{"id":23643,"date":"2011-11-11T13:00:29","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T19:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=23643"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:49:30","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:49:30","slug":"the-real-eighties-going-down-to-alice-springs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=23643","title":{"rendered":"The Real Eighties:  Going Down To Alice Springs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I did say this week in &#8220;The Real Eighties&#8221; was about Britain. \u00a0I oversimplified: \u00a0it&#8217;s about the Commonwealth. \u00a0Most of the really good music of the decade &#8211; yep, as I define it &#8211; came from the parts of Britain that <em>weren&#8217;t <\/em>\u00a0England; from Ireland, Scotland, Wales&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and Australian and New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p>Split Enz kicked off the decade<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And of course, Midnight Oil.<\/p>\n<p>For all of you who thought U2 was too modest and unambitious, or that The Alarm were too subtle, or Big Country were too musically baroque, the Australian band &#8211; led by six-foot-seven-inch-tall socialist activist Peter Garrett &#8211; fit the bill.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OcKcjpSWmm0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Relentlessly preachy, as earnest as a fourteen year old animal rights activist&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;.but musically, both maddeningly baroque and classically ambitious. I mean, if you&#8217;re a campfire guitar player, just try to follow the changes in <em>Kosciosko<\/em>&#8230;:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h5L3N80LKds\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;to say nothing of the interplay between the vocals. This is not &#8220;Louie Louie&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Or &#8220;Safety Dance&#8221; for that matter.<\/p>\n<p>In \u00a0fact, the dancing was very unsafe:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6pKPNnk-JhE\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Preachy enough to make an &#8220;Occupy Minnesota&#8221; glitter-flinging fop blanche in embarassment? \u00a0Absolutely!<\/p>\n<p>But the point of this series isn&#8217;t &#8220;was it cool and detached enough for hipsters today&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s &#8220;there&#8217;s a lot of stuff to remember that wasn&#8217;t focused on hair&#8221;. \u00a0Peter Garret&#8217;s &#8216;do should be proof&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Better hair &#8211; and less preachy &#8211; was the band I always wanted to actually have, back in the eighties; INXS, which brought an R&#8217;nB-ish danceability and hooks you could hang sides of beef from throughout the decade.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8nu6Ix8pwas\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I did say this week in &#8220;The Real Eighties&#8221; was about Britain. \u00a0I oversimplified: \u00a0it&#8217;s about the Commonwealth. \u00a0Most of the really good music of the decade &#8211; yep, as I define it &#8211; came from the parts of Britain that weren&#8217;t \u00a0England; from Ireland, Scotland, Wales&#8230; &#8230;and Australian and New Zealand. Split Enz kicked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-real-eighties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23643","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=23643"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49773,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23643\/revisions\/49773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}