Mine: Sweet Child O’ Mine
Also, I may posed this question in the past.
Also, also, it’s most definitely an excuse for me to listen to guns and roses. I love me some GnR from time to time.
kleinbl00 lil steve ecib ButterflyEffect and anyone else...
What I am most interested in is how much, if at all, your tastes have changed.
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...
Thanks for sharing goobster. There are definitely some bands in there that maybe shouldnt have been formed. Cough... Bon Jovi.
I’ve been wanting to dedicate some time to listening to Dead Milkmen again. Haven’t since I was a kid. Will fix that now. Thanks for that nudge.
Yeah... not a fan of Bon Jovi either, but I can respect that the dude can draw a CROWD, and has had oodles of hits over several decades. There's definitely some there there, but it's not my kind of thing.
It's funny. I was going to list 2 or 3 bands that started in the early 80's... but the list was just SO AMAZING, I kept going. Such a range of things... Nick Cave and Run DMC started the same year as Metallica?!? Really?
Crazy stuff.
Middle school is a tight block for me because it's in between when I was first exposed to music via the radio/dad and when I got my first job at 15 and suddenly had money to actually go to concerts. Because of this and how bland radio playlists are there really aren't a lot of things that trigger flashbacks to that time period.
BUT
I was driving back from band practice one day and heard this shit on the radio. Waves of nostalgia came over me, yet I couldn't for the life of me figure out what song it was. Turns out it was Harvey Danger the goat screaming about having his legs cut off.
And because I was technically 14 in the ninth grade I got really into viking metal with friends.
No song reminds me of middle school. Music was part of life outside of school. But here are the first songs that came to mind when I thought of myself being middle-school-aged and not just middle-aged:
and
- What I am most interested in is how much, if at all, your tastes have changed.
For me, music has changed. There is so much more of it in my life now and so accessible and easy to find. It's amazing. So tastes have grown to include much more.
I cannot think of a song that I liked once and now no longer like -- although as I listen more deeply to some words, I hear more in them - and some of what I hear might not be as pretty as it once was. Ask me for an example if you're interested.
Is there a song that you once liked and now can't stand?
Well, that’s what I meant, lil and flag. What are the songs that make you feel like you’re between the age of 11-14? Doesn’t mean that your school formally introduced you to the song. It’s not like I had a class that played Guns and Roses :)
But Lil, I love your songs. Both are favorites of mine. I wonder how the Dylan tune would be received these days?
There are definitely albums I listened to more than guns and roses, but there is not a song that immediately takes me back as much as Sweet Child O Mine. Oddly, I didn’t listen to it all that much but it was present at some key moments.
I actually listened to Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Violent Femmes a ton at that age. The White Album was a BIG favorite.
Graceland? You and I would have been pals.
This:
and also this:
Thirteen years old, Britpop London exploding, walking around the city with no shoes on just because. First cigarettes, first joints, first getting drunk.
I REALLY have to be less permissive with my own daughter - that was way too much way too young. It was fun though.
Ohhh man I was an angtsy kid then
Also this
And
Definitely conjure up memories of lying in my room being all angry about nothing.
In regards to how it's changed.. Well I listen to a lot of softer music now - I have playlists for moods or things I'm doing rather than just the same stuff on repeat.
That was the year where we were listening to Metallica's Justice For All but the stupid drama chicks were all severely anti-metal and we tried to compromise on Def Leppard but apparently that wasn't quite pusillanimous enough for them. They were all about vaguely-regrettable Duran Duran side projects.
Apropos of nothing I've never seen this video before. It's amazing. Like, damn near Safety Dance amazing.
Edited because why not
It occurs to me that jr. high was where things went dark
(see? Def Leppard is practically easy listening)
But it was also the year that music really started to turn to shit
So that's about where I checked out of the radio forever. It is, however, the year I saw the f'n Oak Ridge Boys in concert because a friend asked me to come so why not.
Nice! I need to introduce Atticus to G N’ R. It’s time