Eight Things I Learned From Intermittently Watching VH1 Classic’s “80 Hours Of The ’80s”

noah | September 2, 2008 8:53 am
Before we get into the news of the day, some notes on VH1 Classic’s weekend programming, which consisted of the channel showing a chunk of its vault’s videos from the ’80s in alphabetical order (by artist, then by song). Why the evil geniuses at Viacom wanted to encourage shut-in-ism among the part of its demographic that probably needs sunshine and air more than most is beyond me, but that’s probably because I was too busy getting sucked in to give it much thought.

1. Paul McCartney’s “Spies Like Us” was, perhaps surprisingly, not a terrible “movie tie-in track” like so many other songs I had the pleasure of catching over the course of the weekend. (Although the ending to the video, which has Macca, Dan Aykroyd, and Chevy Chase “humorously” crossing Abbey Road, is wrong on too many levels.) But I’m still a total sucker for “No More Lonely Nights.”

2. People–including someone in VH1 Classic’s graphics department–still have a problem with the whole “where to put the apostrophe when you’re abbreviating a decade” thing. Just think of it this way: The apostrophe goes where the numbers are missing. In this case, when you say “’80s,” that apostrophe is actually a teeny, tiny knife that lops off a “1” and a “9”!

3. Have you guys ever noticed the green-screening on Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F,” and how it turns him into a mini-Harold running around scenes from Beverly Hills Cop? As if the whole enterprise needed to have more of an 8-bit feel.

4. Surely many of you who were alive during the heyday of “Axel F” had at least three friends who showed off their mad synthesizer skillz by forcing you to sit through multiple renditions of the track on their tricked-out Casios, right? (See also: the theme to Miami Vice. I wonder how much the popularity of the home synthesizer influenced the popularity of these sorts of instrumentals, and vice versa?)

5. The Mary Jane Girls: Still awesome.

6. To revise a post from last week, Peter Wolf’s “Lights Out” could do with a makeover by a producer who would make the whole thing more brittle.

7. I really miss the days of semi-anonymous bands who have great songs that are complete and utter mysteries to me, yet sound incredible on the radio. Case in point: “The Promise” by When In Rome, a middling 1988 hit that I didn’t find out the authorship of until, um, 1995 or so.

8. Yes, someone took to the Internet and typed out the whole playlist. (And this is where you find out that the channel only played part of what it has in its vaults, because, like, I’m pretty sure Michael Jackson and Prince made more than five videos during the course of the decade.)

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