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From: Barbarella
Subject: Eighties (now very very long) (was Re: be afraid)
Date: Thursday, 11 January 2001 12:45 

David Gerard wrote:
> 
> You people are all sick and wrong.
> 
> Australian indie rock
> Australian indie rock taking over Europe
> People going to see bands in pubs
> Readable and informative fanzines
> More vinyl records than you could bloody imagine
> That post-punk thing whose fans wear a lot of black (before it had a name)
> Hardcore punk and its fans
> Some of hardcore punk's fans turning it into music
> The stuff later marketed as 'grunge' when it was the cutting edge of
>     rock'n'roll
> The Triffids
> A million Perth bands sounding just like the Triffids while denying any
>     such thing
> Suits, pointy shoes and BASS GUITARS!
> 
> THAT is the fucking eighties. You sick little MONKEYS.

Thank you, David.  :)  I could simply say "Yeah! Wot 'e sed!" but
instead, goddamn it, I'm gonna have a rant.  Consider yourselves
fore-warned. ;)

I feel prompted to retort the same thing I did when a similar "the
eighties were daggy" thread appeared on a.g.p.[1] - "I'm sorry, but you
appear to have grown up in a different Eighties to the one in which *I*
grew up".

I never owned a Cabbage Patch Doll, or a Transformer, or a Garbage Pail
Kid, or a sodding Care Bear, I never wore pastels or
shoes-without-socks, I never owned Madonna or Cyndi Lauper records, I
never watched "ALF", never liked Molly Ringwald or Andrew McCarthy,
never heard of bizarre rituals involving the breakage of rubber
bracelets (and never owned any of them either), never owned Fildo Dildo
ANYthing.  I used to refer to shoulder pads as "shoulder melanomas" and
removed them poste haste.  And you know I'm still not completely sure
that I know what a Ra-Ra skirt actually _is_?  Yes, I had "big hair"
toward the arse-end of the decade, but it was big hair in the style of
Patricia Morrison, NOT anyone from Dynasty.

The Eighties *I* grew up in was full of wondrous bands, excellent
basslines, lots of black clothes, pointy-toed boots, spiky hair,
experimentation and being called a freak on an alarmingly regular basis.

1982, my preferred "uniform" was black leather pants, black suede pointy
bootees, one of Granddad's old shirts and a big black pinstriped suit
jacket with the cuffs rolled up to my wrists - rabbi hat optional (and I
can attest that simply wearing a hat in public was enough to get you
stared at and called a freak in Greensborough shopping centre back
then).  After the leather pants and the suede bootees died, (*sniff*) I
had an excellent pair of black pants with silver rivets down the side of
each leg and I purchased my first pair of buckle boots at the same time
as my first big black frock coat.  My favourite bands - Duran Duran,
Japan, Bauhaus, The Cure, Culture Club, Echo & the Bunnymen, Specimen,
Tenpole Tudor, PiL, The Models and a billion others.

The aftermath of punk and the emergence of all that was post-punk meant
that pop music was at its richest and most adventurous since the late
'60s - at least in the earliest part of the decade.  All of that energy
and experimentation and preparedness to try something new had to go
SOMEwhere, afterall.  Even in the latter half of the decade, we had the
emergence of House and Acid House dance music (the parents of techno)
and Guns N' Roses came along to blow the spandex tights and fright masks
out of the hard rock scene and put it back into the denim and black
leather in which it belonged.

It was an exciting time in music - particularly in Australia.  For the
only time in history, EVERY Australian city was producing exciting
music; it wasn't just "a Sydney thing" or "a Melbourne thing" or "a
Perth thing" - we were ALL doing great stuff.  Indie record labels and
quality zines were popping up all over the place.  There were more
locally produced music programmes than you could shake a mic lead at (a
lot of which got bands to perform live in the studio, thus bringing new
opportunities to bands and a more varied "virtual gig" experience to
viewers), there were more venues for bands to play in - and what venues
there were!  The Venue, the Seaview Ballroom, the Old Greek Theatre -
even the Astor had bands back then.

Stuff to do - see bands obviously, plays and readings at La Mama, Rocky
Horror Show in _theatres_ not just cinemas, 24 hour Sci-Fi festivals at
the old Valhalla in Victoria Street Richmond (and your body let you know
about it if you were fool enough to fall asleep in _those_ seats, I can
tell you!), marauding Blues Brothers, "arthouse" cinema, the Espy when
'normal' people were still too nervous to venture in.

