Jamon's Coast to Coast

One of the coolest things about living in the 21^st century is that you can pretty much hear any song you want at any time you want no matter where you are.  On the other hand, one of the most annoying things about living in the 21^st century is that you can pretty much ONLY hear any song you want at any time you want no matter where you are.  Not to sound like a crazy, old man, but I kinda miss the days when you could tune in to a radio station that played Top 40 music and hear the Top 40 songs in the nation peppered with a few older songs & some brand new stuff that hadn’t yet entered the charts.  Okay, I’ll admit that you can still technically do that.  The problem is that the Top 40 ain’t what it used to be.  If you like the music that was on the Top 40 during the eighties and you want to hear the modern-day equivalent of that kind of music today, you won’t find it on the current Top 40.  For the most part, the current music of eighties artists and current artists who sound similar to eighties artists is strewn across the Alternative Rock, Mainstream Rock and Adult Contemporary charts with a few songs crossing over to the Top 40.  That means there isn’t really one radio station or similar outlet that you can tune in to and experience anything remotely like listening to a Top 40 station in the eighties.

Of course, many would say that having complete control over what you hear at any given moment of the day is the preferable option.  To me, it’s exhausting.  I prefer the old-fashioned method of sitting back and letting the music come to me.  I know that sounds lazy, and maybe it is – it’s more than that, though.  I really miss the wonder & anticipation I felt when I didn’t know what was coming up next and might not even know who it was when it did but knowing that I would hear it again sooner or later and that Casey Kasem would tell me all about it once it eventually made it onto American Top 40.

Luckily, you have ME…and even luckilier (lol), I have a great deal of free time.  That’s why I was able to create a modern-day facsimile of the eighties Top 40 radio experience.  The following is a list of 40 songs that currently occupy one or more of the aforementioned music charts in this week’s Billboard magazine.  I have taken into account chart positions and activity of the individual songs to compile Jamon’s Top 40.

1. The Weeknd – In the Night

2. Cold War Kids – First

3. Empire of the Sun – Walking on a Dream

4. Meghan Trainor – Like I’m Gonna Lose You

5. Walk the Moon – Shut Up and Dance

6. Rachel Platten – Stand By You

7. Foals – Mountain at My Gates

8. Nothing but Thieves – Trip Switch

9. Adele - Hello

10. Daya – Hide Away

11. Ed Sheeran - Photograph

12. Shinedown – State of My Head

13. Seether – Save Today

14. Elle King – Ex’s & Oh’s

15. DNCE – Cake by the Ocean

16. Adele – When We Were Young

17. Coldplay – Adventure of a Lifetime

18. Ellie Goulding – On My Mind

19. Imagine Dragons - Roots

20. Maroon 5 - Sugar

21. X Ambassadors – Renegades

22. Ellie Goulding – Something in the Way You Move

23. Silversun Pickups – Nightlight

24. Panic at the Disco – Emperor’s New Clothes

25. Weezer – Thank God for Girls

26. Panic at the Disco - Victorious

27. Disturbed – The Sound of Silence

28. Rachel Platten – Fight Song

29. Born – Electric Love

30. X Ambassadors - Unsteady

31. Cage the Elephant – Mess Around

32. Demi Lovato - Confident

33. James Bay – Let It Go

34. Fall Out Boy - Irresistible

35. Disclosure - Magnets

36. Foo Fighters – Saint Cecilia

37. Mumford & Sons - Ditmus

38. Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness – High Dive

39. 3 Doors Down – In the Dark

40. Disturbed – The Light

In addition to the 40 most popular songs in the land, I’ve also added a handful of brand new releases:

Madonna – Unapologetic Bitch

Colin Hay – Next Year People

Elton John – Blue Wonderful

Nevermen – Mr. Mistake

The I Don’t Cares – King of America

St. Lucia – Love Somebody

Chairlift – Romeo

Savages – Adore

Tortoise – Yonder Blue

Suede – Like Kids

Finally, I’ve added a few “recurrents”, which are older songs that have already fallen off the Top 40.

Michael Jackson – Black or White     

Echosmith – Cool Kids

Bruce Springsteen – Radio Nowhere

Billy Idol – Save Me Now

Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk

Duran Duran – Ordinary World

David Bowie – Little Wonder

David Bowie – Space Odditiy

John Mayer – No Such Thing

Rooney – When Did Your Heart Go Missing?

