2008: The Best Year Of The 80s

I haven't yet decided if the return of neon greens and oranges and pinks into the everyday styles of current fashion make me feel old, nor am I now able to hear what I thought a year ago when I first heard “Electric Feel” by MGMT and thought it the completion of the 80’s triumphant return into pop culture. It’s been happening for a while, for years even – back in 2001, when Jennifer Lopez had a hit with “Love Don’t Cost A Thing,” people in the know declared her giant hoop earrings, her open-shouldered shirts and big sunglasses a triumphant return of the 80’s into our every day style.

But it wasn’t until these last couple of years, with techno back into the beats of top 40 hits by Kanye West and Timbaland, and with the blazing geometrical lines of fashion that the 80’s I know has returned – 80’s by way of the early 90’s. By then, in the pop of 1991 or so, the 80’s had become an embarrassing trash heap of trends. The hair metal bands (who, honestly, weren’t exactly of quality to begin with) had gotten into their 3rd for 4th generations – Britny Fox and Trixter had major radio hits instead of Poison and Dokken. Pop stars like Pat Benatar had given way to Cathy Dennis, and this was, without a doubt, a downgrade.

And the loud fashions – not exactly quiet in the 80’s – had turned into the bright neons that are back now. Last weekend at Sasquatch – a what’s what of indie fashion trends – had so much neon in every pair of shorts, t-shirt, shoe, and sunglasses, I thought that I had reverted back to 1991. Actually it’s all of pop culture that has.
But first a theory – 2008 was the best year of the 1980’s. This is something I believe. If there is one song that sounded “new,” or fresh, or “revolutionary” to rock music, it was one that could not truly be considered far off from the trends in pop too. I’m thinking of “Kids” by MGMT, a song I heard blazing from probably a dozen speakers wandering around the Gorge campround. Its iconic, “old sounding” synth is the sound that made it ok for indie rockers to dance again. The Killers and Hot Chip and Scissor Sisters had been laying the ground work for a couple years, but with MGMT, American Apparel and all of Seattle had a sound and a signature to hang their fashionable hats on.

And in 2008, there was so little difference between MGMT’s sound and Britney Spears’ – “Womanizer,” a plum gem of a robo-techno pop song, could stand side by side with it. Same with Madonna’s “4 Minutes” (which even more fetishized the early-80’s synth sound), Christina Aguilera’s “Keeps Getting Better,” Chris Brown’s “Forever,” Santigold’s “Lights Out,” Walter Meego’s “Forever,” Hot Chip’s “Ready For The Floor,” Chromeo’s “Fancy Footwork,” Rihanna’s “Disturbia,” Pink’s “So What” – each had a blast of synth that sounded just like things you might have heard 20 years ago, and though half of those songs were top 40 pop hits and half were indie rock songs, you could DJ a party straight through with them and get no complaints.

It happened in fashion it happened in music. In movies, the best performance of the year was given by Heath Ledger doing a modern, updated, more “real” and “intense” version of a performance given 20 years ago by Jack Nicholson. That’s a great place to start – 2008 was the 80’s revisited after the 90’s and early 00’s made us appreciate what was “real.” The 90’s were subdued, back to basics, “understated” to make up for the ridiculous excess that defined the 80’s. It’s safe to say our hairstyles have not reverted to where they were 20 years ago (they’re still where they were 30 and 40 years ago), but that just proves my point – 2008 was the year we did the 80’s without the embarrassing stuff. No hair metal. No hair spray. No mesh shirts and no tiger-print spandex. The movies had real acting, were directed by real directors. Our action heroes were Christian Bale and Daniel Craig, men whose grit comes from having a code and a seriousness that cannot be deterred.
Now we know how to do things the right way, and can actually enjoy the parts we should be ashamed of. It’s not kitsch, it’s a sort of acceptance of the fun before the “serious” set in, while retaining the best part of the “serious” 90’s and 00’s. The truth is, this music is better than the pop and indie rock of 1988, bands are more competent and, with 90’s business savvy, know how to produce a more complete product.

Which brings me to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the fantastic sunglasses. Whereas MGMT can accurately be described as “80’s influenced,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs go a step further – you could listen to “Heads Will Roll” or “Softshock” off of this year’s It’s Blitz and find it difficult to distinguish them from a song released in 1989 or 1991. I wonder if the improvement we made in 2008 has morphed into just a return to what we were. Sometimes I see these trends and feel old – I’ve lived long enough to see the world come full circle in pop culture. But then I realize this is where these trends have started – as nostalgia for a time when we took things less seriously, for the loud colors and excess of our childhoods. Now we’re adult enough to make these trends work. It’s Blitz is without a doubt the best album released thus far this year. How long can we maintain this 80’s trend? I don’t know, but I’m glad to be back in a pop culture and indie culture that’s enjoying itself again.

