You don't have to look much farther than the title of the recent Rhino box set
dedicated to the 1980s to be reminded that it's one of the more vilified
decades of the 20th century, or at least the latter half of the century. If the
'50s saw the birth of rock and roll, the '60s brought protest music into the
picture and established rock as a serious, adult form of artistic expression,
and the '70s witnessed a rebirth of sorts in the form of punk, well, the best
thing most people can find to say about the '80s is that it laid the groundwork
for the alternative-rock revolution of the '90s. In other words, the '80s was
such a bad time that it inspired an angst-fueled revolt that came to be known
as alternative rock.
Like, Omigod!: The '80s Pop Culture Box (Totally) doesn't even try to
build a case for the decade. For the most part, the essays by former Spy
editor Jamie Molanowski and writer Dan Epstein that accompany the seven-CD
set (in a booklet peppered with pictures of cultural embarrassments like a
Bosom Buddies videotape, a Mr. T doll, the Miami Vice dudes,
Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie, and Martha Quinn) drag the '80s through the
same old mud. And the inclusion of novelty dreck like Meco's "Empire Strikes
Back (Medley)" (a 1980 abomination that I guess I'm too young to remember),
Dolly Parton's "9 to 5," Buckner & Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever," and the Don
Johnson (yes, the Don Johnson of Miami Vice fame) disaster
"Heartbeat" next to genuinely good tunes like Devo's "Whip It," Gary Numan's
"Cars," the Cars' "Shake It Up," the Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang," the
Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me," and the B-52s' "Roam" doesn't help. I
might not be crazy about the Thompson Twins' "Lies," .38 Special's "Hold On
Loosely," or even Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out," but they're not out-and-out
bad songs. And they're not ridiculous or embarrassing. "Pac-Man Fever,"
for all its novelty value, is one of those things that's either best forgotten
or stuck on some Dr. Demento comedy box set. I mean, shouldn't we give the '80s
a fighting chance?
Okay, maybe not. The '80s is when I grew up and made the leap from Top 40 radio
to buying my own music and developing my own sensibility. And I can list dozens
of reasons why that period sucked: Reagan and Bush; synth-pop; junk bonds; MTV
(even though in those days it was so much edgier than radio that you could
discover great new bands by watching in the wee hours of the night/morning);
Miami Vice; tabloid television; no Sopranos; hair metal; Huey
Lewis and the News; Live Aid; Band Aid; Farm Aid; the PMRC -- and I'm just
getting warmed up. Who would want to come of age in such a culturally shallow,
artistically barren, politically backward, and socially just plain nasty era?
Looking back to the '60s, when music had really meant something -- man! -- and
the '70s, when punk had also really meant something -- man! -- I found it hard
not to feel I'd been born too damn late. Of course, we all rarely appreciate
what we've got until after the fact. The birth of rock and roll in the '50s,
the punk explosion of the '70s, and Nirvana's nihilistic call to arms were all
born of frustration and alienation -- the very same emotions I shared with
those of my generation who grew up hating the '80s. "We're desperate" was how
John Doe and Exene Cervenka screamed it in a song of the same name from their
1981 sophomore album, Wild Gift (Slash). And it was Paul Westerberg who,
on the Replacements' 1985 major-label debut, Tim (Sire), called us
"Bastards of Young" in a song that captured that unpleasant in-between-ness we
all felt in simple lyrics like "They've got no wars to name us."
There are enough decent tunes on Rhino's '80s box to make the case that there
was good music to be had then, even if there was always more than enough of the
bad stuff to go around. And it's hard not to notice just how diverse the
one-hit-wonders of the era were (artists like U2 and R.E.M. don't license their
material to Rhino because, well, they don't have to). Any decade that could
accommodate both Devo and Run-DMC in its Top 40 would have to seem exotic when
you're looking back from an era of niche marketing and demographic
fragmentation.
But the '80s had more going for it than that. And though the idea merits only a
footnote in Dan Epstein's essay, the music that we all used to call "college
rock" and that X presciently labeled, in one song title, "The Unheard Music"
was being heard. Beneath the surface clutter of greed and bad taste, the
'80s was a vital era of fermentation -- in places just off the mainstream radar
screen like college radio stations, truly independent record labels, and
cramped little beer-stained rock clubs.
If you were part of that scene, you probably spent more than your share of time
complaining that X and the Replacements, not to mention dozens of other groups
on labels like SST, Homestead, Slash, and Twin/Tone, couldn't get on the radio
or even on MTV. It wasn't until late in the decade, when X and the Replacements
had signed major-label deals and opted to take a shot at breaking through to
Top 40 radio, that we realized that they and similar artists were giving up the
very thing that made them different and better in order to sound mainstream.
That was the real tragedy of the '80s, and it wasn't until Nirvana had
spearheaded the alternative-rock breakthrough of the '90s that Beck and Liz
Phair and Guided by Voices and Sonic Youth could sign to a major label without
jettisoning what it was that made them special.
But the '80s had more than enough great underground bands to go around. And
because it was some years before the major labels came hunting for them, these
bands had a chance to make some groundbreaking music before they hit the
cultural mainstream. Rhino spent the first half of 2002 reissuing all six of
the albums that X recorded: the two they put out on Slash, the independent
label that was later picked up by Warner Bros., and the four they released
after signing to Elektra.
Each of these deluxe reissues includes a handful of previously unreleased
demos, live tracks, and alternative mixes, but those don't add much to the
story the albums tell. And though Los Angeles and Wild Gift
aren't the only good ones, they are the two best, because from 1982's Under
the Big Black Sun up through 1987's See How We Are you can hear X
trying to refine their sound, sanding off the rough edges, and opting for
slicker and slicker mixes until they hardly sounded like X at all. I was hoping
that the bonus tracks on See How We Are would reveal that their demos
for the disc are much better than the polished finished product, but the demos
turn out to be just pared-down versions of what ended up on the studio album.
The Replacements have already had one retrospective thrown together for them by
Reprise, the label they signed to in 1985. All for Nothing/Nothing for All
(Reprise, 1987) features a best-of disc and a full disc of outtakes and
B-sides, and you'll find there the Replacements that most people remember from
the '80s -- the Replacements who occasionally got some airplay with polished
pop tunes like "I'll Be You" or "Merry Go Round." But the real
Replacements -- or at least the Replacements who inspired the devotion of
rabid cult following -- were all but a memory by the time those songs were
recorded. Indeed, by the time the band signed to Reprise, they only had one
great album left in them, 1985's Tim -- after which founding guitarist
Bob Stinson was fired and they became a much tamer if still unpredictable
beast.
Fortunately, remastered versions of the four discs the Replacements recorded
for Twin/Tone -- Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash, the
Replacements Stink EP, Hootenanny, and Let It Be -- have
all just been reissued by Restless, and they paint a very different picture.
For starters, you can hear them making the transition from a hardcore punk band
(Sorry Ma and Stink are full of the kind of fast and furious
tunes they would drop from their set list after signing to Reprise) to a great
if messy rock band, and Paul Westerberg evolving from a guy who was happy to
scream "Fuck my school" to one of the better songwriters of his generation. The
band hit their peak on 1984's Let It Be, which showcased Westerberg's
mellower side in aching tunes like "Unsatisfied" and "Sixteen Blue" without
jettisoning the playful irreverence that was so inspiring (the album covered
Kiss's "Black Diamond" and included a song called "Gary's Got a Boner"). The
best thing about Let It Be, however, is that it reminds us the '80s
weren't so bad after all.
Issue Date: September 6 - 12, 2002
