Right from the beginning of the decade the biggest album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller,  rode out on wave of the best videos of the time and maybe the best videos of all time. Who doesn’t remember the gang fight in “Beat It” or the zombie scenes in “Thriller.” It was the visual appeal of the videos mixed with some good music that catapulted Michael Jackson from ordinary pop singer into, unfortunately, the whacked out frozen space monkey he became.

Others followed with hit videos as calling cards for their new albums. Billy Idol, Duran Duran, Culture Club, Cindy Lauper and the rest took up full time rotation on MTV. Sales soared and interest was revived in a music industry that sank under the weight of endless prog rock songs and difficult economic times (sound familiar?). It gave viewers a connection to the new wave of music in a way that was impossible before–think American Bandstand and Ed Sullivan as the ways to see bands. For me, we got MTV for a while and then our premium cable got cancelled. For me, I watched videos anytime I could, mostly at friend’s houses. Locally (Bakersfield then), I could only watch from 4-5pm when the ubiquitous Richard Blade played 1 hour of videos on KCAL 9. Sometimes he had a cool vid here and there but mostly it was the same stuff but I gobbled it up.

The introduction of the video not only helped radio it created pop music. Videos obviously put a high price on the visuals but moreover they killed radio stars that did not. Coming out of the 1970s the biggies of music got crushed by the video-making machine. Already old and totally out of date two years later, bands like the Eagles, Boston, Styx and every other classic rock name vanished overnight under the harsh light of video cameras. It took out the biggies too: Bob Dylan, who was already a god by then and was riding a crest of creative power from Blood on the Tracks and the double-barrel bravado of Blonde on Blonde, made 9 years in a row of horrible albums (his lone decent album of the era was Oh Mercy, not great but at least a few great songs). Neil Young checked out of the scene with the worst records ever (Trans?), the rockabilly album and plenty of other crap no one will ever listen to (hmmmm…sounds familiar).

The only rocker who figured it all out was Bruce Springsteen. He went underground for the excellent and sparse Nebraska but came back with a roar with Born In the U.S.A.. The thing that would make Bruce fans cringe was that this was largely on the greatness of the videos. “Dancing in the Dark” was a pretty lame single but the video with Coutney Cox and Bruce performing with his white shirt sleeves rolled up and the full band, made the single. Same goes for “Born in the U.S.A.”, “Glory Days” and “I’m on Fire”–all good songs but iconic hits because of their videos. Bruce figured it out.

Of course videos became more and more vapid and repetitive. For me it was killed in the late eighties when Aerosmith perfected and then killed the performance/storyline videos, hair bands showed an endless array of the same plastic girls (Whitesnake–no complaints from me) and performance acts, and rap millionaires scared white kids everywhere with endless gangsta cred clips. It all became so boring.

What about the great bands of the 1980s? Well, they made videos but they weren’t necessarily shown. 120 Minutes was my favorite show (yes, we got cable back) and I taped it on my VCR to watch it throughout the week (along with Young Ones and Monty Python). On this show, you could catch The Cure, The Smiths (my faves), REM (especially when they used to do an IRS label show ahead of 120 minutes) and more. By and large these videos were low production value, had a lot of slow motion clips to emphasize their theme, and did nothing to get them more stateside play. The videos, in effect, were a reaction to the mainstream primping, message videos shown the other 22 hours on MTV. They were purposefully subversive, hard to reach, not understandable and did not do the product placement (band image, hot chicks, cool rock star story) of the pop vids. My fave is the Replacements vid where Paul walks in, sits on the couch back to us, listens to the song, nothing happens and the song ends. Videos in the case of alternative never really brought these bands fame–they just weren’t cute enough.

Videos ultimately exhausted themselves and now they aren’t shown on any channel. The viewership moved over to reality shows (where you can see these same stars 20 years later!) and TMZ. Videos took radio right into the bin with them. No longer able to connect with the flat pop rock on the radio, people have stopped buying and sales have dropped dramatically. So it has come full circle: videos gave music companies life and videos took it away.

During this trip straight into music hell, the masses missed out on some albums that are unmatched to this day for originality, power and their great impact on music. This was the beginning of alternative radio. For those of us who grew up during the 80s (I was 10 at the beginning and 20 at the end), you could not get what you needed on the airwaves. Yes, radio especially sucked where I grew up in Bakersfield (Q94?) but even on repeated trips to Los Angeles, the great KROQ, with the already-too-old Richard Blade, you’d get a steady dose of Depeche Mode and “Sex Dwarf.” Listen, I like any song with the words sex or dwarf in the title and to have them both makes Marc Almond some kind of diety but the point is even with the cutting-edge “Rock of the 90’s”, in 1984 you got nothing but frequent repitition of British bouncy 80s music. Better than Miami Sound Machine? Yup. The best that was out there? Not even close.

Call them what you will now (and there’s a lot to say) but R.E.M. was the link from great 70s music to what we now have as “alternative.” Those four dudes from Athens, GA nursed an industry out of nothing. The ghosts of the MC5, Big Star and the Velvet Underground (which got lost under the stomping foot of punk) were resurrected by the jangly guitars of R.E.M. College radio was born with them. The interns at universities could now spin music being made at the present time, that was relevant, new and exciting. This began the separation from mainstream Janet Jackson loving and those listeners who found a way into X, The Replacements, Husker Du and the like.

For those of us not near a cool university radio station there was only one option: independent record stores. We actually had a good one in Bakersfield. What was good? Well, you needed a large import section (great Euro bands and also, strangely, domestic bands with foreign releases). You had to carry all the labels you could not get the Wherehouse (our other big record store): IRS, Rough Trade, SST, etc.. And you had to play good music. a lot of us hung out in music stores to hear new music that we’d like and buy. With no internet, a limited budget, and no radio spins–this was one of the few options. And we would drive two hours to Los Angeles to shop all day at music stores to find great music. Literally, we’d get there at open (10 am) and stay until dinner before we drove back. We were not the only ones, either, these stores were packed with people after the same records. It was great.

Anyway, that is what this blog is about: the great music that was made in the 1980s. With the advent of iTunes, you can get a lot of this online and for less money then we would spend back in the 1980s (thank you, technology and crumbling music industry).  I’d like to take new adventurers for a ride on some of these great albums and for those of you who were there, we can reminisce together.

Your comments are welcome.