Sucking in the '80's
I'm never quite sure what will plunge me into distracted thought. Ha ha! Just kidding. Everything plunges me into distracted thought. It's happened four times since starting to write this post.
What's really on my mind today are the songs of Yesterday that were playing yesterday: the Never Played list. What I've mostly gotten out of the most recent session with that playlist (besides renewing my desire to build a time machine to travel back to the sixties only to get a single kiss from Francoise Hardy) is that the 80's are a musically misunderstood decade. The jewels of the era still shine, the supergroups (U2, REM, the Smiths) have all aged extremely well, and there's some lesser-known quality to be found, but for the most part...the 80's kind of suck. There. I said it.
The most obvious reason is the production. While the advancements in drum machines and synths were handled well for the deliberately icy and precision sound of Depeche Mode and OMD, the over-reliance on it for pop music makes the disposable pop of the era rot much quicker than the organic sounds of the 60's and 70's. Comparing Rhino's box sets of the 70's and 80's is a quick lesson: there's plenty of stuff on Have a Nice Decade that's cheesy and stupid, but the real drums and horns end up giving it a more natural sound and making it a fun, brainless listen. Compare that to the cheesy and stupid stuff on Like, Omigod, which is so horrifyingly stiff and processed that it doesn't even deserve a second listen.
What's almost more bothering about a lot of 80's music, though, is that even stuff that's classic still pales because of the production. Take Prince: With the slight exception of Purple Rain, it's hard to listen to his stuff without thinking how much better it would sound with an actual band. And even much of the music recorded with actual instruments—including a lot of the more alternative stuff—is compressed to a lifeless lump.
To sum: it's a frustrating decade. I have a lot of nostalgia and discovery tied up in those ten years, but the further I am away from that time, the more unsatisfying I find a large chunk of the catalog. I know that this will be a controversial view, but that's exactly the sort of uncompromising opinions we're unafraid to express here at Are Seven.
Alright...that's enough of the past. I'll have some of the future for you tomorrow.
15 comments:
You need to go download Van Halen's 1984 and Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet right now. Go on, I'll wait. Then we'll see if you still feel the same way.
No need to wait. Both 1984 and Bon Jovi's greatest hits were part of my winter binge. The former still holds up, without any doubt, but David Lee Roth Van Halen (as I've realized even more lately) are about as unique a band as you can find. They had a sense of fun and feel that no other hard rock band before or after has ever had.
Bon Jovi, on the other hand? I've never gotten it. I remembered even liking "Runaway" when it first came out, and I saw them TWICE (on the Slippery When Wet and New Jersey tours), but aside from the nostalgia, there is just nothing that special about Bon Jovi. The songs are fine, I guess. I get them stuck in my head and they're fun enough, if only because I know all the words and cute girls get excited about them, but I just don't get why they've managed to keep their popularity for so long or why they're now seen as a classic band. I guess that, out of all of the inoffensive hair metal bands, they're the catchiest, so maybe that's it...they're just the best of a batch that a lot of people want to remember.
I thought Prince had a band. C'mon Wendy and Lisa.
Oh, he did. That's why 1999 and Purple Rain sound so great. But it's still synths and drum machines.
I should clarify what I said about Prince: I love the stuff. The first three songs off of Purple Rain are three of the best songs EVER. But even the songs of his that get me all worked up, it just feels like there's a limiter; like an excitement governor put on it. It's thrilling and amazing and has a fantastic machine groove, but there's always this gnawing feeling that it could be totally off the hook, but is (deliberately) kept on the hook by the machines.
Yeah, but then he sacked his band (the Revolution) and proceeded to make his best record yet: Sign 'O' the Times! ;)
I totally agree with your overall point, however. Without a doubt the 80's aesthetic has not aged as gracefully as that of any of rock'n'roll's other decades. It's funny how synth sounds of the late 60's and 70's sound cool and retro, while synth sounds in the 80's just seem tacky and heartless. That said, I've been kinda digging Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush albums lately and they sound very characteristic of the 80's.
Good to see someone coming around to my point of view, though I can't say I really like any of your supergroup exceptions.
Becoming musically aware in the '80s was why I believed synthesizers sucked until I was into my mid-twenties.