Foo Fighters – Everlong

Culture Club – More than Silence

Madonna – This Used to be My Playground

The Killers – Somebody Told Me

John Mellencamp – Walk Tall

Glenn Frey – I’ve Got Mine

Eagles – Take it Easy

La Roux – Bulletproof

Def Leppard – Nine Lives

Weezer – Island in the Sun

Coldplay – Viva la Vida

Maroon 5 – This Love

Keane – Somewhere Only We Know

Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus

Guns ‘n’ Roses – Better

The Shins – Simple Song

Green Day – Brain Stew

Foster the People – Coming of Age

Steely Dan – Cousin Dupree

Of course, to truly enjoy the radio station experience, you can’t simply add these songs to a Spotify playlist – you have to simulate heavy-to-light rotation.  To do this, you’ll need a regular mp3 player.  I’ve color-coded the song titles to make it easy to determine how many copies of each song to place in the file folder:

            Green = 5 times

            White = 4 times

            Red = 3 times

            Blue = 2 times

            Gold = 1 time

Once you’ve done this, set the player to “shuffle”.  You’ll have approximately 20 hours of music, which is the equivalent of about three hours of “radio” per day for a week.  We’ll need to do this again every week from now until the end of time.

Damn, I miss Casey Kasem.

Heartache Tonight

I grew up around the Eagles, mainly hearing them on my older cousin’s 8-track car stereo or on the 45’s the girls at school would play during recess.  Though I wouldn’t have called them one of my favorite bands, I liked them.  They were one of a group of artists like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Alabama, Charlie Daniels Band, Eddie Rabbitt & Kenny Rogers that I never really considered rock music or country music – just music.

While I enjoyed songs like “Take it Easy”, “Heartache Tonight”, “The Long Run” and “Hotel California”, the first “Eagles” song that REALLY grabbed me was Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry”.  Honestly, I’m not even sure I realized at the time that he was a former Eagle.  Nevertheless, I had never heard anything that remotely sounded like THAT – that infectious groove that just got in your brain, the “kick ’em when they’re up, kick ‘em when their down” refrain and that freaking telephone ringing.  I didn’t really understand it.  All I knew was that it was brilliant.  I bought it on a “various artists” 8-track and wore that sucker out in 1982.

Although, “Dirty Laundry” was, technically, the first “Eagles” song I bought, the first “Eagles” album I ever bought was Glenn Frey’s “Allnighter”.  (It was actually Glenn’s second solo record, but I was busy listening to Don Henley when the first one came out.)  The first single from the album, “Sexy Girl”, was all over the radio in the summer of 1984 and I was smack dab in the middle of a Columbia House membership drive, so I ordered a copy.

By the time I received it, the title track had been released to radio.  Though the spooky little ditty wasn’t a huge hit, it was easily my favorite song on the album.

Its slick, polished sound also set the stage for Glenn’s later eighties successes.

“The Heat is On” was featured in “Beverly Hills Cop” and reached #2 on the charts, as did “You Belong to the City”.  That song appeared on the “Miami Vice” soundtrack along with “Smuggler’s Blues”, which was also on “The Allnighter” and actually inspired an episode of the hit TV show.

Glenn had clearly found his niche in the eighties, albeit briefly.  By the time “Soul Searchin’” was released in 1988, his career had cooled considerably with the album’s lone Top 40 hit peaking at #13.

Ultimately, “True Love” would be Glenn’s last Top 40 hit.  However, his final solo album of original material, 1992’s “Strange Weather”, would find success on the Adult Contemporary chart with its singles, which received considerable airplay.

Of course, the following year was when “hell froze over” and the Eagles finally reformed, first for the music video for Travis Tritt’s cover of “Take it Easy” and then for a full-blown tour & album.  The Eagles would remain active for over two decades this time around with their biggest hit of their 2^nd era being the #23 country hit “How Long” in 2007.

The band continued to tour over the next few years and even talked about recording one more album together.  In December of 2015, the band was slated to receive Kennedy Center Honors, but declined due to Glenn’s health problems.  He had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since 2000 and the medication that he took to control the disease had led to colitis and pneumonia.  Sadly, he died on January 18, 2016 while recovering from intestinal surgery.

