Like, Omigod! The '80s Pop Culture Box (Totally)
First, let me try to solve your theological puzzle: Sammy Hagar or David Lee Roth? I'll take Axl Rose any day.
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StumbleUponAs for your defense of Hall and Oates: Someone who loves Hall and Oates thinks he can kick my ass? We need look no further for evidence of the damage '80s pop inflicted on American manhood. It turned otherwise red-blooded American men into the kind of people who wore floppy haircuts and collarless shirts and grooved to "Method of Modern Love." What will you propose next—Phil Collins, underappreciated genius?
Since I seem obsessed with macho this morning, I should concede how right you are about the long-term consequences of the rap-rock-metal merger. "Walk This Way" is, I suppose, godfather to Limp Bizkit and all the other seedy, vicious, and generally tuneless mook-moron thrashy-rappy music of recent years. The '80s may have suffered from a testosterone shortage, but today we are being poisoned by it. Still, better Limp Bizkit than Chicago.
Chicago is one of the curious absences from Like, Omigod. You can understand why '80s megastars who still have fabulous careers—see my earlier list of no-shows—wouldn't want to associate with such a quirky, easy-to-ridicule project. What I don't understand is why so many lesser lights skipped out on the Rhino set. Does Tiffany's star really shine so bright today that she can afford to shun Like, Omigod? Have Men Without Hats made so much money off "Safety Dance," that they can spare the extra royalties? Is Weird Al too big for Rhino? Does A Flock of Seagulls believe its career would be tarnished if Rhino buyers could listen to "I Ran"?
The '80s, of course, were the decade of the PMRC and Tipper Gore's crusade against violent, smutty music. (I may have been the only teen-ager in America who liked the PMRC, mostly because I thought Tipper was so cool.) But listening to Like, Omigod is a funny reminder of how innocent '80s music actually was, at least compared to today's charts. '80s pop may have been bad, but it was rarely vicious or obscene. I listened and listened for murder, rape, gunplay, and general raunch, and heard none. In "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," girls just want to have fun. The Cure's "Let's Go to Bed," doesn't get specific. J. Geils Band's "Centerfold" is promising—naked model, etc.—but nothing dirty happens. Even the metal hits of the '80s are mild by '02s ' standards. Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself" actually seems to be about loneliness, not masturbation. Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel the Noize" is nowhere near as filthy as its title. The dirtiest track on Like, Omigod, in fact, may be "Walk This Way"—a song that Aerosmith wrote in 1975. That's right—the '80s were an age of sweetness and naivete.
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Notes From the Fray Editor:
Whose kisses are on whose lists? Who has been fighting the good fight for Hüsker Dü? The Fray has battled over inclusion and exclusion, the ickiness of nostalgia and the roll of Reaganism in our culture. Wild notes that he has been attacked for his outspoken Hall & Oates support (one wonders if this includes the cover of "Jingle Bell Rock.") In Notes I, Big Al provides some useful analysis. Notes II is a remarkable exchange on the imperatives of the market and the elective affinities of rap.
Notes From the Fray I:
Oddly enough, this band would have been better before the age of video. I still recall the dark-haired short one (Hall, Oates? [Oates—ed.]) with the bug-eyes moving his head back and forth like a pigeon on one of those insipid videos. And their domes remind me of how truly horrible 80s hair was. Some vidoes from that era were hilarious, campy, innovative (in a low-tech way). H&O videos were simply and essentially horrible.
-- Big Al
(To reply, click here.)
Notes From the Fray II:
"Walk This Way" signified the end of creative music. This song demonstrated that you could take a recognized song add some new effects and sell a few million copies. It signaled that creativity was unimportant. Look at rap today Puff Daddy won out over Public Enemy. Now music is all formula Like JLo and Britney.
-- biff
(To reply, click here.)
Stop the madness! The idea that "Walk This Way" killed pop music is almost as silly as the idea that pop music is now dead, just because JLo dominates the airwaves. I think Plotz is on to something here: The Run DMC/Aerosmith collaboration not only brought hip-hop to mainstream (read: white) attention, it also brought forth a new direction for listeners to follow. More than either of those two, it proved that the cliques that listeners were lumping themselves into were useless, because the song proved that genres could successfully merge and that pop couldn't be as neatly lumped into camps as we'd been led to believe. (Prince was doing the same sort of thing, but he wasn't rapping.)
Puff Daddy may have won out over Public Enemy, but could PE's rock-riff-fueled sonic assaults have been created without "Walk This Way" coming before? Maybe, but I'm doubtful.
-- aluminum man
(To reply, click here.)
I have nothing against Run Dmc its just that one song. I don't think they particularly liked doing it it was just a deal with the devil that they had to make. What that song did was show record companies that they can make money with garbage and that people will buy records no matter what is put out so there is no point developing real artists when pre fab sells better.
-- biff
(To reply, click here.)
"Could PE's rock-riff-fueled sonic assaults have been created without "Walk This Way" coming before?"
No, and Chuck D. knows it:
Beat is for Sonny Bono, beat is for Yoko Ono
Run-DMC first said a deejay could be a band
Stand on its feet, get you out your seat
Beat is for Eric B. and LL, as well, hell
Wax is for Anthrax, still it can rock bells
Ever forever, universal, it will sell
-- DonkeyBoy
(To reply, click here.)
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