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Xaqtly
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2007-08-26, 16:22

Truly the 80s were a golden age for music videos. My favorites include the Peter Gabriel videos in that era (well late 70s to early 90s I guess)... yeah, pretty much all of them. Shock the Monkey, Sledgehammer, Big Time, Digging In The Dirt, etc. A-ha's "Take On Me" is a classic too.

edit - the topic says "and why", haha. Okay, but you asked for it! Well as far as music goes I am a child of the 80s. When I was old enough to start listening to music and deciding for myself what I liked, it was right around 1980 or 81. I consider myself fortunate to have lived in a decade when you could turn on the radio at home or in the car and surf stations, and nearly all of them would be playing good music. Not just ok music - really good music. I still believe that the 80s was one of the best decades for music we've ever had.

We didn't watch much tv at my house and we didn't get MTV (didn't have cable either). So I saw what videos I could at friend's houses, probably to their annoyance ("hey can we watch MTV? Let's watch MTV!"). Back then videos were really cool but mostly because I got to see what bands looked like and stuff while I was listening to the music. It was always about the music for me. Peter Gabriel was and still is one of my favorite musicians, and his videos were awesome. Awesome to the max. Take On Me was my favorite song for like, a year or something, and the video was completely awesome. I also loved Duran Duran, and their videos were great too.

Funny story about that - I liked Duran Duran so much I convinced my mom to rent their "Duran Duran Videos" videotape at the local video rental store. This is when I was still 12 or 13-ish I think, so their videos were a little risqué for somebody my age but my mom was clueless. The reason I think it's funny is because I only wanted to listen to the music and watch the guys in the band play their instruments. I couldn't have cared less about the scantily clad women, I mean they were nice looking and all that but sometimes they got in the way of seeing Duran Duran.

I watched that tape over and over again until we had to return it. When we went back to the store, I asked if we could rent it again. My mom asked the clerk if it was really okay for a kid of my age to rent that tape (why she didn't ask that the first time I have no idea), and he said "well it's got a little skin in it but no nudity, it's probably ok."

I'll never forget the look of horror on my mom's face. Needless to say we didn't rent it again. But she never bothered to ask me why I wanted to watch it... she probably just assumed it's cause there were almost naked ladies in it. But as a 13 year old boy in that situation, can you really tell your mom "But I only want to watch it for the music"? It wasn't till later that I was able to buy the albums on tape and listen to them all the time.

Anyway sorry for dragging it out, music is just a huge passion of mine.

Last edited by Xaqtly : 2007-08-26 at 16:51. Reason: topicality
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