So much of the 80s production is also oh-so-very dinky. The synthesizers just are not bad ass. You go from Bernie Worrell's dinosaur flatulence and un-nerving drones to ... the bathos of the aerobic bleeps on "Let's Get Physical." Okay, so that was late '81, and "Don't You Want Me" and "Sweet Dreams (are made of this)" came after that, and they have wonderful textures--not to mention robo-synth-y vocals.
To further your production argument, in what may be a complete fabrication of my brain/ears, it really seems that some major process of actually producing recordings changed roughly in '79. To me, I can hear a difference in the background of nearly all recordings; like you say, the '70s sounds more natural. Listen to Give 'em Enough Rope, then listen to "Spanish Bombs."
(Not that anyone cares, but I've never found Purple Rain anything more than okay. I really dig Prince's earliest singles and Dirty Mind, which sounds like fast stuff by the Cars, but better.)
As for indie bands, I'd say the "canonical" "works" from the '80s sure as hell don't stand up to indie work from preceding and following eras.
At the cusp of '79/80, there's Crazy Rhythms, Entertainment!, Los Angeles, and I Just Can't Stop It. Then '81 and on (in terms of indie rock), would you consider any of Talk Talk Talk, Sandanista!, Marshall Crenshaw, Album (Flipper), Murmur*, Speaking in Tongues, How Will the Wolf Survive?, Let It Be, Zen Arcade, Double Nickels on the Dime bona fide classics? Do you listen to any of them over and over again?
Also about 1980: All soft soul went into the toilet, which not-so-mysteriously coincided with Al Green's entry into the ministry. Sure, soft soul always dances on the edge of the toilet seat, but it wouldn't climb back out until New Jack at the end of the decade.
In a related development, Stevie Wonder's slight decline of the latter '70s suddenly became a precipitous drop straight into pure suckitude. Funk--partly as a result of the costs of its bands' need for numerous horn-players and the collapse of the record industry at the end of the '70s--turned to dinkified synthesizers and electro- arrangements--probably best exemplified by the difference in sound between the similarly-themed "Brick House" and "She's a Bad Mama Jama (She's Built, She's Stacked)". And finally, disco disappeared in its extant form (and this was bad, mostly). However, disco's transmogrified surviving form was the decade's only success story: hip-hop.
Come on, Fats! Murmur is a bonafide classic! If it came out today, it wipe the floor with every flavor of the day blogger favorite band.
He's right, Fats. It is. And Speaking In Tongues may not be, but Remain In Light sure as hell is.
I think that the main reason that the early '80's is as celebrated as it is is because it's a singles era. What I feel separates it from other singles eras, though, is that the fluff is unlistenable, whereas I can listen to "Please Mr. Postman" or "Seasons In the Sun" and still enjoy them simply because they at least sound natural.
I'll still take Purple Rain over Prince's other stuff. I love plenty of his other stuff, but...I was thinking yesterday that I want to do a new feature on this blog where I get moment-by-moment analytical on a song, and "The Beautiful Ones" would be one of the first to get the treatment. Vocally, it's staggering.
I'm having trouble getting my head around your proposition that Depeche Mode and OMD have held up better than Prince, in all his incarnations. Depeche Mode has some pretty stupid songs.
Heh heh. That was why I asterisked Murmur, because I suspected it would rile youse up. I'm an unbeliever when it comes to R.E.M., so I'll never be convinced. (I guess you're comparing it to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Sufjan Stevens as the wipees?)
You all know about Matthew Perpetua's fairly new R.E.M.-only blog?
Reid, if I'm not mistaken, Remain in Light was released on the 79/80 cusp. (I don't actually know it except for what's excerpted on Stop Making Sense.)
Take it back that "Please Mr Postman" is fluff.
No question. Prince has held up much better, and some of DM's songs are downright cringe-worthy. The point was actually the Depeche Mode and OMD went for a deliberate machine sound, whereas, while Prince actually used machines pretty well, I can't help but think that it would have sounded better if it had been recorded ten years before with a crack funk band.
So...nothing at all to do with how well it's held up.
I still like listening to Purple Rain. The songs still sound great to me, and I get the same feeling I did when I first heard them. Plus, just thinking about how much it pissed off Tipper Gore makes me smile! ;)
The thing that helped Bon Jovi stand out over similar bands is that they had the typical hair band sound, but with Springsteen-esque lyrics. Now they're getting old and making country music with Sugarland, but every time I hear an interview with Jon, he's turning more and more into Bruce (Bruce meanwhile is trying to turn into Bob Dylan, so it all comes out in the wash I guess).
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