What was going on in music in the '80s?

Toaster Mantis wrote: King Crimson776 wrote: Anything labeled "electronic" as a genre is basically minimalism, I've found. Even relatively involved stuff like later Autechre, Future Sound of London or Venetian Snares? I guess I should mention that I'm not super into 20th century classical, and it's very possible that most more "popular" electronic music (for lack of a better categorization) sounds less impressive if you're familiar with that tradition. After all, electronica came from Reich/Riley/Stockhausen/etc. through early Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze before Kraftwerk then Giorgio Moroder adapted it to a more pop-friendly format.

I'm a little late to this thread.  My observation is that while a lot of prog artists disappointed by going commercial there was a lot of good stuff to turn to.  I kept up with Yes a Genesis for a while but I quit getting new albums from them after 90210 and Invisible Fleece.   I still haven't bothered to upgrade those to CD.  I quit upgrading Genesis after Abacab, though I did get a really cheap used copy of Calling All Stations.  But for me, I had just been heavily hooked on prog for about a couple of years before the '80's his so I had plenty of stuff to explore backwards and there was still plenty of good new stuff to explore - Frank Zappa and the ECM label as previously mentioned.  So anyway from my collection -

First and foremost anything by XTC.   Yeah yeah, I know they will never be on this site as prog artists but I considered them to be so at the time from at least English Settlement forward so bite me.

I'm dropping out albums from Zappa, XTC, Marillion, King Crimson.   Honorable mentions to Joe Jackson, Psychedelic Furs, The Police, Tears For Fears, Eurythmics (for the 1984 soundtrack), Toto (for the Dune soundtrack), New Order (for Low Life, the instrumental Elegia, which got me get that album),  Public Image Limited (for Compact Disc and the other formats), David + David (for Boomtown), Paul Simon (for Graceland),

I've narrowed it down to a list of the top 100 albums that I got when they were new releases:
Anderson, Jon    Song of Seven    1980
Brand X    Do They Hurt?    1980
Budd, Harold / Brian Eno    Ambient 2/The Platform of Mirror    1980
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band    Doc at the Radar Station    1980
Di Meola, Al    Spendido Hotel    1980
Dixie Dregs    Dregs of the Earth    1980
Eno, Brian-David Byrne    My Life in the Bush of Ghosts)    1980
Frith, Fred    Speechless    1980
Hackett, Steve    Defector (Remaster)    1980
Hampton, Co. Bruce and The Late Bronze Age    Outside Looking Out    1980
Hof, Jasper Van't    Live In Montreaux    1980
Laraaji    Ambient 3/Day of Radience    1980
Metheny, Pat & Lyle Mays    As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls    1980
Talking Heads    Remain In Light    1980
Tibbetts, Steve    Yr    1980
Bruninghaus, Rainer    Freigeweht    1981
Byrne, David    Complete Score from "The Catherine Wheel", The    1981
Dregs, The    Unsung Heroes    1981
Harrison, Jerry    Red and the Black, The    1981
Hassell, Jon    Fourth World Volume Two: Dream Theory In Malaya    1981
Hine, Rupert    Immunity    1981
Pastorius, Jaco    Word of Mouth    1981
Sky    Sky 2    1981
Sky    Sky 3    1981
Synergy    Audion    1981
Tibbetts, Steve    Northern Song    1981
Belew, Adrian    Lone Rhino    1982
Bush, Kate    Dreaming, The    1982
Dixie Dregs, the    Industry Standard    1982
Hampton, Co. Bruce and The Late Bronze Age    Isles of Langerhan    1982
Manzanera, Phil    Primititve Guitars    1982
Metheny Group, Pat    Offramp    1982
Ponty, Jean-Luc    Mystical Adventures    1982
Roxy Music    Avalon    1982
Sky    Sky 4 Forthcoming    1982
Summers, Andy-Robert Fripp    I Advanced Masked    1982
Wyatt, Robert    Nothing Can Stop Us    1982
Belew, Adrian    Twang Bar King    1983
Eno, Brian    Apollo Atmospheres & Soundtracks    1983
Frith, Fred    Cheap At Half the Price    1983
Hine, Rupert    Wildest Wish To Fly    1983
Holdsworth, Allan    Road Games    1983
Isham, Mark    Vapor Drawings    1983
Jobson, Eddie/Zinc    The Green Album, The    1983
Moraz - Buford    Music For Piano and Drums    1983
Oregon    Oregon    1983
Ponty, Jean-Luc    Individual Choice    1983
Tibbetts, Steve    Safe Journey    1983
Vangelis    Antarctica - The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack    1983
Budd, Harold/Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois    Pearl, The    1984
Corea, Chick    Children's Songs    1984
Eno, Brian    Thursday Afternoon    1984
Hedges, Michael    Aerial Boundaries    1984
L. Subramanium/Stephane Grappelli    Conversations    1984
Metheny, Pat Group    First Circle    1984
Shadowfax    Dreams of Children, The    1984
Skeleton Crew    Learn To Talk    1984
Summers, Andy-Robert Fripp    Bewitched    1984
Bush, Kate    Hounds of Love + 6 Bonus Tracks    1985
Goodman, Jerry    On the Future of Aviation    1985
Holdsworth, Allan    i.o.u.    1985
Holdsworth, Allan    Metal Fatigue    1985
Jobson, Eddie    Theme of Secrets    1985
Johnson, Eric    Tones    1985
Sting    Dream of the Blue Turtles, The    1985
Carlos, Wendy    Beauty In the Beast    1986
Cluster & Brian Eno    Old Land    1986
Eno, Brian    Ambient 4/On Land    1986
Glass, Phillip    Songs from Liquid Days    1986
Goodman, Jerry    Ariel    1986
Tangerine Dream    Underwater Sunlight    1986
Tibbetts, Steve    Exploded View    1986
Torn, David    Cloud About Mercury    1986
Bears,The    Bears,The    1987
Bears,The    Rise and Shine    1987
Frith, Fred    Technology of Tears, The    1987
Hampton, Col. Bruce    Arkansas    1987
Hassell, Jon    Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things ..., The    1987
Holdsworth, Allan    Sand    1987
New Percussion Group of Amsterdam    Go Between    1987
Phillips, Anthony    Slow Waves, Soft Stars    1987
Summers, Andy    Mysterious Barricades    1987
Tangerine Dream    Tyger    1987
Van Tieghem, David    Safety In Numbers    1987
Eno, Brian-Et. Al.    Music for Films III    1988
Isham, Mark    Grand Parade, The    1988
Kaiser, Henry    Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It    1988
Mitchell, Joni    Chalk Mark In a Rainstorm    1988
Reich, Steve w/ Kronos Quartet & Pat Metheny    Different Trains & Electric Counterpoint    1988
Rypday, Terje    Singles Collection, The    1988
Tangerine Dream    Optical Race    1988
Tibbetts, Steve    Big Map Idea    1988
Anderson, Laurie    Strange Angels    1989
Belew, Adrian    Mr. Music Head    1989
Holdsworth, Allan    Secrets    1989
McLachlan, Sarah    Touch    1989
Morse, Steve    High Tension Wires    1989
Nirvana    "Bleach"    1989
Ponty, Jean Luc    Storytelling    1989
Tangerine Dream    Lily On the Beach    1989

