Post your 80's masterpieces

Please post what you consider essential records from the 80s. I know, it's not easy, the consensus on the 80s is that it's not a good decade for music. Let's prove this wrong, and plese keep it professional. I'll start.

hmm, i sorted my itunes collection by year, expecting to find something in the 80s, but it just skips right over that decade. lots of good stuff in the 70s, though...

[youtubehd]HXU5Rxc3vBQ[/youtubehd]

1989.

The only album i have from the 80's in itunes is the Liquid Sky soundtrack.

I consider it worht recommending.

Yeahhhh

the drums on this are great..

Whoa, what planet are you from where the "consensus" is that the 80s were a "not a good decade for music"?

This is just so mind-bogglingly wrong I can't even begin to think where to start. But I'll start with a genuine landmark of the 80s is where I'll start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJN_vgyx74M

(unfortunately video is for the 88 remix tho the original 83 is better obviously)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_1au_N_Hfc

^^^^^^one of those people who gets written off as a one-hit wonder but whose back catalogue is quite worth investigating for bursts of weirdness

This song UTTERLY CHANGED MY LIFE...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EgB__YratE

  On 2/12/2010 at 12:29 PM, keltoi said:

+ 1,000,000

"I know, it's not easy, the consensus on the 80s is that it's not a good decade for music" WHAT THE FUCK?

Well, most people I know don't qualify the 80s an excellent decade for music. And I think that this statement is widely shared. Now, there was excellent stuff in the 80s but this decade is nothing comparable to the 60s, the 70s or the 90s, imo.

When you ask me to think about the 80s, I think of awful production and cheesy songs. However, when you dig deeper, you can find some excellent music and ideas, unfortunately hidden behind a not so sexy form. And the point of this thread is to prove this initial preconception wrong.

Thing is, I've never heard this "thesis" expressed by anyone, ever.

If there's a decade I've heard derision expressed for, it would be the 70s. But that was disproved over and over again (Krautrock, punk, re-evaluation of italo disco, etc.)

  On 2/12/2010 at 12:46 PM, Masonic Boom said:

If there's a decade I've heard derision expressed for, it would be the 70s. But that was disproved over and over again (Krautrock, punk, re-evaluation of italo disco, etc.)

Well I guess we dont hang out with the same kind of people. I have the most sincere respect for the 70s. You can add to the list prog-rock, folk, early ambient, and early electro.

oh here's another good record from the 80s:

Maybe this is indicative of age more than anything else. People have to search to find the good in a genre they don't entirely remember, but hasn't yet been canonified as a "golden age".

Perhaps that's why my generation can find so much to love in the 80s - because it was our coming of age and we were aware of the amazing stuff going on - while the 70s suffered from not being that "golden age" of the 60s (before we were born) and yet the stuff that filtered down to us as young kids was not the good amazing stuff.

So the generation a decade behind mine will probably feel the same way about the half-remembered 80s if all you ever were exposed to at the time was the concurrent cheese.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDU8omvqD4

I'm not sure I get what you're saying, but I grew up in the 80s, so I should have loved the 80s right ? But not really. I actually had to learn to like the 80s, because I grew up with top of the pops stuff. Now my teenage years happened in the 90s. How old are you ? 40 ?

Completely forgot about Sonic Youth:

and also

and

shhhhhh

Ha! I'm not 40 just yet thank you! I'm a few months older than Richard, you do the maths. :-P

And I prefer this which is TOTALLY a classic of the 80s

What I mean is, you're going to have a deeper understanding of/appreciation of music that you discover in your teenage years and after, because that's about the time that you start choosing to seek out music for yourself, rather than just being subject to the environmental music around you. (Stuff from before you were born is generally filtered, and something that you have to actively seek out, and therefore you're going to choose what appeals to you)

My image of the 70s is, like, Abba and the BeeGees, because that's what I heard as a child. I can't stand that stuff, and for a long time, that's all I thought the 70s were. In the 80s, once I hit my teens, music was something that I actively sought out and therefore I was able to be discerning. I controlled my musical environment, rather than being forced to endure what was around me.

Since you say that you were in your teens in the 90s, I'm guessing that you had a similar experience of the 80s as I had of the 70s - i.e. you were just forced to listen to what your parents listened to, or what was on the telly.

Generally, the music that has the most powerful effect on you - and shapes you and your future tastes - is that which you experience between the ages of about 15 and 21. So whatever decade you were in during those years is the one that you are probably going to perceive as "best".

agreed.