Looking back over the career of my favorite Eagle, the thing that always bothered me was that Don’s solo work garnered more respect than Glenn’s.  The two had, basically, the same solo output with very similar chart results.  Yet, much like Lennon & McCartney, Henley’s solo music is held in high regard by most, while Frey is often dismissed as a “sellout”, undoubtedly due to his Kenny Loggins-like soundtrack success in the eighties.  It always seemed unfair to me.  The eighties were an era in popular music no less legitimate or more ridiculous than any other.  The fact that a successful country rock artist from the seventies was able to adapt to the MTV era and enjoy tremendous success is no small feat, no matter how you look at it.  My frustration over the Henley vs. Frey debate actually colored my opinion of Don Henley for many years.  Though I enjoyed his solo music, in my mind, he was the pretentious dictator-like asshole of the Eagles while Frey was the happy-go-lucky “other guy” in the band who was just glad to be there.  It wasn’t until I saw the 2013 “History of the Eagles” documentary that I realized how wrong I was.

Documentary producer Alex Gibney said that the first thing that stuck him about Glenn was that he was so “forthright”.  “He may have pissed off some people in his time, but it was often because he was brash and blunt,” Gibney went on to say.  According to Gibney, Frey wanted the real story to be told, no matter how ugly it was at times…and it certainly was.  Turns out, Glenn was not “the other guy” in the Eagles – he was THE guy.  He was a driven perfectionist who had a vision and nothing short of that vision was acceptable to him.  It didn’t make him popular.  Actually, it made him threaten to kill Don Felder in 1980 WHILE on stage as soon as they finished the song they were playing.  “I can’t wait,” he reportedly said.  Fortunately, he didn’t kill him.  Felder got the point, though.  Glenn Frey was the leader of the Eagles…and they all knew it.  He drove them to be more than what they otherwise would have been and he always did what he felt was in the best interest of the band.  He was also smart enough to share the spotlight with his musical soul mate who he realized was probably more talented than he was.  He wasn’t the nicest guy in the band, but he was a good leader and it was that leadership that made the Eagles legendary.  Not bad for the “sellout” who did movie soundtracks in the eighties.

Glenn Frey quotes

Upon announcing Glenn’s death on their website, the band posted the lyric to a song from “Long Road Out of Eden”.  It was especially poignant to me, as the album was released a month after my sister died in a car accident on September 15, 2007.  The song was a comfort to me then, as it is to Glenn’s friends and fans now.

Glenn Lewis Frey (November 6, 1948 – January 18, 2016)

Mr. Jones & Me

My relationship with David Bowie was always…complicated.  I “met” him in 1981 and, to be honest, didn’t really know anything about him at the time.  He seemed like a cool guy, though, and he was hanging out with some guys that I knew who were treating him like he was a big deal, so I drew the conclusion that he must be some kind of big deal.

I was VERY familiar with Queen at that point – mainly due to their 1980 album, “The Game”, but I had never actually heard a Bowie song.  The first time I ever heard him sing was on “Under Pressure”.  Therefore, I’ve always considered David Bowie an eighties artist.

Fast forward to 1983:  I had heard “Let’s Dance” on the radio a few times but never really paid much attention to it until I saw the video on Friday Night Videos.

The song was pitted against Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” in the weekly call-in competition.  Though I voted for Duran Duran, I fell in love with Bowie.  I purchased the album before I ever heard the second single.

I didn’t realize at the time, but “Let’s Dance” was not exactly representative of Bowie’s past work.  In fact, I remember reading an interview with producer Nile Rodgers in which he admitted that he was ecstatic when he received David’s call.  Up until then, he had been viewed as a “hitmaking” producer.  He was excited to finally get the chance to work on an “avant garde” project, as he described it.  However, when he saw song titles like “Let’s Dance” and “Modern Love” he realized, much to his dismay, that Bowie had hired him to get him on MTV…which he did.

The success of the “Let’s Dance” album resulted in increased airplay for Bowie’s earlier hit singles.  That means I was soon quite familiar with “Rebel Rebel”, “Young Americans” and “Fame”.  However, it was another artist’s song that made me dive deep into David’s back catalog.

