Listening to Your 1984: Episode 1
The readers weigh in! Personal reflections on the '80s from Serge Van Neck, Ben Guterson, Jeffery J. Rogers, Daniel J. Flynn, Ryan Murdock, John Hunter, and "Rogersville."
It was inevitable. Like any self-respecting TV show or comic book series, Listening to 1984 has inspired a spinoff: Listening to YOUR 1984. In this new, semi-regular series, you—the readers—weigh in with your memories of the 1980s. Our first installment features several fellow writers—which was not planned, but I suspect writers are just more prone to send each other detailed emails about things like, say, the extra footage and dialogue in the edited-for-TV version of Repo Man.
If you have interesting memories of the 1980s (and I know you do!) please consider sending them my way for possible inclusion in a future installment.
And now, it’s time to listen to your 1984…
Coming to America
The summer of 1984 was when, on my third or fourth visit to the US, I decided to stay for good. I was 17. I left behind my father, an amazing stepmother (who had just left my dad, hence my decision not to return), some extended family, and—not insignificantly—a female classmate whom I had just realized "liked me liked me" right as the school year ended. (We wrote a couple of letters back and forth but it was not meant to be.) In exchange for that, I chose what in time travel terms might be called an alternate timeline: I completed high school in Scottsdale, attended Arizona State University for three years, and landed a job in my field of study before I had a chance to graduate. Emotionally, I was completely unprepared for life as an adult in America, and I went through many of the hormone-induced struggles and heartbreaks that other young American males go through.
While in high school in the Netherlands (which started with the 7th grade), I had mostly dismissed the excellent rock music that was being created by the likes of Queen, and remained firmly in the "disco" corner, which included Michael Jackson and, most interestingly to my early teen ears, the erotically tantalizing Vanity 6. (One anomaly broke this pattern: for a short while, mostly due to The Dukes of Hazzard being on TV, I was really into bluegrass.) But once I landed on the other side of the pond, Top 40 music was a constant soundtrack through that remaining high school year and subsequent college years. I listened to all of it: there was the reinvention of staid rock groups like Heart, Fleetwood Mac and the Rolling Stones; the New Wave sound of Duran Duran, The Cars, and Talking Heads; Phil Collins, who would become as ubiquitous on the radio as Tom Hanks became in movie theaters; the Latin rhythms of Miami Sound Machine; all the "hair bands"; and of course ever so many vapid female pop singers and their industrially produced one-hit wonders. Filling the gaps somehow was the ever-present Bruce Springsteen.
Oh, and Madonna. For a while I was really, really into Madonna (I must have played the Into the Groove EP hundreds of times), although that ended abruptly with “Papa Don't Preach.”
-Serge Van Neck, author of Commonalities: A Positive Look at Latter Day Saints from a Baha’i Perspective
Karma Chameleons
I loved Culture Club and thought Boy George had a beautiful voice. The group had a run there for a couple of years that was incredible. I used to think of them as sort of taking the “we've struck pop gold and are going to put out a string of hits” baton from Blondie around 1982 or so.
I remember watching Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan in a theater. I thought it was really cool at the time—but when I watch the preview that was linked to in the April post, it looks crazy. In fact, a lot of the links I follow from these posts take me to clips that look super dated and silly. I guess that's the nature of things, but it blows my mind sometimes.
-Ben Guterson, author of The World-Famous Nine
When the U.S. Wins, YOU Win!
I have too many parallels with these postings to list, including 1984 also being my favorite year, my Catholic grade school obtaining computers and teaching skills soon made obsolete by the rapid development of the contraptions, and my obsession with Doctor Who that aired locally on PBS (Tom Baker, retired from the role for three or so years by that point, was nevertheless synonymous with Doctor Who for me, and all the other guys, even if they predated him, were weaksauce imposters).
If you continue telling the 1984 story, I wonder if you were also ensnared by these scratch tickets of sorts you got at McDonald’s after buying something. I think every ticket paid off with a free drink or fries or hamburger if the U.S. won an event at the summer Olympics. I haven’t been to a McDonald’s in 15 years, but I recall many kids being mildly obsessed with that promotion.
After ‘84, “We Are the World” and “Hands Across America” were goofy. But the end of the ‘80s as “the ‘80s” to me was Bon Jovi and all the terrible bands that came in their wake. That’s 1987. It started ending culturally around that time. And given that the Buggles' “Video Killed the Radio Star” came out in ‘79, “the ‘80s” started before the 1980s. Not sure if My Bodyguard or Over the Edge came out in ‘79, but even the 1980s teen movie started early and ended about 1987.
-Daniel J. Flynn, author of Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days that Shook San Francisco
Reconsidering Reagan
While at age 12, I strongly supported President Carter over Ronald Reagan, I do find myself now fighting nostalgia for him as a good President, and, in a world where Donald Trump and the worst of the modern GOP kowtow to Vladimir Putin, with hindsight, I find Reagan’s policy of confronting, and beating the Soviet Union to have been good. I understand that much about the current psychotic Republican party has roots in certain toxic ideas of Reagan’s that were put across with a folksy smile, such as the notion that “government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem,” but I can’t bring myself to hate him.
-John Hunter, author of Maps and Legends: The Story of R.E.M.
Hart to Hart
Nobody was beating Regan in '84 but how different might our timeline have been if Gary Hart had become president? Looking at Hart's many books, what Democrat today could get away with books praising Thoman Jefferson and James Monroe and advocating for a revival of small "r" republicanism? I put him with Jim Webb and Sam Nunn as appealing paths not taken by the Democratic Party.
-Jeffery J. Rogers, author of A Southern Writer and the Civil War: The Confederate Imagination of William Gilmore Simms
A Study in Sherlock
I'm currently immersed in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the 1984 series with the brilliant Jeremy Brett. Hadn't seen it since I was 12. I recorded a podcast episode about Holmes a few days ago and got pulled back in.
I must have watched in on PBS back then. We picked up the Watertown NY station from over the border.
Brett is utterly brilliant in the role. I read that he set out to be the best Sherlock Holmes the world had ever seen. He studied every gesture, how Holmes ate, how he picked something up from a table... He had a thick binder of notes he'd made from the stories. And when everyone else was off at the canteen eating lunch between scenes, he would be in the corner reading from the original stories. It really shows.
My wife had no exposure to Sherlock Holmes, on account of growing up in Japan. She griped when I insisted on watching a couple episodes to refresh my memory for my podcast, claiming that they'd be "boring." She was totally hooked by the second episode.
-Ryan Murdock, author of A Sunny Place for Shady People: How Malta Became One of the Most Curious and Corrupt Places in the World
Underground ‘80s
By 1984 I was already liberated from the mainstream (anything U.S. top 20 was suspect, except Prince). The local corner store/VHS rental helped me access less-mainstream worlds, like DOA, the documentary about the Sex Pistols touring the Deep South. Trouser Press even sent me my first R.E.M. exposure via flexidisc. “Wolves, Lower” sounded so out of step, it was hard to go back to overproduced glossy pop. Had to read Pete (no “r”) Buck interviews for direction. Big Star? Nick Drake? Here we go. Black Flag? Not yet.
By contrast, Daniel Johnston’s primitivism is practically mainstream now. In the ‘80s, it was the sound of someone asserting his right to create; the merchant class couldn’t market it. He gave his music away.
Rules are out the window now. Check out Cindy Lee for proof. Beauty trumps commerce yet again.
“Refit the tools to reclaim that sound / Turn it around” - “Industrial Breakdown” by Dub Narcotic.
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift just sold 700,000 physical LPs in a weekend. Everybody wins?
-Rogersville