{"id":13577,"date":"2012-10-27T09:00:31","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13577"},"modified":"2012-10-27T09:08:09","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T14:08:09","slug":"dance-music-sex-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13577","title":{"rendered":"Tonight I’m Gonna Party Like It’s 30 Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been doing this series of “Thirty Years Ago Today” anniversary posts about great music of the eighties for quite a while now.<\/p>\n

Here’s the thing I’ve discovered in writing this series; for many of the records I’ve covered – The RIver<\/a>, Shoot Out The Lights<\/a><\/em>\u00a0– it hardly seems like it’s been thirty years, since the records seem (to me, anyway) so very timeless; they’re no less a soundtrack in my forties than they were in my teens and twenties.<\/p>\n

With others, though? \u00a0They’re definitely archaeological artifacts; Boy<\/a><\/em>, U2’s first album, hinted at greatness and timelessness to come, but it was very much a time capsule for an idealistic post-punk do it yourself world of music I craved being\u00a0in\u00a0<\/em>at the time. \u00a0Zenyatta Mondatta<\/em><\/a> and Blizzard of Ozz <\/em><\/a>seem like museum exhibits showcasing one of those rare times in music when pretty much anything went.<\/p>\n

And it’s one of those latter that brings us to today’s anniversary. \u00a0It was thirty years ago today Prince released\u00a01999<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0\"\"<\/address>\n
And it may have not only been one of the greatest albums of the eighties – but if you had to pick an album to serve as a time capsule of what The Eighties were, musically, you could pick a lot worse.<\/address>\n
If you saw The Eighties as…:<\/address>\n
    \n
  • an inflection point in R&B between the funk of the seventies and the hip-hop-inflected R&B of the nineties<\/strong>,\u00a01999\u00a0<\/em>was a key turning point. \u00a0While there was no hip-hop on the album – the term was still on the fringe of pop music culture in 1982 –\u00a01999\u00a0<\/em>linked the big-funk-band ’70s with the technology-driven groove that has dominated R&B for the past twenty-odd years. \u00a0Listen to “DMSR”, and tell me that’s not made for sampling.<\/li>\n
  • an era driven by unprecedented change in music technology<\/strong>: \u00a0In spades. \u00a0There’d been synth-pop albums before\u00a01999<\/em>; there’d be many after. \u00a0But when it came to integrating bleeding-edge technology (synths, a top-of-the-line Linn drum machine) with tradition (Prince’s signature Hofner guitar, a cheapo knockoff of a Fender Telecaster),\u00a01999\u00a0<\/em>was the gold standard. \u00a0Listen to “Let’s Pretend We’re Married”, or the title cut, for two of the most glorious melanges of style…ever!<\/li>\n
  • a period of glorious intermingling between “black” and “white” music<\/strong>: \u00a0There’s a story – possibly apocryphal, although I remember it came from a decent source back (koff koff) years ago – that John Mellencamp, who was just starting to wiggle his way toward critical respectability, came out to do an encore at a show, carrying a boom box. \u00a0As the story goes, he said “This\u00a0<\/em>is a great rock and roll song”, held the boom box up to the mike, and played “Little Red Corvette” for the audience. \u00a0 This was kind of a big deal for me; you didn’t get exposed to a lot of “black” music in rural North Dakota in those days. \u00a0And learning from Mellencamp (for whom I didn’t much care at the time) that there\u00a0was\u00a0<\/em> in fact a link between R&B and R&R kicked loose a brick in my mind that got me thinking, and sent me – thirty years ago this coming winter – into the back room at the radio station I was working at, to dig out some old Motwn records and start piecing together the great rock and roll tradition for myself.<\/li>\n
  • Minneapolis’ musical glory days<\/strong>: \u00a0this was the album that blasted the Twin Cities onto the musical map.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    It’s all of that. \u00a0And it was anything but timeless; how many albums give themselves a shelf-date? \u00a0 The world didn’t\u00a0<\/em>end in 2000; everyone had a bomb but we all didn’t die any day, not yet. \u00a0 “Tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999” is a statement of ironic nostalgia.<\/p>\n

    But as an artifact of a long-gone time?<\/p>\n

    What an artifact.<\/p>\n

    And what a time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’ve been doing this series of “Thirty Years Ago Today” anniversary posts about great music of the eighties for quite a while now. Here’s the thing I’ve discovered in writing this series; for many of the records I’ve covered – The RIver, Shoot Out The Lights\u00a0– it hardly seems like it’s been thirty years, since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-year-that-was"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13577"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31318,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13577\/revisions\/31318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}