The early '80's have been on my mind a whole lot lately. My 25 years plus 1 high school reunion is thhis coming weekend. While I cannot (sadly) attend, connecting with folks I grew up with, and then grew apart from in the past quarter century, has been quite nice. At the same time, a tiny fit of nostalgia has dredged up memories I haven't paid attention to much over the years. One of those was the introduction of MTV to our little community my senior year in high school. Even though it debuted in major metro areas a year or so earlier, it didn't make it to our cable provider until sometime in late 1982.
For some inexpicable reason, this song was an early high-rotation song. Unlike the arty-farty Euro-pop and New Wave, it signaled the musical direction the American music industry would take through much of the decade, a kind of watered down hard-rock, differing from the arena rock of the mid- and late-1970's in that the former had the virtue of being kind of new and having the occasional really talented individual or band. I just can't say that about the following . . .
Along with promoting a kind of silly AOR playlist, MTV had to rely on what was at hand, and British bands had been creating interesting promo videos for a while. So while Pat Benatar may have been helped by MTV, so was Duran Duran.
Had I but known when I first saw this video that I was witnessing the emergence of one of the great bands of the rock era . . . "New Years Day" by U2, with a 12"-remix audio . . .
What are your memories, good and bad, of the early 1980's music scene?
