A lot of people have begun (well...it's been going for a while now) to do retro 80's shows. They'll play music from the 80's on both commercial stations and college stations and fine I'm biased on this but I think they do it all wrong. For one thing, the prevailing tone is "ooooo I'm soooooo ironic" but there's no reason people can't do a show of GOOD songs from the 80's and not just treat the decade like a funny joke. I'm listening to a show now. It started with the Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed" and was followed by friggin' Miami Sound Machine and now Billy Ocean. After IMing the DJ it seems she really likes the Ocean and Machine songs she played and it wasn't to be ironic. Perhaps it's just a sign that the kids today just don't know good music from bad. She was probably born in like '83 so she didn't live through this stuff knowledgeably the first time around. Either way there's really no excuse for a college radio station (WHUS if you must know-which is a station I quite like overall) playing the same freakin' overplayed songs other top 40 stations always play...(The Church's "Under The Milky Way" plays now....certainly an improvement)...
First of all, as far as commercial radio goes, there are two distinct halves of the 1980's. The good half and the bad. Obviously the good half was 80-84 and the bad the latter half. New wave invigorated the radio in the first half and the soulless production of the latter half killed it. (Asia's "Heat Of The Moment" played...followed by Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" of all things...She's going to play my request for the Red Rockers' "China" up next!) OK...China might not have the best production but it beats the crap out of the mediocre shlock people often play on 80's shows. Why don't people play this song more? Or Icicle Works' "Whisper To A Scream"? There are a lot of GOOD songs from the 80's and they're predominantly from the first half. The decade shouldn't be treated as a uniform entity. It's ok to pick the good songs and not treat everything like it's the same.
4:28:43 PM 
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