presents: Pilots of the Airwave... Let's remember the eighties and some songs from that decade.
in the 1980s, a radio to play our songs would have looked like the above model...
At the beginning of this decade, the radios and the media decided it was time for an 80s revival. My theory is that people starting a revival of the 1980s are either too young to remember or had a fantastic time.
I'm forty-two so I'm old enough to remember the 1980s. It was a decade when I hadn't achieved my musical nor personal independence, where my technology was radio, cassette and vinyl. In fact, thank goodness for the cassette double-deck. I would like to tell you that was a rebel in the 1980s, bought a guitar and got an asymmetric haircut - but no, I did my homework in a dutiful way, walked the dog, lived for a few years in a boring French village with holidays in a boring German small town. On TV, I watched the horse jumping, the Olympic games and things that they would show at weekends afternoons. In fact, I had the house to myself only on Wednesday afternoon when the parents were at work and occasionally on Saturday afternoons when they were shopping at the Carefour supermarket. Still a few hours a week to put on the radio and listening to music and taping it on cassettes. In fact, it was waiting for the radio gem to come on so that I could capture it on cassette. I guess when kids download these days their mind work in the same way. Many teenagers don't get pocket money. Of course I felt as my duty to listen to the news on the radio because it is important to know what happens in the world. In fact, I have this habit of cutting out pictures from newspapers to stick in my exercise books. I wish I could have saved my old school days things.
In 1984, I passed my A-level and went to the quaint town of Gengenbach in the Black Forest to study languages. In fact, going to university was not an option in my family and this was a conservative secretarial school. But far less conservative than my parents because they treat young people not as nuisances to adults but as future workers and marriage material. I failed the marriage material but Gengenbach was good for me because I had my own room with girls my own age and no snooping family. I wish I could tell you stories of my being naughty but alas, I was a nice boring girl. Apart from a poster of Ivan Lendl on my wall and smuggling in a bottle of French wine, my conscience is clear. I loved the radio and in 1985, I got my first long play: Tutti Frutti by Spider Murphy Gang. I don't have it anymore but this opened the floodgates. I inherited my groovy 60s grandmother's dansette style record player and her record collection. This means that I listened to a lot of sixties at weekends on my holidays with her - though her favourite song was "Rivers of Babylon" by Boney M. She had this LP Nancy and Lee by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood. To this day, Nancy and Lee are faves of mine. Unfortunately she also had a taste for sentimental 80s german ballads and Musikantenstadl. And it meant that when I was DJing for her I had to play those ones too. Smokie, do you remember those? Now picture that in German.
In 1986, my training was finished. I got a job in an anglo-German transport company in Germany until late 1988. The hours were murder, easy 10 plus transport and stress. The only way to de-stress and compensate was music. Enter the walkman until I got the car. Then when I had my Ford Fiesta with pioneering lead-free petrol system (and lots of installments to pay). Grandmother said that I wasn't allowed to park an old banter at her place. I knew I should have left home but I was a coward and I didn't earn a lot and when a family decides upon your life, you never think of taking control of it. Hit after hit on tapes, bought the vinyl singles. Never realised what Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys were on about - my English wasn't that good, just good enough for basic communication. In 1987, first trip to London and Salisbury - only a fortnight after the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry sank, HMV on Oxford Street was a revelation: I had never seen a shop solely dedicated to records. I should have bought a better record than Johnny Logan 1987 eurovision song contest winner. That year, I fell into every tourist trap London has to offer, therefore no need for me to visit them when I go there.
The next year, the Irish football team played in Germany, and the media was full of stuff about Ireland. A music programme was dedicated to traditional Irish music, and I was charmed. Enya appeared on the scene, but it was Clannad and Christy Moore I liked. If only I understood the lyrics better. In the summer I spent 10 days travelling in London and I visited Dublin and Belfast. I brought home some music. By the end of the 1980s, I had switched from listening to the radio to buying records and at the end of the decade I was in France again, trying to find my head and my feet, travelling with my car and I enrolled at university. The radio event that I caught live was someone on the bbc world service waffling a wall, and then I realised the Berlin Wall is coming down!
