what music did you turn to in the late 80's?

[LovePlusOne]

[quote][i]Originally posted by ghosty[/i]
Of course I completely disagree about most Alternative in the 90's sucking.
I'd say most popular music usually sucks. Certainly the 80's was one big suck job for the most part except for a small pocket of great music (which is why I'm here).
[/quote]

I agree. Let's not forget that in the '80s for every Joy Division or Echo & the Bunnymen, Lionel Ritchie was dancing on the ceiling all night long. Most people today still dismiss the entirety of music from that decade because their was so much [i]bad[/i] synth pop. So in the same way, in the '90s for every Seven Mary Three or Candlebox (horrible, horrible dreck), folks like Pulp, Mercury Rev, Massive Attack, and others were doing their thing.

And yeah, aside from The Chronic, rap did go to hell in the '90s.

[Mechi]

[quote][i]Originally posted by LovePlusOne[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by ghosty[/i]
Of course I completely disagree about most Alternative in the 90's sucking.
I'd say most popular music usually sucks. Certainly the 80's was one big suck job for the most part except for a small pocket of great music (which is why I'm here).
[/quote]

I agree. Let's not forget that in the '80s for every Joy Division or Echo & the Bunnymen, Lionel Ritchie was dancing on the ceiling all night long. Most people today still dismiss the entirety of music from that decade because their was so much [i]bad[/i] synth pop. So in the same way, in the '90s for every Seven Mary Three or Candlebox (horrible, horrible dreck), folks like Pulp, Mercury Rev, Massive Attack, and others were doing their thing.

And yeah, aside from The Chronic, rap did go to hell in the '90s.
[/quote]

There's a point there... and a good one.


<img src="http://home.comcast.net/~myirwin/JD_Montage2.jpg">

[ghosty]

Rap is so troubling because it was really going in a great direction in the late 80's. It was like a golden period with De La Soul, Disposble Heroes, KRS One, Public Enemy, etc.

...and then it all came crashing down with Gangsta Rap. Nothing against Ice T or anything (cuz I like THAT stuff) but it's almost as if record labels said "Hey, this controversy really sells...let's dumb this shit down and remove any content".

Pulp are one of the best bands EVER!!!!!!!! End of discussion.

[ApolloZero]

I started buying house/dance 12" inches instead of albums. The acid Chicago house time of remixing. I think this music was the next wave of new wave, and my friends was also into it. I love that stuff. I also think the Pet shop boys had some great stuff in the late 80's/early 90s.

I also liked Wax Trax /Industrial.. but that stuff now is boring and has no lasting value to me, it didnt age well. I got rid of this vinyl and cds.

I call the late 80's the Shattered Dreams/Hair metal era.. ick... I always said the end of mtv era was when Van Halen made a video.. David Lee Roth killed the Video Star.

[plagiarism]

The late 80s coincided with grad school. I had neither time nor money to pursue music. [:I]

But David Lee Roth didn't kill MTV. Van Halen had a video for "Pretty Woman" in '82, where DLR was dressed like Napoleon, and Alex was in a Tarzan costume. MTV was still filling time with generic videos of erupting volcanos.

Also, I don't like the song, but I consider "Hot for Teacher" to be an all-time classic.

[obs]

Hey, thanks for looking up Wee Papa Girls on Amazon. Only 74 cents! [:p]


[i]Of course I completely disagree about most Alternative in the 90's sucking.[/i]

I think it's more that what was labelled as "Alternative" mutated in the 90s and wasn't really alternative anymore. Eg. was Nirvana really alternative (in the actual meaning of the word)?

[KYYX4ever]

[quote][i]Originally posted by tatermaven[/i]
<br>My tastes were all over the place. I really latched onto any new music that caught my fancy, regardless of genre. My tastes started becoming much more obscure when I started listening to wee-hours college radio shows and ordering cassettes from virtually unheard-of bands in the backs of fanzines.[/quote]

hey, me too! Amazing what you could find in the backs of fanzines. [i]Maximum Rock & Roll</I>, all those cool mags. The weirdest little bands and tiny labels, or just some guys recording cassettes in his garage. The ROIR "label" from NY comes to mind.

[quote]I remember Sub Pop was just starting to make some buzz around '88 or '89 or so. Already a lot of people were talking about Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Green River, and even, yes, Nirvana. Funny how the whole Seattle movement later came to epitomize everything that was wrong with so-called alternative music not a decade later...
[/quote]

very true. I loved early Sub Pop, and it got truly strange when "grunge" took off and made it big. These were bands who were "anti-big" ! ha ha. But those early bands had terrific stories and evolutions into what they became. Fascinating, really.

[tatermaven]

The great thing about finding bands through zines was that it only cost a couple of bucks to get a cassette or a 7" through the mail. That was important to kids in the pre-Internet, pre-filesharing days. I liked to get compilation tapes so as to get the widest sampling of bands for the bucks! Yeah, the sound quality was invariably subpar, and most of the bands were instantly forgettable, but there'd always be a gem or two on every tape.

It was also great when bands would write enthusiastic letters and include freebies like badges and stickers.

