Comments on: Did Any Of Rock’s Long-Standing Icons Not Make A Poor Aesthetic Choice During The ’80s?

By: Chris N.

Chris N. — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:56:21 +0000

Gated reverb was awesome, it was the subsequent digital approximations of it that were so awful.

By: cheesebubble

cheesebubble — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:06:00 +0000

@kurtck: thank you.

By: Kate Richardson

Kate Richardson — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:31:34 +0000

Jimmy Buffett produced some inexcusable music in the ’80s. And let’s not get into a debate about whether his stuff in the ’70s was good to begin with because it definitely was.

By: sparkletone

sparkletone — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:20:08 +0000

@Royfromage: I suppose it's theoretically possible that Tom Waits has made a mistake at some point.

But if he has, if he has, Downtown Train is most certainly not it.

(Not that it's his finest work either, but come on.)

PS: Seconding the Elton John thing.

PPS: Wow. I'd never seen that Bowie + Mick thing. Painful.

By: Lucas Jensen

Lucas Jensen — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:52:00 +0000

@noamjamski: I love that drum sound. Hahaha. I'd never use it, but I love it.

By: jody

jody — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:25:36 +0000

i'd forgotten that "don't drive drunk" existed, but it sounds okay to my adult ears -- ignoring the lyrics, it could pass for something on cupid & psyche 85!

By: noamjamski

noamjamski — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:48:02 +0000

@Big Gray.: Nothing is wrong with the idea of gating in and of itself, it is a very necessary music production tool. The abomination that Collins helped pioneer was the effect known as "gated reverb" where the toms and snare are reverbed to holy hell, and then cut with a quick gate. That is that huge boomy sound heard on everything from "in the air tonight" to "pour some sugar on me" as well as everything in between. That sound is very 80s, and a large reason why so much commercial music from that era sounds dated, even if the songs are intrinsically good.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:38:06 +0000

Starship.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:18:53 +0000

Tom Waits! Tom Waits, Tom Waits, Tom Waits. Pure gold in the 80s.

By: Eugene Langley

Eugene Langley — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:16:30 +0000

@rogerniner: The Steve Winwood reference is apt. "Higher Love" inexplicably came on in a bar a while back and, desperately trying to remember who sang it, my friends and I could only come up with "the bass player from Genesis", who incidentally, I just found out, was Mike from Mike and the Mechanics. In any case, "Higher Love" is as good a distillation of what was wrong with the 80s as anything else.

By: Ned Raggett

Ned Raggett — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:55:06 +0000

Oh the memories this all brings back. The…bad memories. The memories I want to suppress.

By: Halfwit

Halfwit — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:14:38 +0000

Quick follow-up (as I am wont to do): Rod aside, the examples in this piece are, as a whole, absolutely abhorrent. And I would definitely agree that “survivor” groups from earlier decades definitely lost their way big-time in the 80s. See also: survivor bands of the 80s who slipped into pseudo-electronic MOR in the 90s (Tears for Fears, INXS, The Cure).

By: Halfwit

Halfwit — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:11:35 +0000

@musicquizking: Agreed.

Maybe it's because I'm an 80s baby (as opposed to official child/teenager of the 80s), but I like Rod's "Downtown Train". I also appreciate "Sussudio," and dig on a lot of the big, overproduced drum sound that came out of the decade. In general, while I definitely recognize the hollow, faceless, "plastic fantastic" nature of much of 80s music (especially after 1986), I've just never seen it as the musical wasteland that most other serious music fans tend to.

By: Cam/ron

Cam/ron — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 01:58:11 +0000

@Halfwit: Speaking of plastic fantastic pop, I've grown to enjoy Jam & Lewis's production work for Janet Jackson's first record as well as the overproductions of New Order and Dead Can Dance. Who knows, maybe the years of listening to so much Autechre and other post-techno laptop artists have warmed me up to "overproduction."

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 01:36:34 +0000

@Cam/ron: Two more punk missteps: TSOL's "Beneath the Shadows" and Bad Religion's "Into the Unknown." Both used keyboards, which were verboten among the hardcore set. I always liked "Beneath the Shadows." It does sort of fit their Damned-style trajectory. I never heard "Into the Unknown," but I've never been a Bad Religion fan. And for the record, I had a hard time with Black Flag's shift to metal, but over the years I have come to appreciate it more. It's pretty uncompromising, awkward, ugly stuff,if a bit boring at times. I give them credit for not giving a shit about alienating the skinheads.

By: Cam/ron

Cam/ron — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:56:30 +0000

80's-era mistakes made by indie and punk rockers:

-Gang of Four going dance-pop, and making ironic commentaries about consumerism while doing it.

-Sonic Youth's "Master-Dik"

-Husker Du's performance on the Joan Rivers Show.

-Black Flag's decent into heavy-metal sludge

-Big Black's "Jordan, Minnesota." Not every listener can understand an "ironic" protest song about alleged satanists who molest kids.

By: cheesebubble

cheesebubble — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:26:41 +0000

I'm going to claim that Jackson and McCartney rebounded from "The Girl Is Mine" abomination with "Say Say Say" (although its video blew goats). As for those who might try to find some redemption for Elton in the '80s, I submit:

The 1980s killed off all that was good in the preceding decades. Hardly anyone knew what to properly do with the synthesizers and slick production trends of the day (let alone the god awful "fashion").

By: Chris N.

Chris N. — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:24:29 +0000

Peter Gabriel. I can barely believe something this beautiful existed in 1986:

By: rogerniner

rogerniner — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:32:36 +0000

Steve Winwood? Thrived. Robert Plant? (ugh.) I think there is an interesting story in all this. Why did these rock and soul gods sink so damn low? Why is “I only like their stuff from the 70′s” a valid point? Prime example: Elton John. His 80′s stuff was the first I ever heard of him, and I HATED it, hence hated Elton. But then I found his music from the 70′s, and a freakin’ love the songcraft, the lyrics, the production. The dawn of the new conservative corporate drive in music business in the 80′s drove so many artists to commit artistic suicide.

By: Lucas Jensen

Lucas Jensen — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:17:27 +0000

@Clevertrousers: Oh, I love Trans, but there are others. I'm talking about Landing on Water and Everybody's Rocking et al.

@scott pgwp: The Boss was around for nearly a decade, but I will defend his 80s output until the end.

@noamjamski: What's wrong with gates?