands ever (e.g. Zeppelin). Fashion ranged from hippie **** (early seventies) to crazy disco Studio 54 synthetic fabric leisure suit looks. The seventies blew the eighties away in terms of category changing film. The AIDS thing hadn't hit yet so everyone was swinging.

The eighties by contrast are generally recognized as a much more conservative decade. Reagan was in office. Evangelical Chrisitanity was taking off. Alex P Keaton and Wall Street were hot . Yes, there was cocaine culture, but by and large the '80s were a conservative reaction to the '70s, the craziest decade since the '20s.

Originally Posted by iammatt

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I agree, the 70s were definitely the crunkest decade.

+1 but the 80's were the last of the "good old days" when 18 yr olds could legally drink in Wisconsin; having a beer while driving down the road in Florida was acceptable (and I think legal); you could solicit a joint off a complete stranger on the streets of Chicago and the old "I've got a van in the parking lot" line would get you laid.

And then came Reagan and paraquot and MADD and AIDS and I don't even want to think about it.

Originally Posted by montecristo#4

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The '70s was by far the greatest decade in terms of music, crazy styles, and overall general debauchery. There was major sixties carryover in the early part of the decade, leading to the greatest rock bands ever (e.g. Zeppelin). Fashion ranged from hippie **** (early seventies) to crazy disco Studio 54 synthetic fabric leisure suit looks. The seventies blew the eighties away in terms of category changing film. The AIDS thing hadn't hit yet so everyone was swinging.

The eighties by contrast are generally recognized as a much more conservative decade. Reagan was in office. Evangelical Chrisitanity was taking off. Alex P Keaton and Wall Street were hot . Yes, there was cocaine culture, but by and large the '80s were a conservative reaction to the '70s, the craziest decade since the '20s.

This is true. I have no idea what crunk means but the 70s were a much more innovative decade from a cultural and social perspective than the 80s. I guess this is true of most any time period but the 80s were a crappy time to be a teenager from a sexual standpoint given the ******** mentality had evaporated by the early 80s

I was wondering what Japanese pop culture was like in the 80s, because some of it currently is a bit reminiscent of American 80s pop culture.

I think the worst part of the 80's was women's hair.

Edit: I have this in my netflix que. Any good?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380268/

The 80's were plasticky for me. Duran Duran and their ilk ruled the early part of the decade, then it was the hair bands. If you ventured underground to the indie labels you had Minor Threat, Black Flag, Husker Du, which was a ragged release from the manicured fronts everyone was putting forth. It was corporate and upright and starched and religious. Everything seemed so groomed, even in high school where even the freshmen boys rolled the sleeves on their t-shirts and put too much effort into their hair.

Then again, we had a former actor as president for eight of those years, so facades should have been expected to take the forefront.

Originally Posted by Faded501s

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And then came Reagan and paraquot and MADD and AIDS and I don't even want to think about it.

What's paraquot?