Letting it out: My 80ies Guilty Pleasure ...

[TBird1958]

 And I'll show my age here...................

I'll happily take something from Dokken over........most anything current. Just me tho. 

[patman]

The eighties didn't exist for me...raising kids from 84 till 89 when I started playing again.

[gweimer]

I'm firmly rooted in the '60s/'70s, but there were some fun parts in the '80s. 









Oh, and I LOVE that Pursuit of Happiness cut.

[Nocturnal]

I liked the Pursuit of Happiness too. They were a fun band.

[Dave W]

Plenty of good stuff in the 80s

[gweimer]

Yes, indeed!  You just have to remember it wasn't all new wave.






And one for this crowd....(I think that might be a T-Bird, too)

[Pekka]

One 80s relic that helped reignite the local indie scene here in Toronto after punk fizzled out and is still well respected was The Pursuit of Happiness.  Dunno how well they did outside of Canada (I expect not well at all) but good stuff; fighting the good fight against the synthesizers and not that dated-sounding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=CA&v=pSDF8VvU13M

That dancer is part of the band - just not so many backup vox in that track; not a sign of low budget T&A.  See also, Two Girls and Hard to Laugh.  

I have their first two Rundgren -produced albums. Great stuff, very much in the Utopia vein with occasional AC/DC riffs. Tongue in cheek too.

[Pekka]

The greatest 80's band? Dunno, but great they were and especially when they progressed from the synth pop of early into this:


and then into this timeless classic:


"Laughing Stock" is fine too but my favourites are the adult pop (not AOR!) of "The Colour Of Spring" with the great grooves and Hammond organs and "Spirit Of Eden" which made the EMI A&R man cry. Maybe it was the beauty, maybe it was the unmarketable nature of the music.

I also have a soft spot for It Bites who were foremost a pop band with chops and they truly could wipe the floor with neo-prog bands like Pallas, Twelfth Night, Pendragon. They had humour too.


On the other side of prog, Belgium's Univers Zero was one of the best:

[uwe]

In hindsight, there was a considerable share of good music that left a lasting stamp. It wasn't just Kayagoogoo though Nick Beggs did leave his stamp too.

[nofi]

the violent femmes and killdozer.

[Granny Gremlin]

How could I have neglected to mention the Femmes  

Killdozer never got much exposure up here; I remember having my interest piqued hearing a track somewhere but then no more.

I had that Alice Cooper album, Trash.  Young me thought it was awesome (I first heard Poison on MuchMusic, Canadian MTV equivalent, when I was assembling papers on Saturday morning for delivery before hockey practise; I subsequently bought a pirated copy of the cassette in Europe for $1; you couldn't even get legit records in communist countries at the time), but teenage me started thinking it was lame for some reason.  It is a bit cheesey and overwrought with all the she-devil ranting despite solid arrangements and otherwise good songwriting. The same period would have had me into Anthrax's Euphoria (young me was intrigued by the violins trading places with metal guitars; I tried to fit in with the metalheads at school but they were all Megedeth and Skid Row and I just wasn't into it, I did like Metalica though, especially the Master of Puppets album, but it mostly ended there).

[Denis]

The 80s weren't a complete waste. There was Men Without Hats.

Funny, that's one of the '80s bands I DID like!

[Dave W]

Hey, I did put up a Femmes video.

You aren't the only Men Without Hats fan. There's even a Facebook group dedicated to finding the identity of the girl in the Safety Dance video.

Killdozer had a cult following in this area, for sure. They could pack a small venue easily. The general public had no idea what they were about, though.

[gearHed289]

My favorite 80s band -

[Granny Gremlin]

I knew it!  "It's gonna be The Fixx" as I clicked the link.

I had one of their tracks on a comp CD, and I liked it, but for some reason never followed up (before the internet, it was kinda difficult, if you were on a jobless teenager's budget).