Talk About Pop Music. Talk

Talk About Pop Music. Talk About... - There's a strain of revisionism going around that tries to deprecate '80's pop music. A couple of the Infinite Monkeys have been having it out; James started the exchange:

One more thing about Robert Palmer: man, Power Station totally sucked. Had to be one of the worst bands of the 80s-- I'd put them up there with Toto or Styper. Oh, God the memories are flowing back: Wham! Haircut 100. Boy George. Thommpson Twins. A-ha! Oingo Boingo. Duran Duran. Flock of Seagulls. ELO. Whitesnake. Warrant. Scorpion. Wang Chung. Tom Tom Club. Hall and Oates. Bananarama. The Bangles. The Go-Gos. Journey. Styx. Yes. Sugar Hill Gang. The Alan Parsons Project. Genesis. XTC. Simple Minds. Peter Gabriel. Devo. Human League. The Cult. Depeche Mode. The Motels. Rick Astley. DiVynyls. Pet Shop Boys.

Robbo continued with a...er, oblique defense:

I don't want to hear any crap about Oingo Boingo!

Mentioning XTC (who also don't deserve to get lumped in the same list with A-ha and Stryper) reminded me of a great song by They Might Be Giants called "XTC vs. Adam Ant".

Sigh.

OK, kids; I claim absolute expertise on this subject of '80s music and XTC, in that:

• I was a disc jockey during the peak of '80s music - '82-86 - and
• I stood at the next urinal with XTC's Andy Partridge (and told him why "Dear God" was a really irritating and smug song, although in that jovial way guys have when we're unrinal-to-urinal

Fact is, and I can say this without the slightest fear of being taken as a curmudgeon, the period from 1982 to 1986 was one of the three best periods for pop music in the entire rock and roll era. There were lots of reasons for this:

• It was the first and only time the Top Forty was just as good as the Alternative charts - because it largely was the same as the alternative charts! The bands that had been "alt" in 1979 - the Clash, Devo, The Police among many others - and the genres that had never seen radio were suddenly what everyone was listening to.
• The best rock and roll band of 1983 was headed by a little black guy who fronted a band that was 2/3 white. Black and white music cross-pollinated in a way that it hadn't since Hendrix, and hasn't since (rap-metal doesn't count; it's not cross pollination, it's aping a style).
• For all the critics' perennial yawping about women becoming powerful forces in pop music, today's grrl singers - all of them - look like talentless tarts against the likes of Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, Christina Amphlett, Exene Cervenka, even Joan Jett.
• It was a time when rap, rock, R'nB, and about five different directions of pop shared prominence, unlike today's tired scene (with nothing but stale hip hop, R'nB and the descendents of Grunge)

Fact is, any period of time that simultaneously had Prince, Michael Jackson, Big Country, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Schilling, Run-DMC, U2, Peter Gabriel and the Police on the charts has to be pretty damn good. Or, let's be honest, vastly better than anything since, any most anything before (except for 1955-58 and 1964-68).

Keep your Flock of Seagulls references to yourself, thank you very much.

Posted by Mitch at September 30, 2003 06:02 AM