Quoting:
The clothes, the music, and being young.  :)
End Quote

I second that emotion  8)
My husband often tells me that I still love the eighties this way because of my childhood. I'm not sure if that was the reason, but in my mind it was the coolest era, the enviroment, the people, the music, toys, videogames, movies, fashion (clothes/hair/makeup, furniture, heck everything!

I'm not sure how to explain but the 80s is fascinating to me. Sure if i was an adult back then (I'm 26) maybe things would be different but even so, I guess I would have had a LOT more fun than in the 90s when i was grown up enough to go to the clubs and so on. All the people around looked so cool, colourful, funny! And all those music icons (there are no icons worthwhile to me in this decade), the computers were so amazing too!

I simply cannot play the new games that often like I used to do with my atari or msx. Is not a matter of having less time, it's just that i totally lose my attention and get bored with the new games from xbox or playstation. They are just so full of perfect graphics and little stories... while because in the 80s the videgames had less resources, the basic idea was more catching, even if the games were repetitive(sp?) i liked better. That's why i play my emulators  :-*
It's a bit like old movies... before people would be more creative and have a nice plot to catch ones attention. Today they just put a TON of special effects, some computer and bang, the realease a movie with no story at all. Even the video clips nowadays are like that. Before there was some music and fashion, today you just need to shake your butt and put some scifi images.

The toys were great! today the kids are only buzy with pokemon and the comics sucks compared to what we have (come on who can beat Transformers, She-ra, He-man, Thundercats, JEM? not a chance!)

And music was absolutely my fave. You didn't have to sing so well or play well, but that punk attitude of do it yourself was still around, but instead people could play around with keyboards and MTV back then actually played music! Today the music equipments and mixing is so advanced that people want to use everything at once and the simplicity is gone, I'm not sure how to explain but the mainstream music stinks nowadays and in the 80s the mainstream, the charts, had a heck of a lot of great stuff. Oh and the artists had cool and different images! today you just need to have some hipsters trousers, long hair, fake boobs and tanned skin and you get a hit. I guess nowadays they give really really good head and get a record deal (sorry for the vulgarity).

Fashion nowadays is not even worth to mention, because they just recycle all the good stuff that was done before, they just seem to not being able to create anything new anymore. Also from the 90s to now, people tend to dress all grey or black and have boring furniture, even the telephones don't have those funky colours like we had in the 80s. Everything looks sterile like in a hospital today, in the 60s and 80s clothes meant fun and you could buy cheap stuff and get new in a week and so on, nowadays people just want 'quality' so they pay big bucks for a piece of boring clothing because it may last forever. Design + Minimalism equals status to most people here but to me is  blergh

Oh and since the mobile phone, nobody actually talks face to face anymore, here in Norway they just send sms and that's it. Internet is a good thing of today, but it's just too much information sometimes, i guess is the only good thing i see of nowadays compared to the 80s.

In a way I'm kinda happy that somehow some of the 80s fashion is back, a bit more color...
the kids of today dress all like uniforms, it's really boring. In the 80s it had more variation, except that everyone in my school could have a mullet if it was the hype thing to have
LOL

i guess that's it. Sorry for being long

Quoting:
The 80s were an amazing time in my life. I graduated highschool in 82 and was playing in a top 40 band in all the local clubs in the area...End Quote

Wow! Jonman that's excellent. What was your band called?

Quoting:
I suppose at the time they were happening they didn't seem any different to any other decade.

I always seem to remember the summers being hot, all day, everyday, which is impossible considering it was England.

It's amazing how you distort the facts, i'm sure I was pretty miserable alot of the time during the 80's but thankfully you tend to remember the good things.
End Quote

I understand, Boris66au. Sometimes we add a pathetic fallacy where there shouldn't be one. (A pathetic fallacy is when we compare moods with the weather - english lit term). Living in the south has certainly made me miss my snow in winter.

I guess that's why I hold my memories - it makes me understand why I am who I am. The memories we hold are our identity - regardless of whether we put on our rose tinted glasses or not.  ;)

Quoting:
I was a small child and totally innocent to the evil ways of the world!

Plus nothing can beat the Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, The Get Along Gang and Poochie!  I don't there's any really good cartoons that are primarily for little girls nowadays!

Plus the  strange divides we had here in England of Yuppies and Punks!End Quote

Innocence plays a lot in memories, my grandad used to tell us tales of his childhood in the 1930s.

The punk thing wasn't much of a big deal when the Yuppies were unleashed (to be honest with you, in this context, I don't think much has changed here in this decade - apart from mobile phones have got smaller).

