Oh What a Night, mid-November, Back in Eighty-Three

The early Eighties really were as magical and awesome as you’ve been led to believe, even if the seeds of our future heartaches were being planted in the dark. Me, I was 17 in November of 1983, and it’s a lost mystical land I like to escape to when the stars are just right ever since. 

I really am so immensely grateful for so many things, but most of all to have been just the right age when youth culture was at its absolute zenith. We were the Kids of America, dammit, when that actually still meant something.

Looking back it stuns me how many all-time classic albums and singles were released that autumn some four decades ago. And with a chill in the air and the leaves falling from the trees, I thought it a good time to revisit that magical time and feel some major wist.

One of the best ways to return to those times is (of course) music, which was everywhere you turned. This was due to the rise of the New British Invasion and MTV, but other sounds were seeping through, like the new New Wave of Heavy Metal.  

So in honor of the Stranger Things Quadragennial (more on that later), indulge me while I stroll down Memory Lane yet again...

I was so disgusted with The Clash’s flaccid variation on The Rolling-Stones (at least on their LPs) that Big Country was like a brilliant beacon in the gloom. I was also losing faith in U2 after watching Bono act like the absolute biggest cringemaster ever on the War tour, so Big Country’s Celtic mysticism filled that void as well. They also sounded a heck of a lot like mid-70s Thin Lizzy, but I didn’t put that one together until much later.

I remember I pissed off a bunch of skinheads when I put on a Thin Lizzy album at a punk rock party in Allston. No regrets, Henry!

I remember I was shopping with my mom at the Casual Male at the South Shore Plaza when I first heard this cut. I’d heard ‘Mad World’ and wasn’t super impressed with it, but this one rang some bells. I also distinctly remember being grateful that new music was finally getting played on the radio, and not the tired old 70s crap I was sick to death of. Little did I know.

A lot of you probably never heard of these cats, but they’re Mark Kermode’s all-time favorite band. He famously said they were like Joy Division if Joy Division could play their instruments and write real songs. 

This was an remake of a song from 1980, and the rest of the album is kind of like Flock of Seagulls, only darker (same producer, you see), but this jets me back to the days when I was grinding away at my old drawing table. Which I still own, by the way.

Love this song, had both of these albums. Preferred the first one, but loved this song. Just absolute magic. Rips me out of the present and sends me all the way back. Both LPs had Phil Collins on the kit, and he’s still one of my favorite drummers of all time. Yes, I am a philistine. 

A PHIListine - get it?

Phil was a busy boy at the time, but still made time for his day job. This was an instant classic, a killer piano riff and a million-dollar hook. Shame about the rest of the album: 'Illegal Alien’ is one of the stupidest songs ever queefed out by anyone. And ‘Mama’ is the sequel to The Police’s ‘Mother’ that absolutely no one asked for.

Phil got involved in another one of the stupidest songs ever written, penned by one of the most prolific penners of stupid songs, Adam Ant. Phil produced this mess and played drums on it, for what reason I haven’t a clue. But it’s fun watching Adam make an arse of himself in the video.

Well, in theory, I suppose.

I wasn’t crazy about Speaking in Tongues since it paled in comparison to Remain in Light, but I love this song. This also reminds me of running around Harvard Square at all hours of the night, as was my wont. I remember seeing a display for the LP in the window of the Harvard Coop after we'd binged out at The Million-Year Picnic.

Life was better then. I mean, I’m much happier now, but life was better then. Don’t ask me to explain. It’s a paradox.

Bonus factoid: it’s one of Samantha Morton’s favorite songs as well. 

It’s one of life’s great ironies: The Clash spent the early Eighties turning into the Rolling Stones, and this late ’83 single had The Rolling Stones turning into The Clash. 

I can’t explain it. It’s Hegelian.

Similarly, Dire Straits built their career aping Bob Dylan and then Dylan hired Mark Knopfler to help him ape Dire Straits. It’s all good: this is one of the best songs ol’ Bobby Z ever recorded.

