Posted on 03/04/2005 3:18:53 PM PST by qam1
Nostalgia market wasn't ready to embrace that decade… and may never be
Nikki Sixx, the bassist for the famously fast-living glam-rockers Motley Crue, thinks that even 24 years after its debut, his band still has a certain timeless aspect.
“If you want to drop the tailgate, get some beer and go to a strip club, that's the Crue,” he said recently before a rehearsal for the band's new tour. Yet Sixx's band, which just released a two-disc career anthology, is returning at a particularly interesting moment.
The music of the 1980s has re-entered the zeitgeist in a gigantic way. You can hear it in video games as hip as “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” and in TV shows such as “The O.C.” VH1 keeps putting out specials like “Big '80s” and the wildly popular “I Love the '80s.” The record industry reacted slowly, but now acts like New Edition, Duran Duran, George Michael, the Cure, New Order, Billy Idol, Heavy D and the Crue have been encouraged to shake off the dust and get back on the road.
Most of those bands have returned with attendant fanfare, sweeping across red carpets and past screaming fans at radio station visits and showcase concerts.
Yet despite the grass-roots enthusiasm and VH1 dogma, not to mention millions of dollars in marketing, the '80s are not selling where it counts. CD buyers just aren't interested.
Take Tears for Fears. Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal didn't work together for 10 years, but they got back together to write songs and eventually got a six-figure advance from Universal's New Door label to perform again. They found themselves playing radio station-sponsored concerts and meeting fans at in-store appearances at Tower Records. According to Nielsen SoundScan data, through Jan. 30 their album, “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending,” had sold just 80,000 copies, a far cry from their last album, “The Seeds of Love,” which sold about 1 million copies.
Duran Duran, who drew a fanatical following in the early '80s, got all of its original members back last year and scored five sellouts at Wembley Arena in London. The band signed a deal with Epic Records for an estimated $500,000 and made the rounds on TV shows and fashion-industry events. It has all resulted in about 200,000 copies sold of the reunion album “Astronaut.”
“The '80s nostalgia boom is real, but it's not broad,” said Michael Hirschorn, executive vice president of programming for VH1. “It doesn't apply to everything and not in all ways. It applies to a specific kind of Gen X, self-mocking, slightly ironic thing. For this group of people, you can't give them straight nostalgia of the sort of baby boomer ‘everything was wonderful and great when we were kids' feel. People Gen X and younger know that things weren't that great. We never thought that Motley Crue was saving the world. We just identify with them passionately, but with a certain wink.”
Reviving the careers of artists who have retreated from the pop music scene is never a simple affair, but it has been done — usually by appealing to new fans at least as directly as old ones. Aerosmith did it by rapping with Run-DMC. Carlos Santana swept the Grammys for 1999 by doing “Supernatural” alongside popular artists of the day. Sometimes you go where the kids are: Idol is booked to play South by Southwest, the annual buzz-band conclave in Austin, Texas.
But when it comes to the new material, the 30-something American fans who should logically form the artists' core audiences just aren't turning up.
No need
Ann Fishman, president of Generational Targeted Marketing, said the problem isn't with the music, it's with the memories. The fans from Generation X, she says, “are not particularly grounded in their youth.”
“Would you be grounded in something where you had divorced parents, poor schooling?” she asks. “We presume nostalgia is a great selling tool. It is to the baby boomers. It's not to Gen X. The history of their youth has forced them to grow up more quickly. Nostalgia is not necessarily something that's going to move them ahead. They enjoy the music of their youth, but it's not a need.”
The theory might help to explain why Madonna and Prince had a very good year. They both made it big in the '80s but pretty much kept performing and evolving. Their recent albums were simply the latest chapter in a long and varied career.
Making the odds that much longer, the long-lost stars of the '80s are returning to a music establishment they might barely recognize. The machinery that transformed them into mass phenomena two decades ago — mainly Top 40 radio and MTV — has long since been dismantled or redesigned. The radio dial has splintered into tightly managed formats aimed at specified niches, which may not be receptive to revivals.
“There's resistance from radio to play some of these artists,” said Jon Zellner, a former Kansas Citian who ran Star 102 and Mix 93.3 in Kansas City and now oversees programming on so-called hot adult-contemporary stations for Infinity Broadcasting. He said he decided against playing Tears for Fears, among others.
“I think programmers are potentially afraid of their radio stations sounding dated.”
As for MTV, the cable giant now devotes far more airtime to reality programming and lifestyle shows than videos. New bands now establish themselves through outlets that didn't exist five years ago, let alone 20, like AOL's “Sessions,” a live performance for online viewers, or MySpace, an online community popular with music fans. And those formats don't favor bands in their 40s and 50s.