The sanitisation of St Kilda began in earnest as the property developers
moved in. "They took out all the seats on Fitzroy Street so they can
arrest ya for hangin' around..."  The police still hadn't got their
heads around punk - record shops: Melbourne Vice Squad conducted raids
to confiscate copies of I Spit On Your Gravy's "St Kilda's Alright!"; 
Myer Music Bowl: mounted police RODE THEIR HORSES into the middle of the
slam while Painters & Dockers were playing because they thought a riot
had broken out.  

Culturally - it was a time when Australia was really coming into its
own.  It was when I started to feel truly proud of being an Aussie
(jingoism notwithstanding c.f. "Koala Blue" shops and "The Love Boat
Downunder" *shudder*).  We made some great movies (e.g. Gallipoli, Max
Max I, II and III, Dogs In Space), we made some very off-the-wall comedy
shows, we continued to do great things in sport - but everyone expected
that from us anyway.  They didn't expect us to take the America's Cup
off the hands of the New York Yacht Club though, and I gotta tell ya -
dodgey as it may sound now - it was absolutely thrilling to get up at
hour ungodly that morning in '83 to watch Australia II win that goddamn
race and the corridors of my highschool never felt so abuzz as they did
that day (even *I*, the LEAST sports-minded teenager of the decade, had
a picture of that boat on my bedroom wall AND I named the new puppy
after its Captain!).  And it was worth it to watch Bodgy Bob take the
word "BUM!" to the world on our behalf in such arrrrrrr, "singular
style".   :)  Australian bands started making it big overseas whilst
still sounding Australian (unlike LRB and Air Supply).  Australia became
one of the top five music markets on the planet.

Peter Garrett stood for election.  The Desert Mob wandered out of the
red centre and met white people for the very first time.  Melbourne made
the USSR's list of Possible Targets thanks to the receiving station at
Watsonia.  Marilyn took on Derryn Hinch in a bitch-match on the Bert
Newton Show.  Yellow triangles meant NO DAMS.  Motorhead teamed up with
The Damned for a long lost weekend.  Billy Idol turned up pissed out of
his tiny mind to the Countdown Awards.  The Kino Cinema opened in
Melbourne.  I witnessed all but 25 minutes of Live Aid.  The Cramps
played Festival Hall.  The Berlin Wall came down via sledgehammers.  The
space shuttle came down via ka-booming.  The Bicentennial came down via
apathy ("Masturbation of a nation, C'mon give us a hand!").  I had my
first kiss, fell in love for the first time, attended my first gay club,
discovered I could actually dance, lost the first of my virginities...
*sigh*  Interesting times.

1988, my preferred "uniform" was to look like The Girl in Dogs In Space
- but with dyed black hair instead of peroxide white.  My
skull'n'crossbones buckle boots were not far away...  As many waking
hours as possible were spent listening to 3RRR and 3PBS, and digging
around in op-shops for paisley shirts and black lacy things.  Favourite
Aussie bands - Blue Ruin, Died Pretty, Lime Spiders, The Wreckery, Nick
Cave, The Spikes, The Borderland, TISM, Crashland, The Scientists,
Painters & Dockers, The Saints, Olympic Sideburns, Bohdan and a billion
others - there were so many interesting bands and so many decent live
band venues that any weekend meant being SPOILT FOR CHOICE as to where
to go and who to see.

THAT was the Eighties *I* grew up in.  The Eighties these scape.com
people are referring to obviously happened somewhere else.  Somewhere
far, far scarier than where I was.  Remember - the mainstream is
_always_ crap.  It was crap yesterday, it's crap today and it'll be just
as crap tomorrow.  We all know that, don't we?  I don't see any
justification in damning an entire decade on the "strength" of what the
crap people were doing and wearing.

And besides, it can't have ALL been bad - "Afterall, Derryn Hinch has
gone to jail!"  ;)


Barbarella - cue Killing Joke's finest musical moment here.

[1] I do believe the thread moved to PyroJames giving a very *ahem* nice
description of what he was wearing back-in-the-day, which prompted me to
reply "Stop it! You're making me horny!" to which H*ydn responded
something like "As if THAT'S hard!".  Cheeky!  :)