Surely there has been a mistake. The eighties revival that haswelled throughout the year has blown its top this week with therelease of Duran Duran's compilation album, Greatest. Take heed.Take cover and take off those deely-boppers, shoulder pads, day-glowristbands, and stone-washed denim. Just when you thought you'dburied the last remnant from The Decade That Taste Forgot, the retroroundabout decrees that the eighties are back. And how.
It all began innocuously enough last autumn with a compilationalbum, The Eighties Mix, featuring plinky plonky pop acts ofyesteryear like Bronksi Beat, Visage, Ultravox, and The ThompsonTwins. A generation of over-25s engineered its entry straight intothe Top 20. Why?
Then there were the embarrassing comebacks from every reformedpastel-wearing popstar alive: Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet,Haircut 100's Nick Heyward, Heaven 17, and Adam Ant all standaccusedin the dock of 1980s no-hopers who won't retire gracefully.Confirmation that the tidal wave of awfulness has arrived is theimminent arrival on the tour circuit of the Duranies and a jointSuper Tour of clashing egos and hair gel with Culture Club, TheHumanLeague, and ABC next month. Why?The celluloid world is not exempt. In Drew Barrymore's recentmovie, The Wedding Singer, we are treated to a 120-minute paean tothe day-glo cultural minutae of the decade. From the Michael Jacksonmoonwalk to the Miami Vice rolled-up sleeves and disturbing mullethaircuts. Why?Just to seal our fate in a claustrophobic vacuum of pastel shades,the torture toy of the 1980s is back in repackaged style. Hungarianinventor Erno Rubik's Cube is attempting to beat its 300 millionsales with a Rubik for the 1990s. Why? We can forgive a whirlwindromance with the 1970s on the basis that it brought us disco andpunkrock alone.But the 1980s have no such redeeming attributes. Music, fashion,and cultural clutter, not to mention the I'm-alright-Jack mentalitynurtured throughout the decade, all form a brick wall of oppositionto any revivalist tendencies still lurking.Warning: There now follows an A to Z of the good, the bad, and thedownright ugly guide to the 1980s.- Aids Aids was discovered in 1981 and safe sex was to reign in ageneration's libido. The UK government issued abstract warningsabout icebergs. Putting condoms on bananas became second nature tosex education teachers.- Band Aid The music business put their collective egos to oneside and aided Saint Bob in his mission to Feed The World.Humanitarian ideals from Status Quo. Who would have thought?- CDs Out went the scratchy punk rock 45rpm, 7-inch singles and incame the personality bypass compact disc, boasting crystal clearsound for the muso in your life. The wafer-thin circle of technologyparalleled a rise in the 12-inch remix record.- Designer From stubble to beer to condoms, the designer tag wasGod. Kettle by Graves, light by Starck and clothes by Paul Smith.- Exercise Time for lean cuisine. In the narcissistic pursuit ofthe Me Generation, the gym became the place to sweat as well asnetwork.The F-Plan, the E numbers, and the Jane Fonda workout becamecommon parlance.- Filofax Despite being around since before the First World War,this loose-leaf personal organiser left the realm of scientists andengineers to enter the hallowed ground of the yuppie. Loss of thefilofax meant instant social alienation.- Glasnost After more than 50 years of central diktat, Russiansgot the freedom to start business and form extra-party associations.Leader Mikhail Gorbachev promoted liberal policies and freedom ofcriticism (glasnost) and economic reform (perestroika).- Hitler Diaries One of the century's biggest scams that left TheSunday Times with a red face. Its exclusive story that The HitlerDiaries were the real thing turned sour when source and academicLordDacre was proven wrong.- Internet The US army and academics let the public in on theirprivate communication system. The Sinclair Spectrum and Amstradtechnology gave way to Bill Gates, Apple-dom, the Silicon Valley,andour very own Silicon Glen.- JR Larry Hagman's oil magnate baddie in the soap opera Dallaswas on everyone's mind. More specifically "Who shot JR?" badgesadorned any self-respecting soap fan's lapel. His brother, Bobby(played by former Man from Atlantis, Patrick Duffy), was yet to beabducted by aliens, and Joan Collins, as Alexis in Dynasty,succeededin expanding our vocabulary to include the word "superbitch".