Then there are artists that put out some good stuff in the '80's  I didn't discover until after the decade - Djam Karet,  Primus, Ozric Tentacles, No-man, Happy Rhodes, Univers Zero...



Edited by Slartibartfast - September 22 2013 at 06:12

Eh ... somehow "Slavic" and "post-punk" don't got together well in my head. Maybe it's because I heard a lot of jangly garbage in my language.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - September 22 2013 at 04:22

Toaster Mantis wrote: On the subject of Eastern European post-punk bands, here's one from Belarus. I'm not sure if this song is technically from the 1990s, though, information about this group is somewhat difficult to come across in English.

This is imo the best song of Yugoslavian art-pop in 80's, Kao Kakao (in english As Cacao) by 80's Leb i Sol from beautiful Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia...

Edited by Svetonio - September 22 2013 at 03:27

Not just that but also heavy metal separating itself from normal rock music in terms of riffing style with Judas Priest's late-1970s work, punk getting either more creative (hence "post-") or more extreme ("hardcore"), hip-hop coming into being etc.

Yeah, Zappa and Beefheart were probably the original generation avant/prog/psych-rock musicians who did best both artistically and commercially in the 1980s.

I still think the genres the decade was best for were not just punk and its derived genres like post-punk/new wave and hardcore but also metal, hip-hop and the first wave of industrial/noise as someone else mentioned. Likewise, it's the decade where electronic music really broke into the mainstream though for the most part that's the result of synthesizers becoming affordable and more user-friendly.

It's probably relevant that most of the developments I mentioned above started already in the late 1970s, though, but I'm not sure exactly how.

Dean wrote: It is a confusing world of electronic music, electroacoustic music, acousmatic music, musique concrète, elektronische musik, experimental music and good old fashoned avant garde - those who make proclamations of what is real electronic music and what is not are far braver than I.

Yeah. That's why elsewhere on the forums I threw out a request for recommendations of books about the history of electronic music from the 1960s/1970s until now.

On the proper discussion subject of this thread: It just occurred to me that Captain Beefheart released two of his best LPs, Doc at the Radar Station and Ice Cream for Crow during that decade. Not bad when it's remembered as something of a desert for progressive music. I think it helped that some of the more eccentric punk bands of the era mentioned him as an inspiration quite often.

mongofa wrote: Deceit!