Why do the 80's get such a hard time?

maxdown

maxdown

Fractal Fanatic
'Cheesy' seems the adjective most commonly used for the 80's guitar rock era yet I think it was actually one of those decades where the guitar made a comeback as a frontline instrument and should be honoured accordingly so!

OK - I'll admit that the Spandex and hair styles are somewhat bemusing to look back at - but that's just the visual thing, the 70's had the hair without the hairspray and huge flairs and platform shoes - the 60's started with the squeaky clean suits and ended with the non gender style of pyschedelia.

I actually prefer the 80's music to today's guitar driven stuff - it's mostly dark at the heavy end and 'look what a virtuosso I am' at the more melodic end - bit dull for the most part at least in the mainstream - there are of course some shining lights as there have been in every decade. But nothing that whips up a smile quite like the ' say cheese' of those nutty eighties.

Of course I was young, single and gigs were plentiful in the 80's ..... girls in spray on denims and white ankle boots might have something to do with it I guess!
 
I still love the music I grew up loving (being 52 now, I have seen some awesome decades) and am glad to say I still find new bands I enjoy today. Some of the bands I went to see as a teenager as STILL touring to sold out venues... guys, that means they were touring when many of the young guys touring now weren't even born. That's awesome.

I don't hate today's music. I certainly admit that there is a lot of it I don't get, all the anger and negativity, but I'm sure somebody gets it. Hell, there were a lot of the bands I didn't get back then either... I thought Bowie was a lunatic when I first saw him and laughed at Sting's voice in Roxanne. Shows what I knew, right? It took a while to grow on me, and I became a real fan of both of them as they (and I) developed. The 80s (and every other era) had a lot of fluff, but it had a lot of great music and musicianship too. Who cares if people don't get it? I did then, and do now.

Long live live music!
 
I think because people didnt experience it as it happend, just like I didnt "get" the hippy movement (born in 70). There was a time when you dropped the needle on a record and sit there scratching your head how someone made that sound (my experience when I first heard VH1). Kids nowdays have way too many options. There were some great players back then.
 
It came back with my band ;-) (and the guy who plays in the Reflex, sorry I don't remember who it is right now...)

I mostly remember the 80's for a lot of fun music, more so than what I consider to be "great" music. Or I guess what I mean is, what people now think of when you say "80's" is now associated with the big hair scene. Not that this stuff was bad, it just wasn't the stuff me and my crew were listening to most of the time. There was certainly a lot of great music -- Talking Heads, Crowded House, the Cure, U2, Police, etc, and that's what was on our playlists.

But for the most part, when my band plays stuff like that, it tends to clear the dance floor while the crowd is waiting for the next Journey or ACDC song ;-)
 
Being 52,I loved the 80s. Still like a lot of of the music up to now. I lost some times in the 80s too. Still got most my long trem memory ,its the short term having trouble with now. :lol
 
Like any genre, there were the originators and the impostors. The first real assault was the Winger t-shirt on the dork on Beavis and Butthead. However, the cave in to do ballads to attract the women was seen as pandering by all.
 
I think the "cheesy-ness" has a lot to do with dudes looking like chicks and the "Im a badass" type of attitudes that went along with looking like a lady to avoid ego's being destroyed which did happen in the 90's due to the grunge scene taking over completely.
Then you had the backlash from the 80's musicians who were mad as hell at bands like Nirvana for ending their runs. Lots of trash talk about how talentless and awful the music was really backfired on the 80's musicians. It made them bitter and in turn, no1 was buying their albums after that. Arenas went from being packed with 1000"s of fans down to 100's over night. Instead of changing or evolving/devolving, most just bitched and cried about it. This is where the CHEESE comes from IMHO. Its a vicious cycle that has and will happen over and over again.

Just think back to Rap-Rock in the late 90's and early 2000's. I bet Fred Durst is STILL pissed (lol). Nothing is cool forever and once it falls from grace it gets labeled "Cheesy". I see this happening right now in metal music. There are 100's of sub-genres that are subdividing metal into oblivion, with NO signs of slowing down. This makes almost anything a few years old "cheesy", because its not RIGHT NOW, with a NEW name.

I cant see Def Leopard playing songs like Nirvana.
I cant see Megadeath playing raprock.
But I do see Korn playing dub-step.....
Weird.
 
maxdown said:
'Cheesy' seems the adjective most commonly used for the 80's guitar rock era yet I think it was actually one of those decades where the guitar made a comeback as a frontline instrument and should be honoured accordingly so!

