Have you seen this man's page before?  I ran across it, I think, doing an '80s search.

http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/heepsplace/revisionism.html

I'm afraid what he says is too true.

I never heard of "Melt w/You" until that Burger King commercial (altho I like it).   ???

I never heard of "Tempted" or Squeeze until I got a compilation CD.  It never cracked the top 40 either (and I don't like it).   ???

I never heard of "In a Big Country" until last year on this forum (altho apparently it did make #17 on the weekly top 40 - they must not have liked it around here where I live, cuz I still don't know this song).

And I still have no idea what alot of songs and acts are that people mention.  I'm not a true music afficianado, just a regular fan.

There are lots of ways to become familiar w/ the 80's. Besides watching 80's movies, finding 80's music on the internet (for free), look up 80's trivia on the net. See if you can pick up an 80's station in your area.
It may take a while to become proficient in a whole decade. :)

I think one of the most in-depth reminiscent show is I Love the 80's and I Love the 80's strike back. They cover music, movie, tv, politics, fashions, etc. And they also bring up things that I hadn't thought of for a long time.
I wish I would have recorded alot of the shows I used to watch. It would be so worth it now.

Maxwell - I agree about the the college radio stations.  When I was in high school that was all my friends and I listened to (yep, you guessed it, we weren't that popular)  Everyone else was wearing Madonna bracelets, etc. and we were putting on makeup like Robert Smith.  College radio was the only way I heard The Smith and The Cure, etc.  Actually you can add REM to that list too.

I checked the page out and I agree with most of what the guy had to say.  I listened to alot of stuff in the 80s that wasn't mainstream and loved it.  Now that music seems so "romanticized."  At the time, you couldn't find 1 person out of 100 that had even heard of the Psychedelic Furs, The Cure, Depeche Mode, REM (before 1987), or INXS (before the Kick album).  But, if you mentioned Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Madonna, Rick Springfield, or even Kenny Rogers, 99 out of every 100 people knew who they were and knew a lot of their songs.  They were very commercial and very successful.

Hearing people on this messageboard (which I love and post and read posts very regularly), you would think that A Flock of Seagulls (no offense) were as big in the 80s as the Beatles were in the 60s.  Yes, that's what a lot of us listened to and I still listen to that stuff today!  But, in the 80s I also DJ'd.  As much as I wanted them to, nobody ever came up to me and asked me to play any Modern English.  If that got played, it was only because I snuck it in.  They all wanted to hear "that new song by Prince" or "do you have any Cyndi Lauper?"

Now where I don't agree with the writer is the stuff which is "romanticized" now is probably much more influential than the commercial stuff.  The people who were forming bands and who were musicians at the time were listening to The Smiths, not Huey Lewis & The News.  I think because we remember those "lesser known" bands so fondly does not make us snobs.  It just means that we looked harder to find different music and we loved listening to college radio and found the best time to watch MTV was at 2:00 am when they played the "good stuff."  We didn't settle for what the Top 40 programmers were giving us at the time.  

I like to think of myself as an eclectic music fan.  I listen to all of it!  I have an appreciation for the killer harmonies of Hall & Oates and the way that Michael Jackson used to make songs so catchy and contagious and he had "those hooks that bring you back".  But at the same time, I loved the raw energy of The Alarm and the "what will they think of next" sound of Big Audio Dynamite.  

This is why I loved the 80s!