MSP129 [] The 80s: Day-Glo Don’t Quit

The 80s. A great place to visit, a terrible place to live. Why has our obsession with 80s culture lasted for 20 years? It’s time to throw away the neon tees and create something new.

Hosts: Matt Armitage & Jeff Sandhu
Produced: Jeff Sandhu for BFM89.9

Episode Sources:

https://www.bfm.my

https://www.vulture.com/2016/10/2016-why-are-we-obsessed-with-the-80s.html

EPISODE EXCERPT

On last week’s MSP, Matt Armitage had a brain wave. Generally speaking, these are dangerous things accompanied by considerable suffering for other people. This one, if it works, is likely to be no more than a crime against taste. Yes, today we’re talking about The 80s. The decade that just won’t quit.

So. The 80s?

• I don’t know - you tell me.
• I was there. For pretty much all of it.
• And sometimes I feel like I’m still there.
• I walk into stores and they’re selling clothes like the ones that looked terrible on me 30 years ago.

And look worse now?

• Well, yeah, we hadn’t added Lycra to everything back then.
• Now I just end up looking like one of those neon caricatures you see in sweat suits and head bands in comedies.

I should advise you that your use of the word neon is being strictly monitored for this show…

• And rightly so. That’s perhaps one of my favourite things about the decade, the total absence of colour sense that I still display today.
• I force myself to wear mostly black and navy clothes because if I’m left to choose the things I want to wear, I’ll end up looking like one of those orphan balls of Play-doh with all the different colours smooshed together.
• Probably best that I barely leave the house anymore.
• Cultural revivals are nothing new - we recycle fashions and tastes all the time - but those revivals are often short-lived.
• A spring and summer fashion collection, a movie remake or two, some song covers or samples.
• Normally it’s a Flash in the pan - culture moves on. But the 80s won’t move on.

In what sense?

• We were announcing and celebrating the 80s revival in the early noughties and it never really stopped.
• I think pretty much every TV show and movie from that era has been remade.
• Charlie’s Angels, Dynasty, 21 Jump St, Starsky & Hutch, the A Team, Ghostbusters.
• The list of etc etc goes on forever.
• This year was supposed to be the year that Top Gun made a high altitude comeback.
• Not sure when we’ll see it now.
• It’s like there’s no stone of 80s pop culture that hasn’t been given another go around.

Even the games have come back…

• Not just the games - even their music.
• We had stuff like the 8-Bit chip music scene that emulated the kind of music that you’d get in video games and consoles in the 80s.
• Which is weird. Because that music sounded like this:
• Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=NTa6Xbzfq1U&feature=emb_logo
• That was. of course, the Super Mario Bros Main Theme for the NES - Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985.
• And it’s the sound of nightmares. Yet chip music was huge for about 30 seconds in probably the mid noughties.
• But even that’s back. The remix is being remixed.
• The chiptune scene has been profiled for sites like Vice…