My Love of 80s Music, Part 3

The funny thing is, it wasn't even me that purchased my first CD online.  It was my husband and he bought me Hunting High and Low by Aha for my birthday.  I was excited and hesitant at the same time because I didn't want to not like the album if that makes any sense.  Every fiber of my being was hoping that Aha wasn't the one hit wonders that VH1 had professed them to be.  As it happens, they were wrong.  Very wrong. Because if I listened to that album once in a day I listened to it a hundred times. That was it, I was hooked.  From then on I searched Amazon, E-bay, Half.Com and who ever declared they had the music I was looking for.  The Cure, The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, etc.  I was in heaven.  And with the sudden resurgence of 80's music due to the VH1 show Bands Reunited, it was a lot easier to find them here in the states too. You would be surprised how many closet Kajagoogoo lovers there are out there.

I have no idea how many CD's of 80s music I have at last count.  Some one actually gave me a DVD of 1,000 best songs of the 80's one year for my birthday.  So apparently they have a bigger collection than I do, which I think is really awesome.  And you know what? I'm always finding new bands and songs, that I had no idea even existed during that time.  I love finding new/old music. 

Well that's my story.  Now you know why I started this page and the blog.  Everything else after this will be just history retelling itself. Lots of trivia and fun facts.

And before anyone asks, I have nothing against the 80s music that was made here in the US.  Heck, we gave the 80s some of the best music ever!  In fact I plan on doing a special blog just on Hair Bands.  I know, you just can't wait. :)

Ciao for Now ;)

My Love of 80s Music, Part 2

The 80s came and went and we entered into a decade of the unusual.  The 90s.  Musically I think the 90s had quite a few gaps in it until Grunge came along and then there was a smattering of some of the electronica that was reinventing it self from the 80s and of course Alternative.  Now I don't want anyone in particular that had a favorite music genre from the 90s say.."but hey? what about Goth? or What about Death Metal?" I'm just giving the 90s a collective nod as a decade, not as a history lesson.

Now where was I.  Oh yes, the 90s.  Quite a few of the bands that I liked in the 80s, had disbanded and moved onto other things by this time. VH1 and MTV seemed to begin to focus on more mature programming such as Behind the Music and Singled-Out, gone were the all-nighters pulled so you could catch your favorite video and record it. Times they were a-changing with new and different things to occupy our time.  They were called computers and they had World Wide Web.

The internet snowballed into the American Culture like a stampede of wild buffalo.  Everyone who was anyone had a computer, had AOL and waited 30 minutes to connect to the Web so that they could "surf" until their hearts content.  But what would you look for?  What Could you look for? Anything and everything.  News, Sports, Games, Entertainment, Movies, Shopping, you name it, the internet had it.

We loved our computers and we loved the internet.  We found lots of stuff to do there and there never seemed to be enough hours in a day.  It wasn't until I actually got one of my own that I discovered something unusual.  If you found a search engine and asked it a question, it gave you an answer.  Well not like a grammatically correct answer, but it gave you suggestions and links to answers.  In 2001, I had had enough of searching in small record stores and thrift shops and even garage sales.  Everything I wanted was on vinyl and I no longer owned a turntable.   I still had a cassette player, but quite a few of the tapes I purchased from the 80s were warped and unplayable.  I finally broke down and turned to Internet to see what I could find.

To Be Continued...

My Love of 80s Music

Seeing as how this is my first blog, I wanted to write about something that was close to my heart.  I love music, but specifically I love 80s music.  It really sets off something inside me that I cannot explain. Perhaps I will be able to as I continue. 

To be perfectly honest, my love of 80s music did not really begin until about 10 years ago.  I know, I know we all lived through the 80s, most of us that were old enough to, but somehow only some of the music stayed with me through out the passing years.  I credit the music videos for that. Quite a few of them were very unforgettable.  Take for instance, one of my all time favorite bands of the 80s A-ha.  Their video Take On Me was remarkable and extremely creative, not too mention the fabulous voice of their lead singer Morten Harket.

The New Wave sound surfaced during the 80s, so there were quite a few bands that had hit songs that I liked.  Bands like Tears for Fears, Talking Heads, and Men Without Hats.  The same with the New Romantic sound, I was enamored with bands such as; Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran and Ultravox.

But during that decade of big hair, wild colors and skinny pants, the hits that were being made were still on vinyl and also were produced on cassette tape (if you don't know what that is, look it up). But unfortunately it seemed as though quite a few of the bands that I liked, never made it big here in America, so I was never able obtain much of a collection.  What's that they say, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind?  Because that is exactly what happened.


To be continued....