“I just wasn't convinced that the songs were compelling enough to compete in today's marketplace,” said Andrew Slater, president of Capitol Records, who says he passed on both Duran Duran and Billy Idol. “On the television side, you might have someone perform on a late-night show, but ultimately I don't think it's enough to drive a passive audience to all drop what they're doing in their lives and find that connection to the artist that they loved in the '80s.”
All the way live
But '80s acts are expected to do extremely well in their North American concert tours. Motley Crue, for one, will be paid minimum fees of up to $250,000 a night. Duran Duran, in addition to big appearance fees, is cashing in on the trend toward VIP tickets, offering their most devoted fans the chance to buy travel packages, including a two-night hotel stay and signed memorabilia, for $2,590 per person.
But those lucrative concerts play to fans eager for one (or two) glorious nights of nostalgia, not those interested in watching the band try to grow.
“It's hard enough now doing any of the old material because obviously we just want to do the new material,” said Smith of Tears for Fears. “(It's) horrible to be playing onstage and have all these people in the front saying play ‘Shout.' There are certain emotions you have in your late teens and 20s that really don't exist when you turn 40. There's a certain angst we had then that doesn't exist now. Now we have middle-aged angst.”
The stars of the '80s also now have middle-aged bodies, and hauling them around the country on long tours isn't as easy as it once might have been. Mick Mars, the guitarist for Motley Crue, has undergone hip replacement surgery. Smith has two young children.
Still, you won't hear any of them complaining too loudly. Pop music has always been a young person's game, and for those who get a rare second turn in the spotlight, even tepid album sales and a backward-looking concert tour are a rush. But for many fans watching the marketing machinery creak into gear, it can be a little annoying.
In Baltimore, for example, Benn Ray, the co-owner of independent bookstore Atomic Books, has started up a regular “I Hate the '80s” party to mock the trend.
“The '80s nostalgia was starting to roll in, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute! Did you people actually listen to the same decade I did? You had eight years of Reagan. There was cocaine everywhere. There were yuppies.' ” At past parties, attended by people wearing parachute pants and Members Only jackets, local bands performed their most-hated '80s memories on Casio keyboards, which they demolished at the end of their set. Another show had a guy called Evil Pappy Twin playing Van Halen covers on a lute.
In any case, the clock is running out. VH1's Hirschorn says the second coming of the '80s has already lasted almost as long as the original decade, and it may be time to move on. VH1, of course, has already brought out a new series … called “I Love the '90s.”
I had a little Datsun 210 and I zipped around everywhere... usually jamming to "Big Country" music... from Scotland...
Sounds like the lost lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire".
It's all a matter of perspective. Yhese will be the good old days for someone.
Yeah until I read the list, I didn't even remember "Da Butt".
Time separates the wheat from the chaff I guess. My older brother liked the UB40 song and played it endlessly. I think I tried to strangle him a few times as a result.
I was 8 years old. I didn't become a Socialist until I was about 12.
"She Blinded Me With Science" etc.
Man, you would have to mention one of the crappiest songs...
The amazing thing about Delorean is that I remember being 7 years old and thinking that he was a real cool guy.
Back in 81, a kid brought a pistol to class and shot himself in front of his classmates. I didn't know him personally, but from what I understood at the time, he was trying to kill himself in order to send a message to the students who'd been bullying him. He succeeded in wounding himself pretty badly, and was taken to the hospital, and then was taken out of school. I've always wondered how life turned out for that poor kid.
That was one album I was always within a few steps from the door of buying. I would pick it up, walk around a bit, find something else, put it back.
I think I must have done that onr 10 or 20 occasions. I still like that song, but I'm sure some of the other garbage I bought instead has been purged from my memory banks.
Yeah, the the weird science movie was great.... the song fit perfectly in it.
I don't know about him, but loved his car. "You made a time machine ... out of a Delorean!?"
my family was bluecollar Catholic ethnic Dem, that's how i was raised. when i started thinking for myself (which unfortunately was well after graduating law school) i saw the light. My hub took off a semester from college to campaign for Mo Udall! it was when he got his job on Capital Hill that we both converted. I can't imagine my kids EVER being a lib or a dem. they consider the very terms to be epithets!
Yeah, "Weird Science" is classic!
The new Tears for Fears album is very good. Definately better than a lot of the trash being put out today.
If you want a song, just pm me and I will dig out a tune of theirs for ya. Just PM me, be glad to do it.
WRONG! I am also an 80's child fanatic. I wish Van Halen would get back on the road, even if it is mostly "Van Haggar".
Martin County in 1986? It must have been rural back then. Even Boca (where my parents are now) still had farms back then.
Thanks, I already used iTunes to get the song. But back when I was a teen and money was tight, I did the "hmm, this one or that one..." thing a lot.
Now that I think about it, I wonder what happened to some of my LP records. I suspect they got sold in a tag sale. I still have all my CDs though.
The only good thing I can say about the 1990's is that the decade has ended.
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