I got into Motley Crue when the original ‘Live Wire’ indie single was released and got Too Fast for Love when absolutely not one single soul in Boston knew who Motley Crue were. But I was smart enough to realize that their entire act was just dressing like Kiss (who I never liked all that much) and sounding like Sweet (who I loved). 

Plus you gotta love this video on account of it being so 1983 it’s almost a parody of 1983.

  

Not to be that guy (even though I actually AM that guy), but I was into Judas Priest before anyone else I knew, having gotten Unleashed in the East on LP when it came out. Then they got popular and I dropped them like the little punk partisan I was.

Bonus anecdote: I also nearly got busted trying to steal the cassette of Hell Bent for Leather at Zayre’s in the Quintree Mall. I was a pretty canny shoplifter by then and just laughed at the store detective when he nabbed me. I’d already dumped the tape in the hardware section on the way out. Not this time, piggy!

So I like Journey. Got a problem with that? Well, actually just their singles - their album cuts are oddly awful for some inexplicable reason. At least to my ears. For some reason I thought this came out in '81, though.

Peter Schilling was one of those early 80s New Wavers I couldn’t tell apart from all the other early 80s New Wavers (Thomas Dolby, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, the Escalator of Life guy, etc etc), but this song has some solid nostalgic resonance.

No one ever expected to hear from The Romantics in 1983, so it was quite a shock when they scored this autumn hit. I remember I heard this for the first time in the kitchen of my friend Gregg’s house, where we all usually met up before hitting the streets for our usual nights of underage drinking and reckless driving.

Gregg and I used to go over his house after school, smoke ourselves stupid, and then read Jack Kirby and Tomb of Dracula comics while playing Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk album on repeat. We called it "a stack of Jack and a stack of Drac."

I think Gregg got a job or something because I remember I'd get high with my boy Liam and we'd watch Bob Ross and Julia Child on PBS after school. Watching that shit is a trip when you're high. I associate doing that with Husker Du for some absolutely opaque reason. Then in the fall, Soog, my boy Goodie and I would lift down my basement until Batman came on.

I still have no idea how I actually graduated. It’s a total mystery to me. No wonder I'd have dreams that I didn't graduate. For decades.

Elton John never really went anywhere, but everyone said 1983 was his big comeback year. 'I’m Still Standing' was a little too New Wave-bandwagon-jumping for my tastes, but this one could sit comfortably on any of his classic 70s LPs. It also reminds me of reading Frank Miller's Ronin. Don't ask me way.

Long before they became a boring thrash metal band — and even before they were a cool industrial metal band — Ministry was just another bunch of 1983 New Wave sissies. And I loved them for it, even though I wasn’t particularly partial to New Wave sissy bands at the time. 

I used to have this on LP, but can’t remember if I bought it in ’83 or sometime later. Still, great time capsule for me.

I was quite partial to sissy Goth bands, mind you. And this one-off LP had two members from two of my favorites at the time: The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. And of course, Robert Smith was in both. And also of course, The Cure and Siouxsie were a lot darker and heavier at the time than they later became. 

This album has Smith playing with Siouxsie, which he did quite a bit. I used to have this on vinyl as well but never really listened to it. Probably because Smith didn’t seem like a good replacement for John McGeoch, who I thought was a god at the time. It’s basically just a glorified bootleg soundwise, but still: 1983.

Then there’s The Smiths, who got their hooks into me with this classic, released on Halloween of ’83. I remember going into town with my boy Soog and getting this single and Simple Minds' Sparkle in the Rain LP at Newbury Comics. Soog got the Milkwood LP because he was a huge Cars fan. He made me listen to it. 

It was… difficult.

Soog was basically the Asian Steve Harrington, only with a really thick Boston accent. And funnier, also cooler.

I was a huge Generation X fan, but was rather underwhelmed by Billy Idol’s metamorphosis into 80s New Wave idol. I always wished this song rocked harder (Generation X could blow your brains out like few others) but I welcomed it as a partial return to form. Plus this was a great beach-going album.

