Class of '86, Represent!

Some things about this:

-- I'm amazed that there are about a half-dozen things in here that I don't remember.  What was that David Bowie deal, for example?  And "French Kisses in the USA"?

-- The New Order, Bananarama and Swing Out Sister songs in here still sound like totally new, alternative music to me.

-- Rest in peace, Whitney Houston.  So very, very sad.

-- At the time, it felt to me as though Billy Ocean, Phil Collins, Lionel Richie or maybe even up-and-comer Gregory Abbott was going to end up enduring as our generation's Frank Sinatra.  

-- I still stop on these Pretenders, Anita Baker, Van Halen, Jets, Prince, Cameo, Eddie Money, Diana Ross and Moody Blues songs whenever I'm lucky enough to happen upon them on the car radio.

-- Hearing "The Final Countdown" renews my excitement about the release of the new Arrested Development (5 stars, highly recommended) episodes on Netflix this weekend.

-- The watershed song here from an art standpoint is the Aerosmith/Run DMC thing. To me, it's the one song--even though it's a remake of a 10-year-old song, maybe because it's a remake of a 10-year-old song--that announces and proves in that it is making a true evolutionary step in its field. It's not a let's-throw-something-weird-out-there-and-see-if-it-sticks curiosity that creates a fleeting blip in the popular culture; it's a true, here's-what-we-love-about-two-things-and-let's-make-them-blend-because-one-audience-isn't-listening-to-the-stuff-of-the-other's-and-they-should-be-talking-to-one-another triumph that whacked the weeds for a path for a whole more innovation over the following 20 years.   

-- Meanwhile, it seems to me that what's going on from a culture standpoint here is the tension between earnest and ironic.  Everyone and everything in here is falling somewhere along that scale, and the culture ultimately decided to move forward at about 65 degrees toward the ironic in the right angle formed by the earnest and ironic paths. Most everyone and everything in here that in 1986 fell more than 10 degrees outside of the vector that the culture actually did choose now feels either antique-ish or "Pet Rock" momentary.

-- The Impact of "Manic Monday" Susannah Hoffs and That One Early '80s Brut Commercials on Marriages in the United States, 1990-2010 could be at least a couple of volumes.

-- This video is 12 minutes, 18 seconds long, and I've watched it twice through and getting ready to replay it a third time (5 stars, highly recommended). Thank you, Go Heath, for tipping us off to it, and bravo, YouTube user "thepeterson." thepeterson should email this video to VH1 with his/her salary expectations.