I was fascinated by the idea of one artist’s song being a sequel-of-sorts to another artist’s song.  I raided a friend’s brother’s record collection and found a copy of “Space Oddity”.  I even listened to “Ziggy Stardust”, although I never actually bought it.  I decided “old” Bowie was too weird for my young ears.  I preferred 1984’s follow-up to “Let’s Dance”.

Bowie would later admit that 1984’s “Tonight” was the second in a trio of albums that he disparagingly called his “Phil Collins years” (which would further complicate our relationship since I was and still am a HUGE Phil Collins fan).  He felt that the expectations created by his early-eighties MTV success had painted him into a corner.  His last solo album of the eighties, 1987’s “Never Let Me Down”, was an attempt to “move back to rock & roll music”.  He assembled a small rock group and played instruments himself – something he hadn’t done on the previous two albums.  Though reviews were mixed, the album sold well and generated three hit singles.

Despite being relatively pleased with “Never Let Me Down”, David wouldn’t record another solo album for over half a decade, opting instead to form the hard rock band Tin Machine.  He would record two albums with Tin Machine before returning as a solo artist with 1993’s “Black Tie White Noise”.  Nile Rodgers was again in the producer’s chair on what many critics called Bowie's best since 1980’s “Scary Monsters”.  However, I had abandoned him during the Tin Machine years and, because nothing on the album hit the Top 40, was not even aware he had made a “comeback”.

The follow-up, 1995’s “Outside”, was a concept album produced by Brian Eno.  It was viewed by many as Bowie’s return to mainstream music although Rolling Stone criticized that the conceptual elements “damn near sink the record”.  This album also escaped my attention.  If I had been aware of the Pet Shop Boys collaboration, though, I would have been all over it.

However, it was Bowie’s next album, 1997’s “Earthling”, that would finally renew my interest.  David would produce his album himself, something he hadn’t done since 1974’s “Diamond Dogs”, and would utilize electronica and industrial elements.  I saw a live performance of “Dead Man Walking” on one of the late night talk shows and was blown away by it.  “Little Wonder” was also in heavy rotation on MTV and that was just intriguing enough to prompt me to buy my first non-eighties David Bowie album.

Though not a commercial success, the album performed better than its predecessor and garnered positive critical reviews.  It also earned two Grammy nominations and made me buy a David Bowie compilation album.

Over the next few years, Bowie would continue to release an album every other year.  Most critics agreed that 1999’s “Hours” was a disappointment, although 2001’s “Heathen” saw him bounce back with his highest charting album since “Tonight”.  Its follow-up, 2003’s “Reality”, also received favorable reviews.  For some reason, I never bought any of them.

After that, David would take a decade-long break, prompting fans and media to assume he had retired.  He shocked everyone when he returned in 2013 with “The Next Day”.  Touting the album for being “as good as anything he’s made” and “the best comeback album in rock & roll history”, the press surrounding the album caught my attention and I gave it a listen.  However, due to my own personal turmoil at the time, I decided that listening to anything that “dark” was probably not the best idea for me.  I also really hated that album cover.

That brings us to “Blackstar” and its surrounding events.  Released on January 8 of this year, the album was on my list of “things to listen to”.  Three days later, I cleared my schedule for the day and moved it to the top of the list.  That was the morning I learned of Bowie’s death while scrolling through my Facebook news feed.  Like most of you probably did, I immediately searched Google for “David Bowie death hoax”.  Unfortunately, it was no hoax.  Ziggy was gone.  I clicked on a link for the “Blackstar” video and it hit me:  He knew!

I watched the “Lazarus” video after that and it hit me again:  HE KNEW!  HE FREAKING KNEW!

It was as though he had booked a flight (or space flight) 18 months earlier and received an itinerary:

Write a cryptic farewell message to your legion of fans.

Create an eccentric and experimental masterpiece of an album.

Produce two heart-wrenching gothic short films.

Release the album on your 69^th birthday.

Listen to critics and fans rave about your amazing work of art for two days.

Disappear forever into a big chest of drawers.

I won’t be writing a review of the album anytime soon since I haven’t even begun to fully absorb it yet.  There are probably a million “Blackstar” reviews online by now anyway.  I will, however, review the circumstances surrounding the album by simply saying that we should all be so lucky as to go out like THAT.  Farewell, Mr. Jones.  It’s been nice knowing you.

