Rock Of The 80's

One of my favorite memories of my adult life happened in 1983 when I was driving home to San Diego from a weekend in Arizona. As I was coming out of the mountains into Southern California I picked up my first radio station in what seemed like hours. “91X, The Rock Of The Eighties.” Were the first words I heard from the DJ and he started a record that, though I never was a big fan of, changed my listening habits as it pertained to the style of music I paid attention to for at least the next 10 years.

There was something about this music that, though it was so different in many ways, brought my head back to those pop songs I loved so much from when I was a small child. Bands with names like “The Jam”, “The Clash” and “Squeeze” were putting out wonderful pop songs with great, meaningful lyrics that sounded so fresh and exciting. It was a far cry from what all my friends were listening to when I left Detroit just three short years earlier. I couldn’t imagine going to see “Haircut 100” or “The English Beat” with any of those guys yet, to everyone I was with in California, this was the only thing to see or hear.

I was out with a friend the other night and we were talking about the music of our youth. He was saying how much he liked this band or that band, each being one of those guitar rock bands we all listened to in High School. I told him I really had a hard time listening to that stuff. I found myself looking for bands from 10 years later in our lives to bring me that nostalgic feel he was talking about. We were talking about a number of those bands from the 70’s that were still touring and I said I really didn’t see myself going to very many of those shows. Show me a concert featuring any of the above-mentioned bands though and I’d be there in a heartbeat.

I play around on You Tube all the time, finding songs from these “New Wave” or “Punk” bands, as they were known back then. I still find the sounds fresh and exciting. Give me three minutes or so of that toe tapping stuff over swooning guitars any day. I sometimes wish I was born five years later than I was simply to be able to feel the excitement with my old friends when one of these bands come to town.