80's Music/Movies Etc

[+whiteknight06604 932]

I didn't realise how much I missed the 80's until I bought a bunch of "Rock of the 80's" compilations a few years ago. There were so many songs that I had forgotten about, and each one brought back such great and powerful memories that it was like getting hit with a sledge hammer. They were defintily some of the best times I've ever had as well.

 

yeah as I get closer to 40 I realise that the 80's are becoming more "important".I seem to watch 80's movies and listen to the songs almost as a way of reliving the good old days.I guess every generation does it but these were my good old days.

[JediMaster 451]

I have lots of DVDs and CDs from the 80s, and also a ton of MP3s I've acquired over the years from friends. Of course, the DVDs are big SF and action films, I never went for the teen comedy/drama stuff like Pretty in Pink or Breakfast Club really. I cared more about the music in the films than the films themselves!

However, while I like the big stuff, I'm not really a fan of the more obscure stuff. Same with the 90s.

For obscure stuff, I tend to prefer the first 2 decades of rock, up to about 1975. I grew up hearing the 80s stuff, but paying attention to the 60s.

 

So while I love a good INXS or Duran Duran song, I get what I need of them from a greatest hits CD. In fact, many 80s groups are no more than one hit wonders to me, like Flock of Seagulls. Just don't care about any of their stuff other than "I Ran" because that's the only one I heard on the radio!

 

I spent my jr high and high school years listening to the 60s on my tapes and records, and then the CD revolution happened in 1987 with the release of the entire Beatles catalogue on CD. I still have those 21 yr-old CDs today, and the cases are all scratched and worn (but the CDs are pristine!) from how often I've listened to them.

 

Of course, when I went to college is when alternative broke out, especially as Nirvana's "Nevermind" was released my first semester. I also got cable on the TV in my room for the first time and started watching MTV and Comedy Central regularly, discovering MST3K, Beavis and Butthead, and many music videos from the last great era of videos. Let's face it, starting about 1997 MTV really because "teenager TV with occasional videos" and NOT "music TV". For awhile VH1 picked up the slack, but by 2000 it was in the same boat.

[the test pilot 5]

iron maiden made their best albums

iron maiden

killers

the number of the beast

piece of mind

powerslave

somewhere in time

seventh son of a seventh son.

[+Johan217 5]

Of course, when I think of the eighties, the first thing that comes to my mind is:

and

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_N8bGHtUGJU

[Viper6 3]

Wow! After reading these posts it just reminds me how old I've become! By 03-80, I'm starting Ranger School. I remeber ALL the songs mentioned in this thread! (and then some) I also remember the R&B songs of the time as well.

[MigBuster 2,875]

Of course, when I think of the eighties, the first thing that comes to my mind is:

 

 

Wendy James - I sure remember that babe :)

 

[MigBuster 2,875]

Wow! After reading these posts it just reminds me how old I've become! By 03-80, I'm starting Ranger School. I remeber ALL the songs mentioned in this thread! (and then some) I also remember the R&B songs of the time as well.

 

 

Well thanks for not making me feel so old anyway

[MigBuster 2,875]

So while I love a good INXS or Duran Duran song, I get what I need of them from a greatest hits CD. In fact, many 80s groups are no more than one hit wonders to me, like Flock of Seagulls. Just don't care about any of their stuff other than "I Ran" because that's the only one I heard on the radio!

 

 

Yeah thats why I only bother with the greatest hits and compilations like "Now 1985" for most of them - Too young to care about the album stuff to a degree.

[MigBuster 2,875]

My family spent a good deal of the summer of 1985 on vacation at Hampton Beach, NH. I distinctly remember hearing the Tears For Fears album "Songs From the Big Chair" EVERYWHERE that summer. It was also the first summer that girls didn't have cooties, so now I can't hear the song "Shout" without thinking of sun, sand, and two girls named Kelly and Vicky that my friend and I met and hung with for the summer. Ahh, good times, good times!!!

 

I havnt got Tears for Fears greatest yet - was meaning to get it. There was a film (think it was Donno Darko) I saw a few years back that played one of their tracks (head over heels possibly) and I thought that it still sounded pretty good!

[Viper6 3]

Well thanks for not making me feel so old anyway

Anything I can do to help...

[+streakeagle 866]

Yes... I should have mentioned David Bowie with my other favorites.

He didn't follow the trends... he set them.

 

As far as 60's music versus 80's music, my CD collection has a 2nd peak in a graph of songs owned versus release dates: the 60s.

The 70's had some great music, but just not as much as the 60's and 80's

Likewise, I have some great music from the 90's, but in quantity it just can't compare to the 80's and 60's.

Since about 2000, I have only purchased a few CDs here and there.

I no longer have the time to hang out in music stores and go through every listening station looking for my next CD.

But when I did have the time to do that, I stumbled onto some great music.

Most of what I liked went on to become big sellers... like Moby.

 

Obscure music isn't completely outside of the 80's.

Planet P's Why Me? was a cool video on MTV around 1983... but getting the original black vinyl or even a used cassette of the album took me years in the early '90s.

Along the way, I stumbled on to a 2nd album I had not heard of, Planet P Pink World, which was a story concept on a scale similar to Pink Floyd's The Wall including a pink vinyl double album.

If anyone reading this post or even a member of this forum knows who Planet P is and has heard the entire Pink World album, I would be very surprised.

 

Would you believe the most expensive single CD I have is a greatest hits of an ex-Abba member so that I could get one song-- "Something's Going On".

I really wanted the song bad and it was no where to be found in the early '90s.

Then, in a Tower Records in Berkeley, CA, I found a Euro import CD for $30, which is more than I paid for the Euro import of Pink Floyd's "Relics" CD since the US didn't have that one at the time.

 

Despite all my interest in the music and movies of the period, there is no doubt that I am much better off now living in 2008 looking back on the 80's than when I was actually living in the '80s.

 

One more thing no one here has brought up:

While PC games were starting to appear in the early '80s, most games were played on table tops.

I still have all of my wargames and original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books.

PCs may make these type of games easier to play and allow finding other players globally, but I had many dogfights and firefights just as memorable than any pc game sitting around a table eating pizza and chips with several close friends (too young to drink beer). Game companies like GDW and Avalon Hill were cranking out as many games as they could covering every aspect of modern warfare and I was buying them up and playing them as fast as they hit the shelves. When I started collecting these games, they were about $15 for a big box full of high quality color printed materials and map boards mounted on good hard board. When I bought my last games in the late 90s, they were about $50 each and the average home owner can print out better play materials than were coming in the box. The end of these games and the companies that made them is the one great thing I lost with the passage of time and rise of the PC.

[JediMaster 451]

Heh, the most expensive CD I own is the soundtrack to an 80's film: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Released only on tape and LP in the US, I waited in vain for a CD release for literally 2 decades. Then one day I saw on ebay a 2000 release of the ToD special edition CD from the UK. It was $35 and I JUMPED for it. All the songs from my (now totally dead) tape plus a few more! Ahhh...

 

They had some of the best comedies in the 80s, too. Airplane, Naked Gun, Cheers, Top Secret!, Real Genius...