I love the 80s
Feb. 27th, 2012 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertI've been spending a lot of time at the Pettit National Ice center, between the long-track speed skating and the running. They often have the local "B-96!" radio station playing, and they seem to run "I love the 80s!" segments often. I guess this is great for us old peoplemasters skaters, enabling us to relive our youth.
One of the things we have now that we didn't in my youth is Google. I heard a lot of popular songs (you could hardly avoid that), but if you just randomly hear stuff on the radio you're lucky if you hear what the actual song title is. Filling my memory are a lot of names of famous bands, titles of songs, and lyrics and tunes, and, for the most part, no connections between them. There are lots of really famous hits by really well-known bands for which I've certainly heard the song many times and of course I've heard of the band, but I never had any idea they did that. And even in the case of the few groups I liked and was something of a fan of, all I knew was whatever they chose to print in the cassette tape "J-card" or the little booklet in the CD case. It's not like there was a Wikipedia entry with additional trivia.
Now and then I hear something I remember from long ago and think to just type it into google and see what appears. Remember "Tainted Love?" It had a rather distinct sound, and was a big hit at one time. Well, it was written by Ed Cobb and recorded by Gloria Jones in 1965. Before I was born. The version people my age who grew up in the USA remember was released by Soft Cell in 1981 in the UK. A year or two later it was a big hit in the US. Who knew? I sure didn't. I mean, it's not like it was a secret, but how would you happen to know? Yes, the music video is on youtube. I'm so old I remember when MTV played music, but I don't recall seeing this back in the day. It is a glorious example of a weird early music video. The early days of MTV were weirdly wonderful. Everyone had to start producing music videos, but besides not necessarily having much of a budget, back then music videos had just been invented and no one knew what they were supposed to look like yet. Thus, they were fantastic. ("Tainted Love" might not be much of an actual love song, but in my personal case what it reminds me of is holding hands, with a girl. A witty and charming and cute girl, as I recall.)
And, speaking of wonderful music videos, I did see back in the day-but only a few times-the one for Chris De Burgh's "Don't Pay the Ferryman." It's right here. That's truly a fantastic video from back in the day.
One of the things we have now that we didn't in my youth is Google. I heard a lot of popular songs (you could hardly avoid that), but if you just randomly hear stuff on the radio you're lucky if you hear what the actual song title is. Filling my memory are a lot of names of famous bands, titles of songs, and lyrics and tunes, and, for the most part, no connections between them. There are lots of really famous hits by really well-known bands for which I've certainly heard the song many times and of course I've heard of the band, but I never had any idea they did that. And even in the case of the few groups I liked and was something of a fan of, all I knew was whatever they chose to print in the cassette tape "J-card" or the little booklet in the CD case. It's not like there was a Wikipedia entry with additional trivia.
Now and then I hear something I remember from long ago and think to just type it into google and see what appears. Remember "Tainted Love?" It had a rather distinct sound, and was a big hit at one time. Well, it was written by Ed Cobb and recorded by Gloria Jones in 1965. Before I was born. The version people my age who grew up in the USA remember was released by Soft Cell in 1981 in the UK. A year or two later it was a big hit in the US. Who knew? I sure didn't. I mean, it's not like it was a secret, but how would you happen to know? Yes, the music video is on youtube. I'm so old I remember when MTV played music, but I don't recall seeing this back in the day. It is a glorious example of a weird early music video. The early days of MTV were weirdly wonderful. Everyone had to start producing music videos, but besides not necessarily having much of a budget, back then music videos had just been invented and no one knew what they were supposed to look like yet. Thus, they were fantastic. ("Tainted Love" might not be much of an actual love song, but in my personal case what it reminds me of is holding hands, with a girl. A witty and charming and cute girl, as I recall.)
And, speaking of wonderful music videos, I did see back in the day-but only a few times-the one for Chris De Burgh's "Don't Pay the Ferryman." It's right here. That's truly a fantastic video from back in the day.
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Date: 2012-02-28 04:47 am (UTC)MTV is the early days ('81-'85) was great. Then they decided to muck up their format with programs. :-(
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Date: 2012-02-28 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 12:42 pm (UTC)But no discussion of 80s music videos is complete without reference to Total Eclipse of the Heart. The literal version.
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Date: 2012-02-28 02:07 pm (UTC)My favorite video is Icehouse, by the band Icehouse, from their album Icehouse. Directed by Russell Mulcahy. It's like a nightmare in progress, but in a good way.
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Date: 2012-02-29 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-29 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-29 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 05:05 am (UTC)