Totally 80s

[KevShmev]

Because I love the 80s, and because I miss the MTV in the 80s Song of the Day thread, I thought I'd start a new thread where we can discuss anything related to 80s music videos. 

I still DVR the show Totally 80s whenever it's on VH1 Classic, and usually a few times a month, I'll flip through the many episodes merely to see what videos they played, and it's interesting because ideally you would think they would play videos that were played a lot in the 80s, which they do in some cases, but in other cases, they ignore certain bands and genres that got played a ton back then.

-Hair metal as a whole isn't played much at all, at least not when you consider how much it was played on MTV in the latter 80s.
-Stryper is NEVER played, even though MTV played the snot out of them in 1987 and 1988. 
-Same goes for Europe, who were also played to death from 1986-1989.
-LL Cool J's Going Back to Cali is played all the time, and I don't remember it being played that much back in the day.
-Talking Heads are rarely played.  Burning Down the House was played it seemed like every hour for months back in '83, yet you never see it on Totally 80s.
-Michael Jackson surprisingly isn't played that much, even though he all but owned the 80s.

Anyway, this is the new 80s thread.

[jjrock88]

Following.  I gotta say the one video that really stands out to me from the 80s is Aha "take on me".  Obviously I dont like the song, but that video is outstanding.  Better then anything being released today.

[bl5150]

Anything that generates more discussion on the sort of stuff that was in my Top 50 , I'll be in it with bells on.  I have a hard drive full of 80's rock vids somewhere and a few years back it was something of a treasure but now with the way Youtube's gone , it's mostly nothing special I suppose.  Just about everything is out there somewhere.

We got almost zilch in Australia in terms of rock/metal video too, even back in the day.



I don't want to derail Kev's thread but I had an idea the other day for a new thread in a similar vein -  a thread where people could post pics of rarities they have from the days of classic rock ( memorabilia, mag covers, posters, rare albums , photos  etc....) but in the end I decided against it as I felt it would probably die a quick death or I might end up chatting to myself.   In terms of memorabilia I could keep it going for years just with Van Halen stuff - same with magazine covers.

Anyway ..........if anyone has any thoughts on that idea (good/bad/idiotic) then please comment/PM me - if the silence is deafening I'll know I'm on to a dud. Anything that gets us talking about classic rock and metal is good in my book.

BTW the idea came to me the other day when I was going through a cupboard and found on old dish for nibblies etc.........it was a promo job for DLR's Eat Em And Smile     

[Bolsters]

As a kid, I used to get up early every Sunday to watch an Australian clip show called Rage. I think it started at midnight, but I'd get up at five or six in the morning and watch it through to its completion at midday. I started doing this pretty early I think, around three or four, probably up until I was eleven or twelve (around 1996). I was born in 84, so I grew up wth all of these 80's and 90's songs and clips.

Anyway, I was obsessed with this song around the time it came out and watched it pretty much every week for a while (until they stopped showing it, probably). It's not that great of a video really, but it is very 80's.

[bl5150]

FYC - yikes      I mentioned Rage in my Top 50 ...........recording the rock/metal hour or two at 2am ( on VHS    ) was what got me into Van Halen , Ozzy and metal in general.  That'd be mid 80s so that makes me around 11 yo.    That was about the only time you'd see anything other than the Top 40 stuff on Aussie TV when I was growing up.

[Bolsters]

FYC - yikes      I mentioned Rage in my Top 50 ...........recording the rock/metal hour or two at 2am ( on VHS    ) was what got me into Van Halen , Ozzy and metal in general.  That'd be mid 80s so that makes me around 11 yo.    That was about the only time you'd see anything other than the Top 40 stuff on Aussie TV when I was growing up.

Yeah I actually started taping it in my later years, in the early or mid 90's. I remember all the grunge they started to play around that time, and even things like Enter Sandman, and I didn't mind the eurodance stuff. But I pretty much had lost interest once they started with things like the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys.

