The 80s Were Not All Duran Duran

I saw Ian McNabb of The Icicle Works talking about music of the ’80s, and what he said was true, that everybody thinks it’s basically Duran Duran and that was the ’80s, but there was so much more. Just this past week I was digging into very after 1984, when the DX7 came out, and it just was like a big splatter of cheese. Everything, all the progress that had been made with affordable synthesizers, kind of flew out the window with these digital sounds, and the problem was that everybody was using the presets because nobody knew how to program or change the sounds in any meaningful way. This is something that I’m working on right now myself, trying to learn FM synthesis and sound design. Anyway, that’s just one part of ’80s music. I would point to bands like Go West and Bourgeois Tagg. Listen to these records. The songs are great, but it’s pure cheese and so dated and ridiculous sounding, but at the time it sounded like it was from space. Add to that that there was no way for a kid to…