The 80's Through A Series of Tubes: An Overview of the Decade Through YouTube

Sometimes I tend to overlook the eighties when it comes to....well, anything. I don't particularly like clothing from the eighties (and I am slightly horrified that a lot of eighties styles are coming back "in" amongst people my age. Seriously, wasn't once, enough?) and I was too young to understand the whole Cold War/Reaganomics mentality. I do, however, remember Bush Sr. being elected when I was in 4th grade and I remember spitting on some kid for calling my parents hippies since I mentioned that they hadn't voted for him. (I guess things don't change all THAT much, do they?)

As far as music goes, I don't tend to look back on the 80's kindly. Perhaps it's because I've been to one too many eighties dance nights, where the dj's idea of an awesome set means playing New Order's "Temptation" and kids react as if it's the only good song to come out of the decade. It wasn't, although, it was one of the better songs out of a slew of horrible, trite, pop hits from groups like WHAM!.

So, this week, at Just Relax, I'm going to peruse youtube for some of the better groups and songs from the eighties. I'm going to try to avoid the obvious, such as groups like The Smiths, and try to find clips from bands we don't tend to think of when we reflect back 20 years.

To kick things off, at a suggestion from my friend Frouse, I've looked up REM's first ever television appearance in 1983 on the David Letterman show. Perhaps REM seems an obvious choice, (which I said I was going to avoid), but I find that most people I talk to tend to want to talk about the band's work in the 90's(Out of Time, Automatic For the People, Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up) , which is odd to me, because some of their best work is their earliest (Murmur, Reckoning, Life's Rich Pageant, Document), like the song they play in this clip, "Radio Free Europe."