Remembering the 80's

Music videos were the background to my childhood. While I don't specifically remember the MTV moon launch in 1981, I remember it hitting our cable system not too long after that. I had an older bother and sister so the channel went into heavy rotation in our house almost instantly. Naturally it caused a furor in our home because my Mom at that time was in a fundamentalist Christian phase (which thankfully only lasted a couple of years). Her and my brother would argue about his choice of music constantly since he leaned more towards the hard rock side. So whenever a video from Dio, or an old Black Sabbeth clip played it was mayhem. But funnily enough my Mother and Sister's musical tastes seemed fairly in sync, so if Bob Seger came on it got turned up loud and proud. "Old Time Rock and Roll" "We Got Tonight" and Surprisingly "Fire Down Below" were songs on constant rotation in my household from both my Mom and Sister. Fundamentalist Christian or not, my Mom was a music lover, so she let us watch MTV even if she didn't always approve of all the videos.

At the time I was pretty young and music wasn't a focus in my life. Toys were. I had my legos, linkin logs Micronauts and Star Wars action figures and would spend hours, maybe even days at a time creating intricate worlds to play in. MTV was my background while I did this. I ended up absorbing hundreds of music videos in the process and began to love music while I did. I liked the big hits like anyone else. My first music cassette I ever bought was naturally "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. But my follow up was a not so obvious pop group The Hooters (which is appropriate considering my hooter obsession as an adult!). Soon I discovered you could tape songs off of the radio and taped all the hits making my own mix tapes (and maybe I'll do a blog about making mix tapes at some point). My love of music was in place.

The 80's was a wonderful time to be in love with music because there was so much of it, and so many different types being played. A lot of people felt that music videos sounded a death knell for real music as it pushed how a band looked instead of the music. Bands like Duran Duran seemed to push that that fact. But the fact of the matter was that the music still mattered. It was just a new medium helping to present it. You had punk, new romantic, no wave, new wave, pop, soul, R&R, rock, metal and the birth of Hip Hop all happening at the same time. It was exciting and diverse and you never knew what kind of song or video you would get next.

MTV wasn't the only outlet either. There was TBS Night Tracks, The incredible and much missed Night Flight on USA, then there was Friday Night Videos on NBC plus things that came and went like the short lived cable attempt called The Box. Music videos became a huge part of our culture and our lives. Of course this ultimately became not such a good thing at some point, but in the 80's it was still fun, exciting and new.

So scroll down to check out some of my favorites I found, and feel free to comment and request others.

Thanks
Andy