Music was despicable in 1981. MTV started in August of that year, and music was just the shittiest corporate MTV-whoring pusillanimous-so-they–can-fit-more-ads-on-the-radio caca.

Think Phil Collins, "Something In The Air Tonight", and Kim Carnes "Bette Davis Eyes", and Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl".

There were glimmers at the edges - The Stray Cats, Adam and the Ants, "Taintend Love".

The Clash were a bright bit of light when they rocked the casbah in 1982.

1983 Cyndi Lauper said Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and Quiet Riot made metal a thing that got played on the radio with "Cum on Feel the Noize". (Yeah, you kids today think you are so cool with your alt-spellings...)

It was a Dark Time for music.

But, this dark time did a lot for the future of music...

A few of the bands founded in the 81-83 timeframe:

Anthrax

Foetus

Front 242

Beastie Boys

Butthole Surfers

Dead Can Dance

Loudness

Metallica

Throwing Muses

Tom Tom Club

Pantera

Run DMC

Shonen Knife

Dio

Crazy 8s

The Lords of the New Church

Nitzer Ebb

They Might Be Giants

The Pogues

Public Enemy

Voivod

Queensryche

WASP

Art of Noise

Bronski Beat

Bon Jovi

The Housemartins (say hi to Fatboy Slim's first band!)

The Dead Milkmen

The L.A. Guns (1/2 of Guns and Roses, later on)

Megadeth

Melvins

My Bloody Valentine

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Phish

Red Hot Chili Peppers

So yeah... the suck of the early 1980's drove people off the their asses, and got them to form many of the bands that still define many genres of music today.

And that's just over 3 years...