March 12, 2009, - 2:47 pm
Videos of the Day: Do They Stand the Test of Time?
By Debbie Schlussel
I have very eclectic musical taste, in part because of my dad who took me to jazz (George Benson, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, etc.) and other concerts. I love jazz, ’70s, ’80s, metal and hair bands, etc. But I also like funk–hey, I went to a mostly Black high school. One of my classmates, Terrence Parker, began as a well-known DJ and mixmaster in high school and still goes by the name DJ Mixmaster X. He made the best mix tapes (remember those?) and is now big in club circles all over the world.
Yesterday, I saw a screening of the movie, “Adventureland,” which comes out in April. It takes place in the ’80s and features an ’80s hits soundtrack. It reminded me of these three songs from the ’80s (both are not in the movie), which used to be on my workout tape (remember those?), back then. Guess which one didn’t survive? Hint: it’s the one with the weird chip-munk voices on it. Surprisingly, that song–featuring the Black/White French-Canadian duo, Cheri–reached the top of the dance music charts. Now, it’s just completely cheesy. But the other two are classics for me.
From 1980:
Love the guitar portions of this (even if I don’t like the “getting high” stuff in this song)–From 1982:
From 1982:
If you like ’80s club/house/dance music, some of the best remixes are at the Vinyl Morpher and at Terrence Parker’s site, linked above.
First one is nice, I always like to see R&B videos prior to Hip Hop. Music isn’t about ‘hos’ and ‘getting my money’, which Hip Hop is about. As for the second, I can’t ever see Ozzie the same after his reality show on MTV. It was a schtick by her money grubbing wife who kept the guy constantly sedated and pushed him on stage to make her more money. The third song I never heard of, but that synthesizer music, thankfully is gone with the 80s. As a teen the 80s we were deprived of great music. Some rock and some R&B were experimenting with electronic music and never stood the test of time. The onset of indie music was quietly surfacing before the explosion of grunge took off in early 90s.
californiascreaming on March 12, 2009 at 6:25 pm