The re-kindled interest in the Killers got me thinking about the eighties music scene. The VH-1 Cable channel some time ago showed a whole weekend of eighties music videos. Most of the videos showed American bands and artists.
And oh my goodness. Hair bands with screaming singers an cliche lyrics, or then artists with costumes singing poppy songs and dancing badly. No wonder the eighties is considered a bad time for music if you just focus on the American scene.
Meanwhile, in Europe we listened to Ultravox, early incarnations of U2, Simple Minds, New Order and a lot of similar bands that were pushing the boundaries concerning synthesizer use as well as still providing strong melodic lines with very interesting arrangements. And no 200bpm guitar solos, that’s for sure.
It’s kind of nice that bands like the Killers and Keane re-introduces this more interesting music style from the eighties. My background is first listening to a lot of seventies music and playing that in high school bands, but then I was mostly active in the early to late eighties and was involved in bands doing this kind of European eighties music. It was fun, very much pushing the limits and was still commercial.
It’s not good to always copy-cat past styles but this would be an exception to make the music scene interesting again — unless I start sounding like and old-timer wishing for the good times. Or, alternatively, just start another interesting music scene, that’s as valid. If nothing else, please get the synthesizers back as arrangement tools and not designed to do staccato techno lines all the time.