!
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The guitar didn't make a comeback - there was a continuous stream of guitar-dominated music starting in 1955, and going from Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, through the Beatles, The Stones, Hendrix, Zep, and too many other great 70s acts, and then to Van Halen, Journey, Satriani and Metallica (with hundreds of omissions in my list, obviously)

Then the 90s came and suddenly all that mattered was wearing a flannel shirt and chunking a D chord while staring at your feet. Guitar has never truly recovered. I'm not saying there haven't been great players since then, but in the 80s, Satriani instrumentals got airplay on commercial radio and MTV. That is long gone.
 
I have never found anything worth emulating about the 80's as a guitar player: screeching showboaty solos, four-on-the-floor-for-every-song, and incredibly predictable song structure, no thanks. The only difference between 'metal' then and 'metal' now is the solos.
 
shemihazazel said:
I have never found anything worth emulating about the 80's as a guitar player: screeching showboaty solos, four-on-the-floor-for-every-song, and incredibly predictable song structure, no thanks. The only difference between 'metal' then and 'metal' now is the solos.
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Metal then was love songs wrapped in rock, today's metal is far darker and loveless IMO.

Today's rhythm playing is far more complicated than Dokken's power chords over an E drone.

The 80s solos had a melody, think Yngwie and Satch, today's ironically sound like an oddball scale being played through top to bottom in position.

The last great metal album IMO was Images and Words from DT.
 
luke said:
Metal then was love songs wrapped in rock, today's metal is far darker and loveless IMO.

Today's rhythm playing is far more complicated than Dokken's power chords over an E drone.

The 80s solos had a melody, think Yngwie and Satch, today's ironically sound like an oddball scale being played through top to bottom in position.

The last great metal album IMO was Images and Words from DT.
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The "love" in most 80's metal was incredibly vapid and passionless. It was Justin Beiber with some distorted guitars.
 
I can't stand the 80's for a few reasons, "Cheesy" being one of them. My main deal is the dude's dressing like chicks, to get chicks, yet still "acting tough". What the heck is that? Some GREAT stuff came out of the 80's, but IMO it didn't come from what they called "metal". What I consider good "metal" that came from that era were bands like Slayer and Metallica. That was metal. Poison, Kiss, etc... not metal. And all the songs were about getting girls, which for me is what's cheesy. The whole era became less and less about the music and more and more about getting chicks, partying, and over the top stage shows. It was doomed to fall under it's own weight.

Cheesy doesn't have anything to do with the actual chord progressions though, for me at least. 80's hair band songs are actually a lot more complicated than the pop songs you hear on the radio now. If anything, the newer stuff is much cheesier when it comes to expected chord changes.
 
Why do the 80's get such a hard time?

images


... that's why!

... and this also

images


...thanks a lot guys... er... and gals
 
The 80s felt like a very synthetic decade to me. It felt like I couldn't play the music I wanted to and had to pay as much attention to my personal appearance, clothing and hairstyle as to any music you wanted to play. In the UK we also had Thatcher and the culture of greed which made it even worse. I actually gave up the guitar half way through that decade for almost 10 years. All my friends were buying DX7s and Atari STs and making horrible noises in their "home studios". It probably wasn't as bad as I remember but I'm still recovering.
 
Manning said:
Then the 90s came and suddenly all that mattered was wearing a flannel shirt and chunking a D chord while staring at your feet. Guitar has never truly recovered. I'm not saying there haven't been great players since then, but in the 80s, Satriani instrumentals got airplay on commercial radio and MTV. That is long gone.
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The 90s started good... EJ's Ah Via Musicom just came out, and "Cliffs of Dover" is still heard on the radio and TV pretty often, while Stevie Ray was at the top of his game, sober and tearing it up. Unfortunately, the year ended with Stevie gone and it seems like radio buried the guitar solo with him. But there were still bright spots as the decade passed. On the acoustic front Clapton did the unplugged album which I thought rejuvenated his career (again!), and some really cool players like Tom Morello came to the fore, so it wasn't a complete loss. Endless soloing gave way to some great riffage, which was ok by me.

The worst thing about the 1980s and the 1990s, looking back, is that the Axe Fx was still years away. My lower spine still bears the damage of the gear of the time... 2006 couldn't come fast enough! And I agree many 80s bands looked ridiculous, but then the theatrics have just changed focus with GWAR and Slipknot. The makeup changes... but it's still makeup. The New York Dolls live on.
 
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