Video SAVED the Radio Star

It’s been said that “video killed the radio star”.  In fact, that was the title of the very first song/video that MTV played when the network debuted on August 1, 1981.

The message in the lyric was a belief shared by many in the industry who assumed that, much like the movie stars of the silent film era who were unable to transition to “talkies”, many of the less photogenic rock stars of the seventies would fade away once their images were being piped into households across America on a regular basis.

The impact of the music network was felt almost immediately with record stores selling out of such new artists as Men at Work, Duran Duran and Human League, who were struggling to get radio airplay at the time.  The result would be a 2^nd British Invasion due to the heavy play of British acts who had been accustomed to producing music videos for over half a decade.  Of course, it wouldn’t take long for American artists to jump on the MTV bandwagon.  By 1983, you would have been hard-pressed to find a Top 40 hit that wasn’t accompanied by a music video.

What nobody foresaw, though, was how quickly established artists would embrace the new medium.  Pop music had always been seen as a “young man’s game”, so it was a fair assumption that that perception would only be magnified by the new visual aspect of the genre.  However, the naysayers could not have been more wrong.  Not only did the rock stars of the seventies make masterful use of this new tool, many artists who were long past their hit-making prime would use the music video to reinvent themselves, resulting in a second career for some of them.

The following list of artists would have taken up several fewer pages in the Rock history books had it not been for MTV:

Michael Jackson:

MJ’s stints with the Jackson 5 and The Jacksons aside, he had carved out quite a solo career for himself by 1981.  In the ten years from 1971 to 1980, he racked up a respectable 9 Top 40 hits – seven reached the Top 10 and three of them hit #1.  However, that was nothing compared to what he would do during the MTV era.  Nobody displayed a more masterful use of the music video than the gloved one, who saw the medium as a showcase for his signature dance moves.

Jackson would also produce high-concept mini-films to accompany his songs.

Beginning with “Billie Jean”, Michael hit the Top 40 twenty-four times between 1981 and 2001.  Nineteen of those singles entered the Top 10 and a staggering 9 of them reached #1.  Along the way, he revolutionized the art of making music videos.

It might be a stretch to say “video SAVED Michael Jackson”, but it undoubtedly took him to another level.

Bruce Springsteen:

Though “The Boss” released his first album in 1973, he wouldn’t hit the Top 40 until 1975.  His signature song, “Born to Run”, would peak at #23.  He would hit the Top 40 three more times over the next eight years with his biggest hit being 1980’s “Hungry Heart”, which peaked at #5.

However, it wouldn’t be until 1984’s “Born in the USA” that Bruce would begin utilizing music videos on a regular basis.  His videos were generally low-concept clips that focused on his strength as a performer.

Beginning with “Dancing in the Dark”, Springsteen would produce videos for five of the album’s 7 hit singles, all of which reached the Top 10.  Over the next decade and a half, he would rack up eight more top twenty hits with half of them reaching the Top 10 – all eight were accompanied by music videos.

Though his legacy was already secure before 1981, Bruce would likely have never enjoyed the Top 40 success he did had it not been for the advent of MTV.

Genesis:

Prior to MTV’s debut, Genesis had hit the U.S. Top 40 five times.  Not coincidentally, they would finally reach the Top 10 with their first video hit, 1983’s “That’s All”.

It wasn’t until the follow-up, however, that they would become bona fide MTV stars.  By the time “Invisible Touch” was released in 1986, lead vocalist Phil Collins had become a staple on the network thanks to his “No Jacket Required” album and its accompanying music videos.  The band would continue along the lines that Collins had established and showcase his quirky sense of humor.

Fueled by heavy rotation on the music network, Genesis would rack up seven Top 10 hits and four more Top 40 hits before Collins’ departure in the early nineties.  I think it’s pretty safe to say that video had SOMETHING to do with that.

Lionel Richie:

Much like Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie had enjoyed a highly successful career as a member of a group before embarking on an similarly successful solo career.  Richie would top the charts with his duet with Diana Ross in 1981.  He followed “Endless Love” with his self-titled debut album, which generated his second #1 and two more songs that reached the Top 5.

Lionel would officially leave The Commodores in 1982, just as he began working on his second solo album.  Released in 1983, “Can’t Slow Down” would mark the first time Lionel would heavily utilize music videos.

