The difference between the late 70s and the early eighties, starkly drawn.

I have to set the record straight. One of the most annoying misconceptions I have to deal with is that I’m an “8o’s guy.”

“Yo, Flock Of Seagulls!”

Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m a bit older then that. My ears were intrigued by the New Wave/Post-Punk axis of musical development in the late 70’s. The music that I’m still writing about and considering was forged in the infamous malaise of the late 70’s when social and economic stagnation held the middle classes at bay. Unemployment was up as the buying power of our currency was down. America was still hung over from the tumultuous second four years of the Nixon administration. Watergate threatened to tear the country apart with a Constitutional crisis, while the costly Vietnam war limped to its fractious conclusion. The latter has cast a particularly long shadow over the nation. And that’s just the American side of the equation.

Across the pond, the UK were laboring under the same economic hardships (driven by the oil embargo) and a fluctuating balance of power in multinational energy policy. The infamous “Winter of Discontent” saw James Callaghan’s Labour Government given a no-confidence vote that saw Margaret Thatcher swept into power in a wave that would be replicated in America the following year, with the depressingly similar Ronald Reagan taking the White House.

The seventies, which some would say were presaged by the killing at Altamonte Speedway, and fully inaugurated by the US National Guard killing its own citizens who were not yet old enough to vote, limped to a conclusion that painted the decade as a never-ending series of disasters. Apart from hints of social justice gains made by women and gays, the decade was one huge downer to grow up in. Many people were of the opinion that the status quo was something to rebel against.

If you were Gene Simmons, the seventies were the best time in the world! If not, well, that was your tough luck. I grew up listening to seventies top 40 music because I didn’t know any better. I had no siblings to point the way forward for me. Occasionally, a glimmer of something more filtered down to me; an “Autobahn,” or “Love Is The Drug,” that showed that there were musicians out there looking beyond the obvious, and asking questions that groups like KISS were incapable of asking!

So by the time that Punk Rock happened, [and that was over by the time I had a handle on it] I was left with Post-Punk and New Wave music that was addressing my values in ways that pop music had only hinted at previously. And all of this was happening in the late seventies. I keyed into this during the ’78-’79 period and there were so many genuinely exciting things happening musically, that all of a sudden those Alan Parson’s Project albums seemed not just insipid, but insulting [the writing was on the wall with “I, Robot” anyway…].

The subhead of this blog states “Searching for divinity in records from ’78-’85 or so…” and even that’s generous. The ’78-’81 period was a tremendous period of musical development that saw enormous growth in a multitude of directions. ’81-’85 is the sound of the wave crashing to the shore and flattening out. Stripped down punk, anxious New Wave, synthesizers, machine rock, female performers, and artistic stances that dared not to be “good music.” I’ll never forget seeing DEVO on Saturday Night Live performing their version of “Satisfaction.” For the first 90 seconds I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever heard as I knee-jerked my way through it, only to conclude that “…I must have that album, now!!!” by the time the last chord died out.

It was an explosion of sound that reverberated for several years afterward, but like all events, it came to an end. I pin the terminus at 1985 on my blog subhead, but the contraction started probably around 1982. That was the first year that not quite as many amazing and vital records hit the racks. 1983 brought a paradigm shift as the previously exciting UK charts were assaulted by the likes of Wham and Culture club; proffering watered down soul music that offered succor to the status quo. Like any decade, the character of any new decade takes some time to reveal itself and the eighties really manifested itself during this time. Thatcher and Reagan were calling the shots. It was their way or the highway. If it didn’t make money, it made no sense.

So by 1983 – 1984, there was a lot of music happening that traded off on the new energy and technology of the Post-Punk period; synthesizers and drum machines were even on Bruce Springsteen records of this time. That says it all, really. The eighties can be microcosmically modeled by examining the career of Post-Punk metainfluence David Bowie.

His material of the late seventies is a hugely influential exploration of  experimental music that he synthesized into popular form and managed to get on the UK charts. Every act from the late 70s I like was influenced by David Bowie, and during that time, they had to compete with him on the charts as well! His albums of this period are my personal favorites of his canon: “Low,” “Heroes,” Lodger,” and “Scary Monsters [And Supercreeps].” Probably his as well. Of this time, Bowie referred to the first three in the folowing quote from 2001.

“Nothing else sounded like these albums.
If I never made another album
it really wouldn’t matter now;
my complete being is within those three.
They are my DNA.”

Apart from the consolidating success of “Scary Monsters,” he’s right. Nothing he did following them mattered much in comparison. Is there a more cogent signifier of the difference between the late 70s and the eighties than the difference between the David Bowie or “Heroes” and the David Bowie of “Let’s Dance?”

The eighties, for my money, lasted from 1983 to 1992 or so. Not so coincidentally, that is precisely the time that David Bowie released an awful series of solo albums that hardly seemed believable, compared to what preceded them in the seventies. There’s always a lag wherein a decade finds its footing as to what it will be about. Take any ten records from 1985 and compare them to any ten records from 1980-1, and for my ears it’s no comparison. There’s a huge qualitative gulf between them. The eighties were a time of drum machines, Fairlights, big hair, mullets, day-glow paisley, huge shoulder pads, and craven, unmitigated greed reflected in records that catered to power. There’s not a lot there for me to like.

So no, I’m not an “eighties guy.” I’m a “late seventies guy.”

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