This was my life in the 1980s. I am not nostalgic about the formative years.
inventions from the 1980s inventions: personal stereo (= the walkman), ghetto blasters, hand-held TV, mobile phones, personal computer, Liposuction, DeLorean cars, pacman, nitendo, the moonies cult, camcorders, compact disks, DNA processing, first black Miss America, crack-cocaine, digital light processing (nowadays used for flatscreen TV) 1983: the internet was invented! 1984: first use of the word Cyberspace in a novel Neuromancer by William Gibson
Jean Shultheis - Confidence pour confidence (narcissistic love song) [www.youtube.com]
I found some more French classics
Les Inconnus: Auteuil Neuilly Passy [www.youtube.com] (the long sufferings of posh Parisians)
(lyrics: she is an emancipated woman, reading Marie Claire and Le Nouvel Observateur and Claire Bretecher, but don't let her down because being a liberated woman it's not that easy).
Chagrin D'Amour: Chacun Fait (c'qu'il lui plait) [www.youtube.com]
The early 1980s:
1980 to 1985 Recession times with high inflation, Greece joins the European Economic Community in 1981 - Spain and Portugal join the EEC in 1986, 1987 the Erasmus programme launched, for student exchange within member comments of the EEC. The Preshing crisis in 1983, the cold war, Solidarnosc in Poland being crushed, the last years of Leonid Brejnev and his Niet policy. Then 1985, Gorbatchov comes along and makes reforms in the Soviet Union. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands war, The miner strike, Sloaney girls and yuppies. Conservatives: Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior ruling the USA. 1982- Conservative Helmut Kohl ruling West Germany. HIV discovered in 1983, AIDS in 1984. Famine in Ethiopia, 1984: the Bhopal chemical disaster in India. There are still victims this day.
from 1985 to 1989 rap music radio (Run DMC are the first rap group to get a gold album record sale), 39 dead at a UEFA football match Liverpool vs Juventus in Belgium, French government sinks Greenpeace ship, Earthquake in Mexico, Titanic wreck found, hole in the ozone layer is discovered, Swedish prime minister Olof Palme assassinated, India's Prime minister Indira Gandhi assassinated, space ship Challenger explodes on take-off, Chernobyl Nuclear disaster, Fox network starts in the USA, Austrian President and former UN secretary Kurt Waldheim revealed as a Nazi yet wins the election, British journalist Martin McCarthy kidnapped by the Jihad and released after 5 and a half years, supermodel Gia is the first woman in the USA to die of AIDS, Corazon Aquino wins the election in the philippines thus ending the corrupt regime of Marcos, Baby M - first surrogate baby trial, the ferry Zeebrugge-Dover route Herald of Free Enterprise sinks - 189 die, amateur pilot flies from Germany and lands on Moscow's Red Square, Condom commercials on TV, Italian porn star wins a seat in the Italian parliament, 5 billion people live on our planet in 1987,
in 1988, there are more CDs sold than vinyl records, US TV evangelist caught with prostitutes, Prozac is introduced, Iran-Iraqi war finishes, USSR troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the first black talk show host on US TV, Salman Rushdie publishes the Satanic Verse and fundamentalist muslims want him dead, Dalai Lama wins Nobel peace prize, Time + Warner merge into Timewarner, Colin Powell becomes US Chief of Staff highest ever ranking for a black man in the USA, TV guide published a fraudulent picture of Oprah Winfrey which is her head pasted on the body of a slim woman, Vietnam withdraws from Cambodia after 11 years of occupation, Burma becomes Myanmar, Tiananmen square repression, collapse of the Iron curtain in Eastern Europe - return of democracy in those countries. Fall of the Berlin Wall paves the way for reuniting Germany which was split since 1949.
here is the only Stock Aitken Waterman assembly line song that I like. Maybe it's because I find Liverpool people charming. The Reynold Girls - I'd Rather Jack
[www.youtube.com] someone writes as a comment: "..in the UK in the 1980's the main radio stations (Radio 1 ) were still playing the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac and Rolling Stones and a daily peak hour show "The Golden Hour" with Simon MasterBates. This was a message to MOVE ON FOR CHRISTS SAKE!!!"
Goombay Dance Band: Sun of Jamaica (from Sunny Eastern Germany brrr)
the only song from this list that I didn't hear in the eighties was Pulp's My Legendary Girlfriend. This is a tribute to the band because in 1995, I read a scrapbook about their story and this is a band, if I had a time machine, I would want to buy a record by them back in the eighties. As things stand, I only spotted Jarvis on the telly on the first day I moved to Belfast, on June 24th 1994. But that's another story!
in the 1980s, I would have had a computer like this to type the titles of audio cassette and probably sent the print-outs to my friends by post...
good job we have the internet!