Over the next decade, he would hit the Top 40 a dozen times with ten of those reaching the Top 10 and three of them hitting #1.  Most of Richie’s hit singles were accompanied by music videos – usually concept clips that were a bit cheesy at times and, honestly, have not aged well.

Nevertheless, the videos kept him relevant and, though they didn’t technically save him, didn’t hurt him one bit, either.

Billy Joel:

If any radio star should’ve been “killed” by video, it’s the “piano man”.  By his own admission, he’s a bit of a funny-looking guy.  Regardless, he quickly found his niche with a number of creative music videos that transformed him from a respectable singles artist to a hit-making superstar.  Even today, most of his clips hold up surprisingly well.

Prior to the debut of MTV, Joel had hit the Top 40 fifteen times, four of which made the Top 10 with “It’s Still Rock & Roll to Me” topping the charts in 1980.  From 1982 through 1993, he would hit the Top 40 eighteen times with 9 Top 10 hits and two chart-toppers.

Suddenly, that funny-looking little guy doesn’t look so funny, huh?

Tina Turner:

After splitting from husband Ike in the early seventies, Tina Turner failed to carve out any semblance of a solo career during the remainder of the decade.  In fact, when she and her big, crazy hair popped up on MTV in 1984, I thought she was a new artist.

Of course, Casey Kasem soon set me straight.  Over the next decade, Tina would hit the Top 40 thirteen times with six of those reaching the Top 10 and 1984’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It” hitting #1.  If there’s one artist who was SAVED by video, it’s Tina Turner.

Steve Winwood:

Despite being a member of such classic groups as Traffic, Blind Faith and The Spencer Davis Group, Steve Winwood was pretty much a one-hit wonder in 1981.  He had hit #7 with “While You See A Chance” a year before MTV made its debut.  However, it wasn’t until 1986 that Winwood finally found his hit-making groove.

In addition to the #1 “Higher Love”, Steve would hit the Top 40 with three more singles from “Back in the High Life”.  The follow-up would give him another #1 hit with the title track.

In all, Steve would hit the Top 40 nine times in the MTV era with five of those reaching the Top 10.  Most of his hit singles were accompanied by gritty performance videos that perfectly matched his soulful sound.  The stylish clips still hold up today and, undoubtedly, had a lot to do with his chart success during that time.

Heart:

Heart had racked up a respectable nine Top 40 hits, two of which reached the Top 10, during the pre-MTV era.  However, when they returned in 1985 after a string of lackluster albums, they had a new look and a new sound…and MTV immediately embraced them.

For every diehard fan who wasn’t exactly enamored with the “new” Heart, there were two young fans that were discovering the band for the first time.  Over the next decade, the band would eclipse their earlier success by hitting the Top 40 eleven times with seven of those reaching the Top 10 and two of them topping the charts.

The band’s videos relied greatly on big hair and colorful outfits and, therefore, look VERY dated today.  However, they did their job back then by making a couple of seventies chicks seem relevant again.

Aerosmith:

Another band who was all but dead by the time MTV hit the airwaves was Aerosmith.  While they had scored two Top 10 hits and four more Top 40 hits during the seventies, they hadn’t hit the charts in a decade when 1987’s “Permanent Vacation” was released.  Fueled by heavy MTV airplay of their music videos, which portrayed the band as a bit of an eighties version of Spinal Tap, the album would generate a Top 5 hit and two more top twenty hits.

The follow-up, 1989’s “Pump”, would follow suit with four more hit singles.

In all, Aerosmith would hit the Top 40 fifteen times during their “second life” – six of the fifteen would reach the Top 10, with 1998’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” hitting #1.  There’s no question that the band’s comeback would have been much less successful had they not utilized music videos in such an engaging way.

ZZ Top:

Though they had been around for over a decade, the “little ol’ band from Texas” had only hit the Top 40 twice before the MTV era…and I doubt anyone at the record label thought that was going to change if anyone saw their bearded mugs on their TV screen.  However, it’s safe to say that no one had a more distinctive visual image in the eighties than ZZ Top.

MTV viewers couldn’t get enough of the beards and the cheap sunglasses and the iconic ’33 Ford coupe.  By the end of the decade, they would hit the Top 40 six times with two of those reaching the Top 10.

