I Miss The 80s

I know that people look down their noses at the 1980s a lot, but I grew up then, and it is "my" decade... and I miss it. It was a decade where culturally, appearances were everything, substance was nothing. It was a decade where we all wanted to date Belinda Carlisle, we all wanted John Taylor's hair, and we all wanted Sonny Crocket's wardrobe.

I recognize the value in certain things that people who were born after me don't understand. I know what people thought about music before Thriller and after, before the Beastie Boys and after. I know what people thought about movies before Arnold and after, before Eddie and after, before Molly and after. Before Miami Vice and after. Before Roseanne and after.

It was a decade of really great bands that played really crap music, but nobody cared. When Iron Maiden came out with a new album, the first question anybody asked was, "Oh yeah? What's the album cover look like?" Bands like Cinderella and Brittney Fox had the best hair, and we sat in front of MTV for hours just to see the Tawny Kitaen on the hood of that Jag one more time.

But the 1980s also had some of the best music as well... at least 10 times the amount of will-still-be-popular-a-century-from-now music as the 1990s. We had Madonna, The Police, and INXS. We had pop music that was still varied, like Genesis, Van Halen, Billy Joel, Prince, and the Thompson Twins. We had great music that the radio wouldn't play, but everyone still listened to, like Judas Priest and The Scorpions, LL Cool J and Eazy E. We had weird music that the radio stations didn't play, but everyone still knew was cool, even if we didn't fully understand it, like Morrisey, Love and Rockets, Talking Heads, Siouxsie, Devo.

Lead guitarists were almost as (or more) famous as the lead singers they played for. Even the bassist had to be able to sing harmony. People went to concerts just to hear a kick-ass drum solo. And lead singers: Whether you were up high like Steve Perry, or down low like Billy Idol, rough like Ronnie James, smooth like Freddy, or quirky like Ozzy, you had to have the personality and power to lead 15,000 screaming fans through 2 hours of stadium madness.

But the 1980s wasn't just about music. I know the pure, unadulterated excitement associated with the first time ever that our TV went blank, stopped showing moving pictures, and there was a black screen with 2 white bars, and two zeros at the top: Pong had arrived. Opening our first Atari on Christmas morning was a seizure-inducing event. Every new electronic introduction beyond that was truly ground breaking, as Intellivision replaced Atari, Colecovision replaced Intellivision, and Nintendo replaced them all.

We used to call the dentist's office at 11:00 at night just to hear the town's first answering machine. We would pause our Betamax recording of Magnum PI every other minute just because it was so cool to be able to stare at a single frozen picture on your TV for as long as you wanted, and we would fast-scan through the commercials, giggling at the hyper-movement of the people. We laughed at the possibility of owning our own $1,000 compact disc player.

We didn't laugh at our clothes... or our hair. Big hair was beautiful. Wearing suspenders was stylish. Argyle socks were in for a while... along with thin leather ties. Collar up. Neon colors for a while were in, and then black-and-white... whatever Chess King dictated. Guys got their ears pierced and mousse and gel and spray were as important as toothpaste and deodorant. Concert T-shirts were also important, to show that you were cool enough to be there, but a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt from some exotic locale was worth its weight in gold.

We were always 5 minutes away from being vaporized by Russians, but nobody could catch AIDS unless they were gay. Gang violence and crack cocaine was a more immediate threat to our children than sugar-filled fruit drinks and mind-numbing video games.

Ours was also the first time since the turn of the century to idolize business acumen. We made celebrities out of Iacocca and Trump. Revenge of the Nerds was more than a movie, with Bill Gates and Steven Hawking and Carl Sagan becoming respected household names.

Well... I'm sure there are all kinds of other things about the 1980s that made it a great decade, but I was only a teenager then. These are the things that I remember.