Quoting:
I don't think much has changed here in this decade - apart from mobile phones have got smaller).
End Quote

A  _L_O_T_   ~smaller~

http://www.ptt.dk/telefonmuseet/uk/page0035.htmlhttp://www.privateline.com/PCS/images/oldcellphonepool.jpg

"The first portable units were really big and heavy. Called transportables or luggables, few were as glamorous as this one made by Spectrum Cellular Corporation. Oki also produced
a briefcase model"

http://www.privateline.com/PCS/history9.htm

--------------

I have a pic of an early 80s mobile phone that it's much scary, it's like huge shoulder bag, lol.
I laugh so every time i see Depeche Mode 101 video, because there is a part where the manager talks in a HuuuuuuGE mobile phone, hehe it cracks me up everytime

Quoting:
the music, movies, tv shows, concerts, parties, arcades, atari, MTV, best time of my life!!! anybody wanna build a time machine and go back??
End Quote

I'd pay a lot of money for that, MotleyCrue85!  ;D

Quoting:
anybody wanna build a time machine and go back??
End Quote

I'm with ya' on that!  With one condition:  we have to be certain we can zap back to reality after our little 'jaunts' back to the 80's.  I LOVED the 80's, but there were certain things that happened to me in the 80's that I'd rather not go thru again.  But I'd love to drop in on occasion and go down memory lane :)

I really don't know what I think made the 80's so good.  Musically, one thing that I can think of is that there didnt used to be as many lines drawn between different music styles.  You could pretty much expect to hear several types of music all on one radio station.  That's hard to come by these days.  Bleh, that's all I can really think of at the mement.  Bottom line....80's ruled!   :-*

Quoting:


I'm with ya' on that!  With one condition:  we have to be certain we can zap back to reality after our little 'jaunts' back to the 80's.  I LOVED the 80's, but there were certain things that happened to me in the 80's that I'd rather not go thru again.  But I'd love to drop in on occasion and go down memory lane :)

I really don't know what I think made the 80's so good.  Musically, one thing that I can think of is that there didnt used to be as many lines drawn between different music styles.  You could pretty much expect to hear several types of music all on one radio station.  That's hard to come by these days.  Bleh, that's all I can really think of at the mement.  Bottom line....80's ruled!   :-*
End Quote

I dont know Durania, I think I might wanna jump around to the different years and skip over the bad ones and probably stay in '86. That was my best year!

That is very well said about the music in the 80's, thats what was great about it, is that people liked all kinds of music from pop to metal, and they played all different genres on the same station. Today you have one station for hip hop, one for rock, and so on.

Quoting:
The Smiths. Full stopEnd Quote

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If I wasn't living in this stupid country (Canada), I might have actually known of them back then!! But since I discovered them a few years too late (but at least I was in my late teens), I would have to agree they were one of the best things about the 80's. ;D

I was a kid growing up in the 80's and it was in no way wonderful...but I'd have to say music was a saving grace, and music video. I also loved 80's fashion, and even followed it to a certain extent until I became a teenager and decided I wanted to be an individual and not follow the "cool kids." I think I will always love 80's music and clothes. They were just so cool!! The 80's was the last decade where you could be truly unique in music (please correct me if I'm wrong, but everything I've heard lately seems to be a rehashment of things past). Many bands in the 80's paved the way for what music is today...well, some music anyway. The 80's brought a forum for people to see promotional videos on television so we could actually see the artist we've been listening to. Admittedly, it did kill some careers like "talkies" killed the careers of some silent film actors (yes, video did indeed kill the radio star - how did they know??), but it helped the careers of others. Fashion was flamboyant, colourful, big and extravagant. Yes, it was garish and godawful as well. But people expressed individuality, guys wore make up...it was an androgynous decade. And fashion was, for the first time, being dictated by music because of the advent of music video. Guys wanted to look like Duran Duran and girls wanted to look like Madonna or Cyndi Lauper (OK, not all of them).

The 80's was a unique decade. Music and fashion were (for the most part) fantastic. I will always hold the 80's dear to my heart for the music it produced and the escape it gave me because of it.

Absolutely Vile

Quoting:
The 80's was the last decade where you could be truly unique in music (please correct me if I'm wrong, but everything I've heard lately seems to be a rehashment of things past). End Quote

I think the 80s were the last true unique music era. For me, the nineties was either 80s rehashes (like Boyzone's 'When the going gets tough) or boredom from Manic street preachers or Stereophonics.