As unlikely as it might have seemed, video DEFINITELY helped those guys.

Welcome to the Eighty-thirties!!!

When I started this blog a few months ago, my objective was not just to lead you down memory lane with all of my favorite eighties music & stories.  It was also to share some “eighties music” that you might never have heard before – specifically, the eighties music that was created AFTER 1989.  You see, the beginning of the nineties didn’t exactly signal the end of the eighties (musically speaking) – far from it.  In fact, a lot of the biggest artists of the eighties continued to enjoy enormous success into the nineties (and beyond) making pretty much the same style of music that made them MTV stars.  Duran Duran had two of their biggest hits in “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone” after the eighties supposedly ended.  Michael Jackson, Madonna, U2, Bon Jovi and a host of others continued to churn out hits through the turn of the millennium, as well.  That’s not to say every eighties artist was so lucky.  However, a song doesn’t have to be on American Top 40 to be a good song.  Many artists who enjoyed their glory days between the years of 1980 and 1989 continue to make music that rivals anything they ever did in their hit-making prime, even if you’ll never hear it on the radio.  That’s why I get frustrated when I hear someone say “they don’t make music like THAT anymore” every time an eighties song comes on the radio.  It’s there.  It’s just that you no longer have Casey Kasem or Rick Dees to serve it up on a platinum platter.  You have to look for it…OR you can just read my blog.

That brings us to…well, whatever THIS decade is called.  I don’t think anyone really knows what to call it (OR the previous one, for that matter).  I know what I call it, though.  To me, the year after 1989 was 19810 (or nineteen eighty-ten for those of you can’t see where I’m going with this yet) and then 19811 and so on.  That means we are now smack dab in the middle of the eighty-thirties…or 19836, to be exact.  I thought it might be fun to kick off the new year with a few choice cuts from the post-1989 eighties:

Van Halen

There was no bigger story in 1985 than the departure of Van Halen’s original frontman David Lee Roth.  Two lead singers and two decades of rumors later, they would reunite in 2006 (with Eddie’s son Wolfgang taking Michael Anthony’s place) for a very successful tour that would eventually lead to a new album, 2012’s “A Different Kind of Truth”.

                                                                                         

Duran Duran

No band has had more “comebacks” than the eighties’ answer to The Beatles.  In 2011, they released their best record since their MTV heyday, "All You Need is Now".

Bryan Adams

Canada’s favorite son hasn’t had a bona fide hit single this side of the border since 1996’s “I Finally Found Someone”.  That could change with his brand new Jeff Lynne-produced set, “Get Up”.

Hall & Oates

After dominating the eighties, the best-selling duo of all time kept to themselves for the most part in the nineties.  However, they stormed back in 2002 with a new album and a #1 AC hit.  As a whole, “Do It for Love” (the album) stands among their best.

The Fixx

Though the hit singles stopped after 1986’s “Secret Separation”, The Fixx have continued to release albums since then.  The best of the bunch is 2003’s “Want That Life”, which sounds more than a little like 1983’s “Reach the Beach”.

Billy Idol

After yelling at the top of his lungs (AND the top of the charts) throughout the eighties, Billy Idol was relatively quiet during the nineties.  However, he returned to making new music in the mid-2000’s and he’s been screaming ever since.

Culture Club

Boy George’s drug problems derailed his band’s success by the late-eighties.  He would enjoy a mildly successful solo career in the nineties before reuniting with his bandmates for 1999’s “Don’t Mind If I Do”.  The album was a bit spotty but contained several songs that were reminiscent of their biggest hits.  The follow-up is due sometime this year and features a more manly Boy.

Huey Lewis & the News

While Huey and the boys have toured regularly since their last Top 40 hit in 1991, they’ve spent more time playing golf than making records of late.  Their last album of new material, "Plan B", was released in 2001.  According to Huey, their next one may be in 2016.

ABC

Martin Fry and co. had a string of hits in the eighties – the biggest being 1987’s “When Smokey Sings” – before taking a hiatus that would last for most of the nineties.  The band would make a welcome return with 1997’s “Skyscraping”.

Berlin

It’s rare that a #1 song breaks up a band, but that’s pretty much what happened when Berlin topped the charts with “Take My Breath Away” in 1986.  Singer Terri Nunn would reform the band a decade and a half later and release “Voyeur”.