Sasquatch, celebrity, and a very good weekend

It took me hours at Sasquatch - the Northwest's annual, awesome three day music festival over Memorial Day weekend - to realize that the black sunglasses with hot pink/yellow/green arms were not purchased by everyone, but were provided by a sponsor for the weekend, 1-800-Quit-Now, an anti-smoking group. You couldn't tell the difference between those sunglasses (of which the green pair I owned as a 2nd grader in 1990) and the ones that must have cost $70-100 in the Volcom or Ray Ban or Oakley variety that everyone else was wearing.

How do I best describe these sunglasses? Very round in front, kitschily plastic, primitively assembled. Neon. Definitely neon. Everything is neon now, it turns out - board shorts in hot green, t-shirts of electric blue with a triangle in heightened shocking orange. For a while you could look from the hill down onto the mainstage and see fashion choices like a highlighter - a great neon yellow line from shirt to wristband to sunglasses.

I'm 27 years old now, and I have to assume I'm above the average age of this year's Sasquatch attendees, so I have to wonder if the throwback to all things late-80's/early-90's is kitschy to your average college student, or it's of the same recycled fashion trends that brought us back "boot cut" jeans and fuzzy corduroy jackets. Now I see fashion that reminds me of the font used on Joan Jett's I Love Rock and Roll album covers, or the opening credits sequence of Saved By The Bell. I try and get more information about how much Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs reminds me of Siouxsie Sioux and find virtually no one online has mentioned the subject - to me, it just seems the most obvious conclusion.

What a great time though. I thought often during the weekend about what a great idea music festivals like Sasquatch are - three days of nothing but listening to music, drinking, smoking pot, and doing nothing but meeting others and talking about music. I spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to look at this concert from the eyes of a 19-year-old than of a 27-year-old. In fact, when I met people, I found that one of the most commonly asked questions - by me and others - was how old you were. It defined a person's perspective of the whole experience.

So now, I have two perspectives I don't understand in trying to frame what this weekend must be like to others - first, college kids, of which I am no longer one. Second, indie rock fans, of which I've always been totally confounded by. Let me talk about the shows that talked directly to the me's of the audience first.

Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor has been working out A LOT. He's huge! This was not what he looked like when he ran around in the mud during Woodstock 94 and knocked his guitarist over. He's 48 now, but with a good cropped haircut and successful brown dye, he looks ten years younger. More importantly, he looks like Bruce Springsteen. He jaunts with the same energy that never seems to dissipate, waves his hands in the air, runs around the stage with the same fervor. If the music wasn't so glum and noisy, it would feel like an identical show. That's high compliment - Reznor brought out his A material, and even made you want to listen to the work he's been doing since whenever it was you stopped paying attention to Nine Inch Nails (for me, it was since a casual listen to With Teeth, apparently 3 records back). Reznor sounds exactly the same as he always has, he remembers his strongest material even if it's songs you'd never thought he'd performed ("Gave Up" from 1992's Broken, or "Burn" from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack). Despite songs like "Terrible Lie" (Sample lyric: "Why am I seething with this animosity... Can this world really be as sad as it seems"), the result is totally, viscerally electrifying. Reznor's Nails launched an empire, not just industrial music, but in defining the entire expression of dismay and ambivalence by its fans. He deserves his King of Gloom crown still.

TV On The Radio. It turns out 2008's Dear Science was so universally hailed by critics, TV On The Radio has fans who are college-aged now. I don't know why this thought never occurred to me, but it hadn't - the band's labyrinthine, evocative and meticulous lyrics must have connected with a younger audience, because by the time the band reached "Golden Age," everyone sang along. Part of me resented everyone knowing TV On The Radio, an art rock band who forges along with a personality that's so unique, they seem to be remaking rock around them. The set was extraordinary - a great plunge into the great catalogue the band has built up with increasing fanfare. For once I felt like the right age at the show, but then, it turns out, so did the rest of the audience (which, of course, also had plenty of members much older than I am).

Kings of Leon. Kings of Leon have been around making well heard underground rock for so long, it took me a minute to realize - with the entire audience singing along to the ferocious "Crawl," played second in the band's headlining set - that this is one of the most successful rock bands in the world right now. Only By The Night, the band's 2008 release, is still in the top 20 nearly a year after its release, and somehow has spawned three hit singles (by whatever measure you use to call something a "hit single," however the singalongs to "Crawl" and the sorta-filler single "Use Somebody" are plenty great indicators). Still, Kings' appeal is to the drunken frat boy in all of us, a grunge and PBR version of The Rolling Stones. The band is heavy on filler - it becomes fairly clear the difference between a serviceable song like "Notion" and a truly, unmistakably great song like "Crawl" or "The Bucket" or "Black Thumbnail" (which loudly, brilliantly closed the set) is still quite massive: the former you enjoy because you're at a concert, but it just takes more work to love. Caleb Followill looks like a baby-faced version of Ozzy Osborne, or a rocker-faced version of Bryan Adams, but he holds a crowd like no one besides Karen O, who I'll talk about in a minute.

