For most of the 80’s I lived in Colorado, so a large portion of my remembrances from that time period center on that location. The weird thing is the associations I have with a lot of 80’s music have little or nothing to do with Colorado, or even the 80’s themselves since I didn’t get into a lot of that music until the 90’s! There are very few 80’s songs that I remember hearing when they were “new”, so listening to this playlist for days and days has been…interesting. I’m getting the strangest recollections! Here are a few that actually do make me remember some true 80's moments:
I remember the song “Invincible” by Pat Benatar mainly because it was a major component to the movie The Legend of Billie Jean. This song always makes me think of the malls in and around Denver, probably because there’s a big scene in the film that takes place in a mall. I recall buying grey suede ankle boots on the 16th Street Mall in Denver and being thrilled with the purchase, I think that was one of my very first solo shopping trips. I also remember overhearing some teenage girls at the Aurora Mall, and one of them complained that her father gave her “only $50” for her shopping trip. Her friend was horrified at this paltry sum, but I remember thinking I could’ve gotten a TON of stuff for fifty bucks! Nowadays I can see that fifty dollars can indeed be chump change, but I can still find a ton of stuff for that amount. Some people have no idea how good they have it.
I had a friend in high school that was mad for Men At Work, and their song “It’s A Mistake” came up the other day – wow, that’s one I haven’t heard in a while! It’s definitely one of their lesser-known gems, but every time I hear this band I think of her. She was also nuts about The Monkees at the same time because MTV had been playing reruns of their TV show, and the band was experiencing a revival of sorts; she used to record the episodes onto video tape. Remember video tapes? LOL! It’s a bit weird making the leap from Men At Work to The Monkees to video tapes, but there you go.
“Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood made me remember how a clearly repressed girl in my school was absolutely shocked that anyone would like this song. Somebody had a radio on at lunch and I was grooving to it when she came up to me all wild-eyed and asked:
Her: Don't you know what this song is ABOUT?
Me: Yeah. So?
Her: *GASP*
She was literally speechless, and walked away shaking her head. It never ceases to amaze me (great Split Enz tune, BTW) how so many people are shocked – SHOCKED I say – when you show that you’re not a sheep merely following the rest of the herd. Thirty friggin years and nothing about that has changed. Probably never will, either. Sheez.
I also find it interesting HOW I listen to 80’s music now. I couldn’t care less about a lot of the popular artists of the time (Madonna, Bon Jovi, etc.), and even though I may have some of them on my iPod, they’re listened to now more as “background” music; I don’t really pay a whole lot of attention to it. On the opposite side of that token is the stuff I really got into during the 80’s (Duran Duran, Spy V Spy, Pseudo Echo, etc.). This is the stuff I listened to so many times that I literally wore out the original records/tapes, but now I can barely tolerate them. I still like the bands, still think they’re good songs, but nowadays I usually skip them when they show up on my iPod. Maybe I’ve heard them so many times I’ve memorized every single note and lyric, and don’t really need to actually hear it? Hmmm. This means I’m now listening to the stuff I pretty much ignored back in the day, and not having heard some of this stuff in ages means it sounds fresh. Plus, it makes me remember some odd things, like malls. :)