This week I am attending my 20th High School Reunion. I am proud to say that I can still fit into my Varsity Jacket (Five Letters.. no shit!). I am little nervous as I know that at least 2 former prom dates will be in attendance. Since it was a co-ed boarding school, there will be a lot of women there that I used to date.  Imagine factions of hormonally charged teens living just 100 yards from each other.   I ran into a female friend and her husband a few years ago and she mentioned "Yeah, we all dated each other at some point for three weeks." 

So I got a little nostalgic and I was looking at some of the videos that spanned the publication dates of "The Blade" circa 1983 to 1987.  Some of the videos I picked were not exactly in this time period, but I SAW them for the first time during this strange era. And all of these have stuck with me and they all mean something different than they did 20 years ago.

We were the first generation of the second generation of Music Video. They had just figured out that a music video did not need to be shot against a white background. "They" discovered this thing called "moving film" 

 So, in no particular order.. #1 The Talking Heads, Life During Wartime, Directed by Jonathan "Silence of the Lambs" Demme

#2 Sun City  (Bono and Springsteen look really young.. Joey Ramone looks healthy.)

#3 The Housemartins-- Happy Hour Either the guy asleep with the pencil or the guy with big watch became Fat Boy Slim.. who is also now horribly outdated.

#4 The Trailer for "The Hunger" .. Basically the first five minutes of the movie. Directed by Tony "Top Gun' Scott. Euro-Trashy.. but GOOD Euro Trashy!

#5 Hoodoo Gurus. It hit at that cross point of wanting to be a corporate killer and a beach bum.

#6 was Billy Joel "Pressure"  (o r for that matter "She's Right on Time") but BMG Music doesn't allow embeddiing videos.. so #6 is U2: Live from Red Rocks: SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY!

Crap! you can't embed that one either. You can got to YouTube and take a peek. So #6 is:

WAIT! wow. I'm pissed off because I can't embed music videos into my blog? In my day we used to have to wait hours for these things to come on.. and maybe snag one on to the beta max.

FINE ! # 6 is now GIRLS ON FILM!. For the kids, we had it rough. We had to wait HOURS for this IF our parents were out of town!!

Well, that was much more gay than it used to be.

 #7 Van Halen vs. Van Hagar.

 


#8 Free Nelson Mandela

#9 David Bowie -- Modern Love.. Such fancy pants..Yes, this was VERY COOL, 20 years ago  I met a Greg around this time... did a killer Bowie impression... but it was more of a "Tin Machine" thing. Does David Bowie look back and say "DId I really wear that?'

and #10,, how much fun can you have in a $100, 2 minute, 8mm music video?

 From 1979...I saw it in 1985

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