Santigold. Santigold is the plucky, adorable Brooklyn indie sensation whose awesome 80's throwback single "Lights Out" can currently be heard on a Sprite commercial (why, Santi, why?). Her set is even more 80's - a sign of smart branding - two dancers in high-wasted gold shorts and big round plastic shades, dancing ever so erratically, but mostly standing as blankly as a Robert Palmer backup dancer. She sounds just as wild on stage as she does on record, managing to hit all of those bird-call "kee-kee-kee"s on "Creator" without having to cough or anything. Santigold probably has a big indie following now, but with her hip-hop/punk/pop/dance sensibility, she's the sort of artist that people would need to go out of their way to dislike.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Without a doubt the greatest performance I saw all weekend was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I haven't seen them before, and I've read since their arrival with Fever to Tell in 2003, about Karen O's fiery onstage antics, but I hadn't thought much of them besides being another Patti Smith also-ran. She is, but so much more. With her shocking green tights, heavily-triangled neon and white mumu cinched off at the waste, and single pink glove with glow-in-the-dark stitching (see it on stage in the picture above), Karen O also is the indie college kid's female president of sorts. She has a trancelike smile, and her antics aren't "antics" so much as they are an expression of herself. Say what you will about the band, this woman has presence. Not only can you not keep your eyes off of her, she makes whatever song she's singing into a dizzy, energetic, whatever-goes evocation of the current revival of 80's and 90's synth kitschiness. Suddenly the highlighter slashed crowd has someone to lead them.

But more than that, Yeah Yeah Yeahs impressed me not just as a great band - something I've never thought of them as before - but also of a band who's smartly at the top of their times. They rode the early-00's guitar revival back with Fever to Tell, pulled real Siouxsie Sioux 80's punk into 2006's Show Your Bones, and this year released It's Blitz, a techno-dance influenced album that follows the indie trend set by MGMT and The Killers to let some fun back in the rock paradigm, something that's worked so well I believe it's truly behind the early 90's revival that's so taken over fashion. I loved the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' performance so much, I bought It's Blitz on the way to work the day following the concert, and I realize that because of O, and because of the great, spitty sangfroid at the center of the record, it's pure Yeahs, and more importantly, a pure evocation of what youth trends are doing to music right now. In the early part of the decade, albums like American Idiot by Green Day and The Woods by Sleater-Kinney helped show rock at the forefront of anti-Bush political anger. Now people wnat to have fun again. The Yeahs anger then actually isn't that far away from their fun now.

I'm never going to be younger again, so, I'll never know what it's like to be a 19 or 17 or 21 year old at Sasquatch, but I know that the music I loved in the 90's I thought of as the first music of its kind, a type of thing that all of music history had worked up to create. Now I see things more as trends, great bands happened in the past and great bands (albeit less of them) happen now. I often have said that 2008 was a great year for music and was, in its way, the greatest year of the 80's - 80's trends tookover music, fashion, movies, and in 2008, we did all of them better and without as much to be embarrassed about. This might be the first time I haven't thought it was better to be a teenager in the late 90's, when rock music was at a different type of peak - because life as a music fan, as led by Karen O's smile now, just seems like such a great time.

I read one review when I got home about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs set that described the band and O's magnetism as something that "hasn't been generated since Nirvana." This, to me, was clearly a teenager writing - a common problem of rock writers, constantly overstating the excitement of seeing a great artist. Karen O, despite my frustration of not finding her original, is a true rock star - and in any case, even if she is repeating Sioux or Patti Smith (which she is), or Chrissie Hynde (which she is not, despite many claims - the similarities end at the haircuts) there are so few fiery rock women of this vein in rock history, a little repetition could potentially not be such a bad thing. I had always looked at the Yeahs a little competitively - taking some fame that should have gone to PJ Harvey or Sleater-Kinney, but this view undersells O tremendously.

She sang an acoustic version of "Maps," the band's two-cord love song that everyone seems to know, and introduced it as the "Yeah Yeahs love song," and played it softly with an acoustic guitar. The song was already clearly quieter than the band's entire catalogue, and is hardly the first or best love song ever written, but O's drama and disarming smile is such that on stage, holding a finger to the audience on each "Wait - they don't love you like I love you," everyone not just sang along but felt along. If music like this is continuing to repeat all that we love and know of music, then let us forever have more of the same.