Do you wish to be called 'Absolutely Vile' or would you like to be called something else?

Quoting:
Innocence plays a lot in memories, my grandad used to tell us tales of his childhood in the 1930s.
End Quote

This is something I have always pondered as well.  Ultimately I've come to the conclusion that people just want to remember the past as being somehow magically better and less problematic.  This isn't the reality, but if it makes people feel good, well then more power to them I guess.

I too had a grandfather that used to talk about how great the 1930's were.  I thought gee, the 30's had the Great Depression, dustbowl weather, heat waves, unemployed and alcoholic people.  The 30's were probably the worst time in America, yet my grandfather saw it as the best years of his life.  The 1970's were another cr*ppy decade that is remembered as being "more innocent" and "the good ol' days".  The 70's had Vietnam, Watergate, high crime, high oil prices and high unemployment.  Seems like yet another miserable decade to me,....but for people that truly grew up or lived in that decade, it will be a glorious and more innocent time by default.  

And for the past couple of years I've noticed the "rose tinted glasses" treatment as you say happenning to the 1980's....  The 80's, the decade of greed.  The materialistic decade that gave us stuff like Married with Children, A-Team, Rambo, Porky's and The Last American Virgin is supposed to be some kind of wholesome Leave to Beaver family decade?  And I'll be the "rose tinted glasses" effect will happen to the 90's even sooner then it happened with the 80's. When you consider how many positive aspects the 1990's had, it is ironic that it was and still is regularly trashed.  The 90's were overall the most stable and prosperus time America ever had.  But all we ever heard non-stop was how terrible and cynical the decade was.  Why?  Because at the time the 90's were "the present" and it still is fairly recent today.  Wait a few years and you'll hear people waxing poetic about how back in the 1990's they had to walk two miles uphill to school. (both ways ofcourse, ;) )
 

Quoting:


YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If I wasn't living in this stupid country (Canada), I might have actually known of them back then!! End Quote

Hey, if ya decide to move out of Canada could you do me a favour and take Gord Downie with you? ;)

Quoting:
This is something I have always pondered as well.  Ultimately I've come to the conclusion that people just want to remember the past as being somehow magically better and less problematic.  This isn't the reality, but if it makes people feel good, well then more power to them I guess.End Quote

Yep! I'm hearing you there. My grandad often talked about World War 2 with great fondness. I find it a little bizarre now but maybe I also understand that even in those times he had good memories - he never mentioned the violence or the bloodshed.

He talked, in great detail, about this mate who fell from a pit latrine into the human entrails below - toilet humour at it's most literal.

Quoting:


Hey, if ya decide to move out of Canada could you do me a favour and take Gord Downie with you? ;)
End Quote

Dead or alive??  :D Hehehe...:)

I would, but do you think I would be able to put up with him?! I don't think so. Tell you what...I'll get the chloroform, sedate him, put him in a hockey bag, stick him in cargo on the plane, and get rid of him that way. He'll be on his own once he wakes up and realises where he is.

Hmmmm...funny...the song "Locked In The Trunk Of A Car" is coming to mind...<vbeg>

Absolutely Evil (an anagram of "Vile")

Quoting:
Sorry, who is Gord Downie?End Quote

Being in England, it's probably best that you remain ignorant as to who Gord Downie is. :)

But since you asked....

Gordon Downie is the lead singer for the most famous band in Canada...a staple in Canadian culture (unfortunately)...The Tragically Hip. They're most probably the biggest thing since The Guess Who (who had hits like "American Woman," "No Sugar Tonight," etc., and who I'm shamed to share the same birthplace of). Downie's voice is just awful, he looks like he's having seizures in half The Hip's videos and on stage live, and they're just annoying as all hell. Downie, I think, is now being regarded as some sort of poet laureate as he has released two solo albums now and people love his songwriting. I'll admit he does write some interesting lyrics. I mean, I find writing a song about kidnapping and murdering someone, and dumping the body rather intriguing. ("Locked In The Trunk Of A Car," probably the only Hip song I like.)

If Downie's lyrics are really that good, maybe he should stick to writing poetry and not put music to his words. Kinda like Leonard Cohen (apologies to my husband...) ;D

Absolutely Vile

Quoting:

I think everyone else has said it so well, so I almost feel like I'm intruding to pitch in even more...
End Quote

Don't feel like you're intruding Dugn. You have explained very well why you like the 80s - and that is what I wanted.

Thank you for your memories.  :)