[TAC]

-Talking Heads are rarely played.  Burning Down the House was played it seemed like every hour for months back in '83, yet you never see it on Totally 80s.

In the very early days of MTV, I think they played Once In A Lifetime every hour.

[King Postwhore]

Those 2 videos were played all the time.  Duran Duran's "Rio" was big and mid 80's Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" got big airplay.

[hefdaddy42]

Money For Nothing and Sledgehammer were played every hour.

[King Postwhore]

And we had to hear Alan Hunter show us that he was in Bowie's "Fashion" video every time he played it.

[Zantera]

Whenever I think of the 80s, I think of The Cure.

[King Postwhore]

Smiths were big too.  I always dug Simple Minds and Big Country.

[Kotowboy]

U2

Dire Straits

REM

 

[bl5150]

Sabrina 

[hefdaddy42]

Beastie Boys

[Zydar]

Sabrina 

Samantha Fox

[KevShmev]

Remember, naughty girls need love, too.

And yeah, TAC, Once in a Lifetime was played to death.  I remember when we first got MTV, the videos that I remember seeing non-stop were Once in a Lifetime, Billie Jean, Greg Kihn Band's Jeopardy, Down Under, and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

[jingle.boy]

Whenever I think of the 80s, I think of The Cure.

We don't come to you with our problems, do we? 

Forget the name of the show, but there was a video show on at midnight or something on Fridays, playing the top 10 vids of the week.  I remember (in my later teenage years) going to "parties" (there was only a dozen or so, I never did like the huge house parties), getting stoned out of my mind, and endlessly watching Kickstart My Heart, I Remember You, Love Song etc... Those vids in '89 were on all the time.

1984 (the album) got a ton of video airtime too.  My early 80s memories were Karma Chameleon and shit like that.  Oh, and we can't forget Twisted Sister!  So many good music video memories.  DLR solo were the best.

As for Brent's suggestion, I don't have much memorabilia, so not much to contribute there.

[KevShmev]

There was a period in 1984 where We're Not Gonna Take It was played at 7:00 CT every single weeknight, so I tried my best to always have MTV on at that time so I could see it as much as possible (this was before we had a VCR ).  Oddly, that is another video that I never see on Totally 80s, which surprises me since Dee Snider is always on those specials VH1 does (like 100 best rock songs, etc.), so I would think they'd show his band's videos and whatnot as much as possible.

[hefdaddy42]

I distinctly remember Heart's videos from the 80s.   

And I had a Samantha Fox album on cassette.  Wasn't bad, actually.

[King Postwhore]

I distinctly remember Heart's videos from the 80s.   

And I had a Samantha Fox album on cassette.  Wasn't bad, actually.

Heart yes!  Fox, only  for the eyes.  My ears bled.

[T-ski]

Smiths were big too.  I always dug Simple Minds and Big Country.

Its a shame that Big Country will only be known for "In a Big Country".  They made some great albums.

[bosk1]

Fellow child of the '80s reporting in!

My covers band does more '80s material than any other decade.  Some of the ones currently in our set rotation are:
Sharp Dressed Man
White Wedding
Boys of Summer
Living On A Prayer (we have typically had Wanted Dead Or Alive in the set instead, but are prepping for a gig where the core audience will be middle-aged women, so...)
Any Way You Want It
Where The Streets Have No Name
Hazy Shade Of Winter (yeah, I know it is technically not an '80s song, but we pretty much do the Bangles' '80s version of it)

[Big Hath]

-LL Cool J's Going Back to Cali is played all the time, and I don't remember it being played that much back in the day.

we must have been watching different versions of MTV.  I saw this video all the time.


I remember there was a time in late 1988 I would rush home after school to watch the end of the top 20 video countdown because the last three videos in some order were invariably Guns 'n Roses - Paradise City, Def Leppard - Armageddon It, and Bon Jovi - Born to Be My Baby.

