Years ago, I was working in an “oldies” station. \u00a0Still being in the middle of a radio career, and trying to keep my options open (I’d always wanted to do news and talk, and was chafing with life as a disc jockey – but “when in Rome…”, as they say), I asked the station’s program director what it was that made a song an “oldie”.<\/p>\n
He replied that music directors operated on two key bits of psychology:<\/p>\n
I was sitting in a Culver’s the other day. \u00a0They were playing Sirius FM’s “Original MTV Veejay” station – the station where Martha Quinn and the rest of the original MTV VJs (no, I can’t remember anyone but Martha Quinn) voicetrack the songs that were in vogue from 1981-86ish.<\/p>\n
And for some reason, they played a 4-5 song sweep of nothing but music that was on the radio and MTV when I moved to the Twin Cities, 30 years ago next month.<\/p>\n
And, just like my old program director said, it was\u00a0incredibly\u00a0<\/em>evocative. \u00a0I remembered how it felt driving across the prairie for the last time as a North Dakota resident, listening to\u00a0Rain on the Scarecrow<\/em>. \u00a0Driving down 494 and turning onto the Southtown Strip for the first time as “Money for Nothing” played on the radio. \u00a0My first rush hour on 494 at Cedar, racing to my first job interview in the Cities to the tune of “Shout”, in WLOL. \u00a0Watching MTV after a long day of cold calling and seeing “Take On Me” for the first time.<\/p>\n And I started writing this post on my phone.<\/p>\n (Warning: \u00a0immense number of embedded videos below the jump. \u00a0You’ve been warned).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I’ve spent a lot of time, on this blog and in real life, setting people straight about what “the Eighties” was really like when it came to music; it wasn’t\u00a0just\u00a0<\/em>haircuts and synthesizers. \u00a0There was a lot of really, really great music out there – even allowing for the fact that I heard all of it at a time of my life where music is going to have a huge impact on me, especially given the circumstances.<\/p>\n Of course, the more I thought about it – and the more that Martha Quinn played as I sat in Culvers last Sunday – the more I realized that there was great music, there was some really ungawdly crap, and there was some that is lost to history – luckily in some cases, but by no means all.<\/p>\n The Good<\/strong>: There\u00a0was\u00a0<\/em>a lot of objectively great music out around that time:<\/p>\n Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, of course – the big\u00a0hit single from the album that launched them from “Biggest Cult Band in the World” to one of the biggest attractions in music, at least for a few years:<\/p>\n