I LOVED ROIR! I remember how adamant they used to be about being the "cassette only" label, as if that was somehow the future of music! Of course, most of their catalog got reissued several times over the years in other formats and by other labels. ROIR mailorder was the coolest. They used to offer discounts if you bought five or more tapes at a time. And, of course, the Bad Brains S/T is still a must-have!

As for Sub Pop, I'm still amazed that it was Nirvana of all bands that ushered in the alterna-explosion of the 90s. I loved <I>Bleach</I> even when it first came out, but it just seems strange to me that there were dozens of other bands that had been around longer, were more influential at that point in time, and that had signed to majors earlier, that WEREN'T able to accomplish the same thing years before. I guess all the right elements just aligned a certain way for Nirvana.

I tend to think that there was just no way to contain underground music at that point. It already had a huge constituency; it just hadn't been discovered by the corporate media. Plus, mainstream music was so lame in the early 90s that something more interesting HAD to come along. Still sad how it all got so thoroughly co-opted...

[DJ Shred]

Well things were changing by the late 80s. I was 20 in 1988 and early that year started getting into house music when I went out. I was in London in school early that year and thats how I got into it. The first time I danced to house music I was at a club with members of Depeche Mode in London and their afterparty was all house music.

1989 saw the move from acid house to deep house in the clubs. I turned 21 and was living in London at the time. It was all s'express, maurice, baby ford, etc.

Yet all the while I still listened to the usual, erasure, dm, new order, etc. of course. I liked both. I never gave up listening to new wave whatever else I listened to.

[The Magus]

Well... at the end of the 80s, I started buying lots of stuff, cassettes fist and then CDs... I was mostly into popular new wave / synthpop / new romantic stuff before, but around 1988 I got a lot more into (then) so-called "alternative" stuff. And so it goes: Yello, Sisters of Mercy, good ol' Cure, Trisomie 21 (best off-key band you'll ever hear) and then a lot of brit bands: Ride, Curve, Slowdive, Lush (boy do I miss them), Stone Roses to a certain extent, and even the Happy Mondays every once in a while. However, the specter of electronic music always hung in the back, and I really dug Front 242 and some Nitzer Ebb, Twitch-era Ministry and so forth... even some Skinny Puppy.

Then came two really defining albums as far as my tastes go: Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine really got me into EBM-like stuff, and the 4-CD industrial comp by RAS-DVA got me listening to a boatload of electro-industrial bands I had never even heard of.

Even today, I remain a big fan of "good" EBM and synthpop.

F.

[manekineko]

In the late 80's I got into stuff like The Sundays, Sinead O'Connor, The Sugarcubes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Camper Van Beethoven, Sonic Youth, k.d. lang (when she was cow-punk), plus I got into reggae and other ethnic music, like Ofra Haza. Remember when everybody had "Legends" by Bob Marley and thought they were reggae afficionados? I got deeper into it than that. Plus zydeco, blues, and jazz. But I admit that period felt like a void in music, after the exuberance of the new wave revolution.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v706/maneki_neko_kawaii/manekineko4_2.gif" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

[Dave]

My high school/college years were '79 - '85 so I lived the punk/new wave era. And for all the time invested and enjoyment received during that period, I really lost touch with the music scene in the late '80s. It might have had something to do with the change in lifestyle (i.e., the 12+ hour work days).

LAter in '92 when I went back to college in the UK, bands like Bjork, Waterboys, Proclaimers, They Might Be Giants got me back into music. But I feel like a really missed out on the late 80's... which has left me a bitter old man to this day

[fiftypercent]

The late 80's were a very interesting period for me. I started listening to and buying singles in 1985 - a year in which just about everything sounded awesome - but by 1987 and 1988 there was just not the same quality about. I really got into New Order in 1987, but the house scene and huge acts like Bros and Kylie just left me cold. I started listening to more "adult" music like Suzanne Vega and Chris Rea (who has remained a favorite ever since). I also listened to Johnny Hates Jazz and Black ("Comedy" is a great album). By 1989 a lot of good stuff was coming out:

New Order - Technique
The Cure - Disintegration
TFF - Sowing The Seeds
Ian McCulloch - Candleland
Sharpe & Numan - Automatic
Marillion - Season's End

Overall just a really weird period. I've never been the same since...

[tileboy]

I started to lean toward industrial at that time,but my musical taste was still all over the map.
the cure -Disintegration -89
Pixies-Doolittle-89
Ministry-Land of rape and honey-88
My life with the Thrill kill cult-88
Reolting cocks-Beers,Steers and queers-90
Wire-Ideal copy-87,Bell is a cup-88
Woodentops-wooden foot cops-88
Hunters and collectors-Human Frailty-87
That petrol emotion-Chemicrazy-90
Proclaimers-sunshine on leith-88
The Hunters and Collectors "Human Frailty" has to be one of the most under rated cds from that time and "Doolittle" has to be considered a classic.

[highway1pch]

Pixies-Doolittle-89
Woodentops-wooden foot cops-88

MINT!

<a href="http://www.ocnewwave.blogspot.com/"><font color="#ff6600"><font size=+1.5>OC New Wave Blog</font></a>
<font color="#00ff00"><font="westminster">Music videos, Orange County concerts, and more.</font>