No one expected Yes to come back after the Drama debacle in 1980, but onetime-Buggle/Drama-era Yes replacement-player Trevor Horn had other ideas. I could take or leave Yes (a bit too RenFaire for me) but this was a very solid album and sold squillions. I’m using this vid because I’m sick to death of ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart.’ 

Great song, but I never need to hear it again. No one does.

This track was apparently used in the recent Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but you’d need to tie me to a chair to get me to watch a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Appropriate it’s associated with a comic book movie though, since I strongly associate it with my “Dacey’s Runs” for some reason.

What’s a “Dacey’s Run?” 

Well, It was basically just grabbing a bunch of comic books off the spinner rack at Dacey Bros. convenient store (which was always by the door) and running off into the dark night. They finally wised up and moved the comics to the back of the store, the party poopers.

I kind of lost interest in Killing Joke in ’83, since they were still in their “Adam and the Ants, only evil” phase. This was the B-side to a really awful single, and it still sounds like Adam and the Ants, but it also sounds REALLY evil. Also, psychotic. Also, Lovecraftian.

It’s weird: I didn’t buy Fire Dances until the 90s, but it brings me back to 1983. It also reminds me that I first saw that LP when Gregg and I were checking out this new record store in Quincy Square. For some reason, the girl who worked there was practically straddling me while we were browsing the bins. I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do. Gregg was too. Plus, she was like 23, or something ancient like that. 

Inevitable postscript: I went back a few days later and that same girl totally ghosted me. Maybe I seemed too eager. I do remember buying The Comsat Angels first LP there and debating whether to pick up the latest Bauhaus. I demurred.

I first heard this piece on WERS-FM back around the time of its release. I had been taking my usual post-weed nap and this was playing as I was waking up. Around the ten-minute mark I looked out the window and the street lights were glistening after a fresh autumn rain, and the world looked magical and mysterious and synched-up absolutely perfectly with the music. 

A budding mystic from day one.

This came out in September but you couldn’t get away from it the rest of the year. You still can’t, even today.

Two things come to mind: one is Pat Benatar really reminds me of the lost Osmond Sister the family disowned in this video. And second, it really makes me sad when I think America was still a country back then, with a sense of shared nationhood, and a loosely shared culture.  I think about that when I watch any 80s movie, especially after I’ve been to WalMart or somewhere. 

I don’t even recognize this country anymore.

Duran Duran loved Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’ so much that they changed the chords around - slightly - wrote some even-more pretentious lyrics and put out this single. It’s bloody awful, but the video is so 80s you can practically taste the cocaine and AquaNet.

My wife and I went to an 80s package tour show in Point Pleasant (NJ, not WV) some years back. It was The Alarm, The Psychedelic Furs and The Fixx. The Alarm had mysteriously morphed into Stiff Little Fingers, and were great. Then the Furs put on one of the best performances I’ve ever seen by anyone. 

Then The Fixx came on and Cy Curnin was easily the most obnoxious douche I’ve ever seen on a stage, even worse than Bono in 1983, Billy Corgan back in 1992 and The Goo Goo Dolls in 1990. Hard to believe, isn't it? 

We walked out after a few boring new songs and had a lovely evening on the boardwalk.

Still, you don’t get more 1983 than The Fixx.

Then out of the clear blue sky, the literal voice of an angel called out to me during that fateful November and changed everything forever more. I remember I had some new comics (All-Star Squadron, Sword of the Atom, and Saga of the Swamp Thing) to read, had turned on Nocturnal Emissions with Bradley Jay on WBCN, and was instantly enraptured by the infinite sadness and longing in her singing.

I called into ‘BCN and demanded they immediately identify this intergalactic communication, and they said “The Cocktail Twins.” And so it transpired that I was on the train to Newbury Comics the very next day.

I mean, that little alien angel was calling out to me - me! - and telling me she was watching me from the orial, the balustrade, and from the flagstones. Can you believe it?

I felt so special.

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