After a sick day I had not too long ago, when I stayed home and spent endless hours watching videos on WebSiteLikeTV, I mentioned my idea of doing a series of entries about 80’s rock, and some of the bands I used to like back in the day. I have to confess that I don’t exactly know where to start with all of this; the natural place would be at the beginning, but since rock music is a bit of a continuum, I guess I’ll jump in by starting with the music that I came across first.

I didn’t grow up in a major metropolitan city, I grew up in an isolated little town in the middle of Washington state. No cable TV, no live music or touring bands to speak of. I’ve played piano since I was three years old, so I grew up listening to classical music, and then a little bit of stuff from my friends, but not much. The majority of my musical childhood was spent listening to whatever my parents had in their record collections. My dad had a sizable collection that was all classical. My mom had about 50 records, including some Simon & Garfunkel and Beatles, and some classical, and some folk, but nothing really earth-shaking.

I’ve always hated 70’s arena rock and all that boring blues-based stuff. I’ve always hated that wispy 70’s folk that was the antithesis of arena rock. I didn’t discover rock music that I actually liked until I was about ten or eleven years old, but that was pretty much just whatever was on the radio at the time. Nothing particularly earth-shaking there either.

When I was twelve or thirteen, my parents had been divorced for a couple of years, and my dad moved to the Portland, Oregon area. That was when I finally got to hear some new and different music. Portland had two whole radio stations devoted to classical music. They had jazz, all kinds of different pop music and dance music, as well as hard rock, which was what I took a particular interest in. My dad also had cable TV, which included the still-fledgling MTV, which was just beginning to have a huge effect on popular music. I will never forget some of those exciting, innovative and strange early videos. Here’s the obvious choice to show first, the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Lots of things were happening in the early 80’s that affected music greatly. Cable TV, particularly MTV, led the way in creating a new look and style for the changing times. Technology was changing daily as well, which meant that computers, synthesizers, camcorders, VCR’s, cassette recorders were all inexpensive and readily available, which meant that almost anyone could create things at home that could be seen by lots of people, relatively easily and cheaply.

That, combined with the all-pervasive ‘bigger than life’ ethic that exemplified the 80’s made for some interesting music and videos. Duran Duran were one of the biggest bands of the time, and deservedly so. They combined intelligent, catchy songwriting with youthful good looks, and the ‘exoticism’ of being English. Here’s “New Moon on Monday.”

And it wasn’t all new groups, either. More, um, seasoned bands like Yes and Kiss breathed new life into their careers by ushering in new members and taking advantage of the new technology to update their sound and look.

Here’s “I Love It Loud” by Kiss, and “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes.

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This was also the decade of the widening “generation gap” between adults and their kids. Unlike the “My Generation” kids of the 1960’s and 70’s, kids of the 80’s seemed to have a completely separate existence that was entirely their own. Times were changing at a breakneck pace, and many parents seemingly had no other choice but to abdicate.

This seems like a good start, and there’s plenty more to come.