[KevShmev]

I suppose.  I mean, I remember Going Back to Cali being played quite a bit, but not so much where it should be the video played the most on Totally 80s these days (which it seemingly is). 

Livin' on a Prayer and Pour Some Sugar On Me are two songs that are guaranteed to have girls flocking to the dance floor faster than the speed of light at any bar or club where the song is played or performed by a cover band.  Every single time.

[hefdaddy42]

Can I get some Whitesnake?

[bosk1]

Livin' on a Prayer and Pour Some Sugar On Me are two songs that are guaranteed to have girls flocking to the dance floor faster than the speed of light at any bar or club where the song is played or performed by a cover band.  Every single time.

Yup.  We were close to including Pour Some Sugar On Me, but it got axed.  Living On A Prayer is tough to sing.  We had to opt to NOT modulate up on the last chorus like they do in the actual song.  I about pulled something trying to sing it that way the first time. 

[KevShmev]

Hahaha, I can imagine.

Can I get some Whitesnake?

Oh, there you go again on your own.

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

Livin' on a Prayer and Pour Some Sugar On Me are two songs that are guaranteed to have girls flocking to the dance floor faster than the speed of light at any bar or club where the song is played or performed by a cover band.  Every single time.

Yup.  We were close to including Pour Some Sugar On Me, but it got axed.  Living On A Prayer is tough to sing.  We had to opt to NOT modulate up on the last chorus like they do in the actual song.  I about pulled something trying to sing it that way the first time. 

Girls, Girls, Girls has the same effect.  It just has a way of bringing out the stripper that every woman secretly has lurking inside.

Oddly enough, I didn't fall in love with 80's music until the latter half of the 90's, after I'd missed all the good shit, and when the music at the time sucked in a major way.

[bl5150]

JBJ doesn't bother to sing LOAP live so why should anyone else?  That's what the peeps are there for 

[bosk1]

JBJ doesn't bother to sing LOAP live so why should anyone else?  That's what the peeps are there for 

Yeah, I plan on it being a major "audience participation" song.    Problem is, most of us in cover bands don't play the big halls that Bon Jovi can play, so sometimes we simply do not have the option of making the "crowd" sing the chorus like he does.

[bosk1]

But https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxrwImCJCqk

[jingle.boy]

[Jaq]

...did someone say the 80s? 

Ahem.

Where I live was one of the first handful of markets to get MTV when it went live in the summer of 1981, which means that I got to see MTV in its embryonic days, before it became hip and cool and fashionable. And in those embryonic days, let me tell you, they played any music video they could get their hands on. New wave bands blew up as much because they had multiple videos to play as they did because they made music that interested people. Dire Straits made a full length video for all eight minutes of Tunnel of Love? We'll play it! Rod Stewart has music videos dating back three or four years? Playing it! You could sit down in front of your TV and see Juice Newton be followed by the Cars, Judas Priest (they made a video for Don't Go. REALLY.), Kim Carnes and live performances up the wazoo. If MTV played a concert by a band, it would get sliced up into separate videos (they got over 10 out of a REO Speedwagon concert) and played and played and played. Phil Collins waking my sister up with That Drum Fill from In The Air Tonight.

Early MTV was wild and freewheeling and had a massively distorting effect on the music industry. While early MTV did play the shit out of some acts that were breaking big-Billy Squier is one I am thinking of-and Duran Duran frankly was made by MTV, a lot of bands that got played massively on MTV were nowhere near as successful as you'd think when you'd look up their chart success. But that was later. At the time it came on, the notion of 24-7 rock and pop music television was not only massively novel, but for me perfectly timed: I turned 15 early in MTV's existence, and MTV was the soundtrack of my teen aged years. And as anyone who followed the other thread can attest, the soundtrack for my late teens and early 20s to boot.

[bl5150]

Ahh................Billy Squier - he of the legenedary "moves".  So bad it's good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR0j7sModCI