My Eighties Ain't Your Eighties

I am tired of people going on ad nauseum about the eighties. That was the worst decade for music that I can remember. But that's not to say the decade was without its redeeming qualities.

As 1979 rolled into 1980, the last informed music trend of the 70s was dying - the Two-Tone ska revival that came out of the UK; as usual the states took literally years to catch up and wound up behind. And now, we have a number of really bad US ska bands, mostly from the west coast which tells you something (wuzzup No Doubt!). Bands in checkered kitchen trousers leaping about like imbeciles. And they all play very fast & have removed any hint of rhythm which the original version of ska was absolutely drenched in. These clowns exist solely because of the Two-Tone scene (which was pretty cool, actually, done with a huge nod to the past while bringing a new twist to the picture), but these bands are unaware that Two-Tone was merely reviving mid-60s west indian dance music.

Anyway, that was 79/80. Aside from asymmetrical hairdos, synths, crap like Depeche Mode and Duran Duran and jazz oxfords, the 80s had another big cult. The former '77 punks started unhooking their safety pins and sewing up their ripped clothes and pushed black music (including street level disco) to the forefront. It started happening first in the UK, but for once New York was right there in the action, shoulder-to-shoulder. Blondie went hip-hop. Talking Heads went afrobeat. And then there were James White & The Blacks (junkie no-wavers that played atonal James Brown riffs. Brilliant.) New York Rocker put Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads on the cover with Grandmaster Flash, cradling a huge boombox. The Clash went all rhythmic. New post-punk 12" dance singles replaced 7 inch punk picture sleeves. Our attention span went from a minute 40 seconds to 6, 7, 8 minutes, with a bonus beats track as well. The 12 inch 45 rpm single that was once thought of as a waste of vinyl in the Studio 54 disco era was now a must-have. Even more so than albums. Black ghetto clubs in New York were being name checked on post-punk singles world-wide. Something different was happening, again, & it was big fun.

I was lucky enough to have a young black co-worker who was deeply into the forward faction of the scene at the time. She lent me a huge stack of albums & 12 inch singles so I could get caught up. From that point on, my rock records collected dust in the corner. She also directed me toward Detroit's absolute best dj who was hidden away on the crappiest black station in town (WGPR, the radio equivalent of a local access cable station). Working his outer space funk magic on the overnight shift was The Electrifying Mojo. Not too long after I caught wind of him he began taking the city by storm. He played -gasp- white music on what was exclusively an urban format. And I don't mean he played The Beatles. He played - KRAFTWERK! Yes, the German computer geeks! And he actually turned them into a black act if you know what I mean. he did the same thing to The B52S. They too became a black radio staple in Detroit. And Was Not Was. He would spin the instrumental versions of 12 inch dance singles rather than the short vocal versions. It was months before I knew that Run-DMC was a vocal rapping duo. So now white kids were watching local dance show "The Scene", on WGPR's low budget TV affiliate. The call to arms was "are you ready to throw down?" and whether you were ready or not, your reply was "yes - we - are!" They played the best music, mixed by the biggest & most important djs (read: Carl Craig, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson - sound familiar?) back then of course the main man was Prince, who brought along The Time who, in my opinion, were much badder than Prince. They rocked plus they had soul & attitude in spades, pardon the expression. Just as I do not know any songs on the chart today, I pretty much knew no pop oriented music back then because I was listening exclusively to urban music. It was great back then and still stands out today. THAT was the music of the 80s.

Most of my record shopping in the 80s was done in little record shops in downtown Detroit or in the lower east side ghetto. And the interesting thing was you could pick up French or German imports in these shops! Sometimes the versions Mojo would play weren't released stateside, and you had to have the versions he played, so the shops would stock the imports. And in a lot of instances the only places you could get these were in the ghetto.

Then MTV came & ruined it all. I shoulda known that was gonna mean trouble. All it did was create mooks and wiggers (wuzzup, Fred Durst & Kid Rock). The benefit was that some of these urban acts started getting wider exposure & started making a few bucks. But the sounds stayed real enough that it was quite awhile before I started looking for the underground again. The downside? Prince & Madonna & Michael Jackson and their uber-star bullshit that continues to this day with a whole new batch of clowns, from Britney to Bono (yeah, I said it).

Oh well, there was always reggae. But even that started to suck in the 80s, and it was all because of the glossy video age and its promise of fame and fortune. Jah had no choice except to kill off Bob Marley & Peter Tosh before things got bad (after all, Tosh had already hooked up with The Stones). The exceptions were roots acts like Yellowman & Eek-a-Mouse, who continued to keep it real. But that's another story.

Don't say damn, say whoa.