- Karaoke A Japanese import that was cheap, cheerful, and promisedhours of lo-fi entertainment for overworked office workers whofancied a singalong. Proven saviour of every no-hoper bar that sadlyinspired legions of delusional professional singers to form aneverending pool of Stars In Your Eyes hopefuls.- Levis Nick Kamen stripping down to his white shorts in alaundrette revitalised the San Franciscan product of Levi denims.The red 501 tag was noted on the backside of every pop star andBritish Gas workman alike.- Madonna The Material Girl shook her bangles and belly at any TVcamera that moved while getting into the groove with on/off husbandSean Penn and making dreadful movies. The Virgin dervish whirled herway through a theatrical wardrobe of chameleon images and won theadoring hearts and ears of a global audience to become Queen of Pop.- Nuclear Nuclear weapons and Nuclear Disarmament ensured an on-going struggle between The Greenham Common protestors, her Majesty'sgovernment, and the boys in blue. Designer Katherine Hamnett (nowcharged with giving Tory leader William Hague a fashion makeover)famously took her anti-nuclear protest to Downing Street where her T-shirt blasted Mrs T with news that 58% DON'T WANT PERSHING.- Ozone Unaware that the protective layer around our atmosphereeven existed, the 1980s bellowed that our toxic emissions and carbonmonoxide overload was burning a hole in the ozone layer. Biblicaldestruction of our planet will be a direct result of this globalwarming. Stop using spray cans now.n Privatisation The buzz word and buzz activity of the decade witheverything from the coal mines to gas and house purchases swoppingtheir nasty, Labour- smelling "nationalisation" persona for thegreater Conservative value of private, mine, mine all mine.- Queen Her Majesty received a bolt from the brave new world whenthe new generation of royals kicked the Palace into the mediaeighties. Fergie and Andy, Di and Charles: the quartet whoseromancing splattered the Palace's inner sanctum on the tabloids'pages. One was not amused.- Raves The acid house scene shook the minds, bodies, and souls ofthe luvved-up Ecstasy ravers dancing their little Smiley Shoom T-shirts and dungaree-clad limbs to the club sound of Ibiza. Mad ForIt!- Sportswear The shell suit, once a lightweight athlete'sessential, was stolen by a nation of couch potatoes. Sporting labelsfrom Nike to Pringle and Adidas was de rigueur for football casualsto bowling pensioners alike.- Thatcher Former Prime Minister Margaret Hilda, now Baroness, whoreigned supreme from 1979 throughout and gave us the Poll Tax,NormanTebbitt, and The Falklands War.- USSR The culmination of the communist countries' disintegrationand move away from Kremlin rule spread like a red virus throughoutEastern Europe eventually reaching the crisis- ridden Motherland inthe late 1980s.- Videos No-one cared about the song - it was all about how muchand how extravagant the three-minute video looked. Image is all. Bythe time we'd reached Michael Jackson's mini epic Thriller thoseoriginators Queen were hanging their cheapskate video heads in shameat how tawdry Bohemian Rhapsody looked.- Wall Street Conspicuous consumption, greed, and Gordon Gekko allhit the big money wall on Black Monday, Black Wednesday, and BlackFriday throughout the decade of crashes and ERM fiascos. You couldspot a Wall Street moneymaker by the red braces and the red Porsche.- XTCThe original name of the drug now known as MDMA, E orEcstasy. Texan students, gay New York clubbers, and a man with whitehair called Alexander Shulgin in California were among the first tosample the "luvved-up" effects of this drug. As the years progressedMDMA transformed into a cheap'n'nasty amphetamine with fatalitiesanda generation apparently heading for serotonin deprivation.- Yuppy The Young Urban Professionals overtook the Sloans (fulltitle Sloan Rangers) as the most disliked breed of the 1980s. Withmobile phones glued to their ears, filofaxes in constant blurrymovement, it was go, go, go on plumping up the money earning tree onthe Isle of Dogs before doing some R&R at their new Docklands flat.- ZTT The record label established by The Buggles man Trevor Horngave us the best-hyped band since Sigue Sigue Sputnik in threeLiverpudlian lars and two very out Liverpudlian gay singerscollectively known as Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Their debut single,Relax!, was banned. Subsequently stormed the charts - and historybooks.- Culture Club, Human League, ABC play SECC, Glasgow on December11.Duran Duran play Clyde Auditorium on Monday, December 14. Theiralbum, Greatest, is out now.
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