THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY (Day 32) : LOST IN THE 80s

Lost In The Eighties- A Post Punk Mix Tape

Film, TV and Radio with their roll call of ready made stereotypes and lazy clichés - would have you believe that the early eighties music scene was a period populated almost exclusively by frilly shirted New Romantics, Flock Of Seagulls fright-wiggers or Brideshead Revisited meets Roxy Music pseudo-smoothies

If you were there at the time (and I'd imagine there's a solid core of VV readers that were) you'll know this of course a nonsense perpetuated through lazy off-the-peg imagery and pop culture compression. Compression where, retrospectively an era's peaks and dynamics become condensed creating a composite of clichés and grotesques, leaving an approximation that lacks depth any of field, widescreen horizon or actual essence of the time as it was. It's the very same process that's led to the seventies routinely being Abbafied.

Getting back to the eighties though, the key period for me is the post-punk, pre-Live Aid years (Live Aid being the moment where any Rock dinosaurs who had weathered punk's ice age could re-enter the mainstream arena). A time where musically and stylistically almost anything and everything was up for grabs. Several posts on my PM blog are based around a local club of the time Crocs - not that it was somewhere especially sensational, more that it was just somewhere so typical of that time.

A place where - scooter boys, psychobillies with (Carmel look-a-like girlfriends ), Numanoids in skinny ties, electrics in pegged trousers, wedges or raincoats, Bunnymen fans in macs, Ant fans in kilts, bovver-boy skinheads, Boys Town/Hi-NRG types, Mohican postcard punks, Proto-Goths in Bauhaus Tee's, or suede tassel jacketed types - would bounce or flap around on the dance floor (obscured by clouds of dry ice) to a potential pick 'n' mix playlist that may have ranged from obscure electro 12" mixes, Bowie or glam anthems to Nina Simone, Louis Jordan, The Stray Cats, Northern Soul stompers and even on occasion songs from The Jungle Book...

In attempt to rebalance the received eighties vision and retromania – I’ve rattled up a sixty minute mix of tunes from the time, into a virtual C-60 cassette pet (two sides of thirty minutes) that hopefully captures an underground sound of the crowd that seems to have been lost in the eighties…

Side 1 – Sound Of The Crowd

Soft Cell – Memorbilia
Simple Minds – I Travel (remix)
Pete Shelley - Homosapien
Divine – Love Reaction
Human League – Empire State Human
Cabaret Voltaire – Nag Nag Nag
Fad Gadget – Back To Nature



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Side 2– Creatures Of The night

Gina X - No GDM
The Bollock Brothers - The Bunker
The Cramps – Human Fly
Bauhaus - Largartija Nick
Tuxedo Moon – No Tears
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Spellbound



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TODAY'S OVERWHELMINGLY GENEROUS GUEST POSTING IS COURTESY OF MONDO FROM THE BLOG PLANET MONDO.