Category: 80s-music

80s-music Dance Music Modern Rock New Music New Wave
July 19, 2022

Does The New Metric Album Measure Up?

It’s almost embarrassing how long it took me to discover Metric. First off, they’re from Toronto, which is practically in my backyard. They also create 80s inspired dance pop and techno, two of my favorite genres. I suspect that they aren’t better known just because they seem so retro. It wasn’t until 2012 that that I ran into them through their near perfect techno song, […]

70s 80s-music 90s Dance Music Indie Modern Rock New Music
May 16, 2022

White, Lizard, Fire, and the Bastille

The idea behind Tunes Past to Present is to talk about new music that might appeal to us, well, older folks. After you reach a certain age, it’s easy to exist in a music echo chamber. You listen to the tunes that you are most familiar with as do your friends. After a while it becomes easy to miss great bands that you would certainly […]

80s-music 90s Dance Music Electronic retro soul
February 1, 2022

Bits of Bonobos

Electronic music artist Simon Green’s, Bonobos project is modern twist on classic electronica. Bonobos is retro dance in some ways. For example, it uses classic sequencers and samples more than is typical in modern electronic music. This gives an overall analog sound to the music that is often lacking in modern electronica, especially EDM. In addition to the use of retro techniques, the structure of […]

80s-music Alt folk Dance Music Indie New Music Roots soul
January 4, 2022

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

In 1967, Sandy Denny, then with the band The Strawbs, asked the question “Who Knows Where the Time Goes? ” Certainly not me. Just in the last year, I recovered from brain surgery and retired from the computer tech world. I then started the podcast “Tunes Past to Present”, with the working title of “New Music for Old Farts.” That project was abandoned a few […]

80s-music 90s Alternative Dream Pop Goth
October 26, 2021

Kaelan Mikla Under the Cold Icelandic Northern Lights

How does one describe Kaelan Mikla? 80s inspired synth pop? Yep, there’s that. Atmospheric dance music? Certainly. Goth? Very much so. Proving once again that weird but great music comes out of Iceland (remember The Sugarcubes?), Kaelan Mikla, produces an amazing mix of dark, strange, and mysterious music that can best be likened to the most goth elements of Siouxsie and Banshees, Bauhaus, and Nine […]

80s-music 90s Alternative
September 29, 2021

Remembering Kirsty MacColl

I first heard Kirsty MacColl in the mid-1980s. She had recorded a very synthpop version of Billy Bragg’s “New England” and it was making the rounds of metro New York City clubs as well as the local new music station WLIR. Kirsty’s version was different enough that it was hard to tell if it was the same song. She had a voice that was as, […]

60s 70s 80s-music Blondie Dream Pop garage New Music New Wave Power pop Shoegazer
September 27, 2021

The Shivas Make Me Feel So Good.

Back in the early 1970s, the rock music writer Lenny Kaye was asked to put together a compilation of lesser-known songs from the 60s. The result was Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era. The album featured raw, DIY music from bands practically no one had heard of, or at least heard from in a long while. This music, later tagged garage or psychedelic […]

80s-music 90s Concert heavy-metal New Wave Punk
September 7, 2021

Concert Review: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Ok, usually I’m writing about new bands and music that will appeal to a… mature?… crowd. Yeah, mature. We’ll go with that. It’s rare that I delve into the past. This is, hence, a BIG exception. Cut me some slack. On Labor Day (US) I went to the New York State Fair. State fairs are a celebration of agriculture and industry. New York State is […]

80s-music 90s Americana Indie New Music Punk Roots
August 25, 2021

The Cruzados Are Anything but Automatic

Back in the mid 1980s, a group of artists mixed new wave and punk with country, blues, and folk styles to create a genre called roots rock revival. For a short while, 80s style roots rock revival was a fixture on college and alternative charts. Groups like The Beat Farmers, The Long Ryders, The Blasters, Los Lobos, and Lone Justice updated American music to fit […]