Ah the 80’s. Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s Hit Factory, Banamara, Mel and Kim, Kylie, staying up till 3am on a Satdi to watch the Hitman and Her, baggy shirts, high waist kecks and bouffanted hair.
Hmmm. I love people's skewed concept of that decade. Here's how I saw it.
1980: Afghanistan, peak of Futurism, oh dear, who the fuck did we vote for last year in the General Election? Ra-ra skirts, wedge haircuts and Shakin' fucking Stevens. Death rattle of New Wave at the expense of synthesisers. Last year, a few blokes take a Chic bassline hook and boast over it. We said it'll never catch on.
1981: Bit like above, only slide toward stagflation. Reaganomics, coloured framed big-specs, tank tops and baggies with tucker boots. Everyone wanting to be a fucking pirate or grow their wedges assymetrical. BBC plugging the airwaves with novelty shite like Bucks Fizz. Synthpop wrestles with New Romanticism, thanks to one Steve Strange and one Vince Clarke and some Philip Oakey.
1982: Death of Futurism. Synthpop wins the war so the NR refugees transfer to Goth and trade in white lace for black sackcloth, whilst the walking wounded New Wavers morph into Indie twerps and Smiths devotees. Other people call these 'fucking students' who have a penchant for radical left wing dogma, three-quarter length overcoats and act like Rik from the Young Ones. Argentina miscalculates and hands Thatcher a seven year goal kick at the dispatch box and we seem to want to go nuclear a lot more.
1983: The zenith of synthpop and it's failed struggle with power pop. Suddenly everyone had 'gone casual' and Thatcher's aspirational bullshit splits the country forever. The haves like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran and wish they were in trunks on a yacht in Antigua whilst the have-nots are predictably miserable now, at least those not on trusteeships and with rich daddies who they keep quiet about in the refrectory. Freemans clothes one group, Millets the other.
1984: Oh dear. Some strumpet from Michigan seems to have taken over the charts. She seems to have stopped the world from seeing in the Orwellian prophecy too with her trashy (yet strangely agreeable) slut-pop. Africans are dying and maybe we should fucking pay attention a bit more, but in defence we are maybe a bit preoccupied with our own gathering war and famine over coal.
1985: The fightback! Brit bands go full on with their MTV coaxing, commercial wankery. Then, out of all this noxious confusion of styles comes a benefit concert which would show blood-sucking executives the real shining path toward exploiting idiots with pocket money who like music. Truly, 'the day the music died'. See also, unions.
1986: Now exhausted by how wonderful mankind can be by trying and failing to save starving tribes by throwing cash at them and sending well-fed celebrities, its on with the show. Somewhere in Chicago a bloke pulls a drum machine and a bass synthesiser out of a bottom drawer. Meanwhile, everyone is still wearing shoulder pads and pretending Croydon is Denver Colorado and greed is good maaaan. Only if you have money. If you don't, Thatcher doesn't care. The Space Shuttle explodes in agreement.
1987: House music all night long. Suddenly, those 'working classes' (and aspirational middle classes wanting to be working class all of a sudden) are all 'having fun' and 'loving each other' whilst 'off their fucking tits', which is better than sitting in misery whilst Thatcher and her grisly morons trample on their worlds. Everything is suddenly slaved to the Akai S900 and the aforementioned TB303/808/909 trinity and seemingly dressing is dayglo assists the euphoric feeling of 130BPM and 4:4 pulsebeats in sludgy fields somewhere inside the M25. If this doesn't spin your props then the altern8ive is Roland D50/DX7II based diarrhoea, shot out of the arseholes of three blokes called Stock, Aitken and Waterman. We would soon learn that each record could be played at 16, 33.3, 45 and 78 and it was actually the same fucking artist. They also 'invented' Kylie, both as a name for kids and a gorgeous (but disappointingly boring) pop morsel.
1988: The last death throes of power-pop and synthpop wrack through music and people start to go 'soul' and 'R&B' although neither term has much reference to soul or Rhythm and Blues, more 'what Gary Davies and Steve Wright are paid to plug. The charts are filled with dogshit, the streets are full of wankers, Thatcher is now looking like Snoke (and equally unstoppable) and people are wearing rayon, oversized tracksuits and basketball trainers with Grolsh tops on the lace-loops, pretending every night out is a 'rave' and holidaying in the Balearics long after it has burned to the ground. Young, Upwardly-mobile bastards are seemingly the aspirational target because they have the ability to call their mums from their cars. Their partners look like people you laugh at today.
1989: Suddenly, the world realises that Acid House and SAW was in fact, desperately shit and they should possibly grow the fuck up. Madonna's year-long reinventing campaign succeeds and after a brief struggle we are all 'chilled out' and enjoying tasteless, gassy piss-water in gaudily decorated 'fun pubs' listening to 'Luther .... mah maaaaan!' and enjoying the amphetamine buzz. Goths and Indie, after a small protest struggle, have been ushered out of the door and towns are filled with gangs of happy, hopped-up, blissed-out bellends, gleefully propagating HIV and Chlamydia. People have just given up fighting the wrongness of Thatcher because, like the Soviet Union, she will hopefully eventually die. The end of the decade comes with just as many uncertainties as it started with the chief of which is why Top of the Pops is still shit.
pommpey
