Category: 80s-music

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 […]

70s 80s-music 90s Dance Music New Music
August 17, 2021

I’m Loving Jungle’s Loving in Stereo

Back in the 1970s, I would have hated Jungle’s new album Loving in Stereo. In fact, I would have hated all of Jungle’s music. That’s because they are unabashedly retro but more specifically disco and danceable R&B. At that time, I was all about progressive rock and then punk and new wave. I even had a “Disco Sucks” t-shirt. Now, I’ve grown. I’m still not […]

70s 80s-music Dance Music New Music Pop
June 22, 2021

Cola Boyy Premiers with an Unusual Album

The artist Cola Boyy (whose real name is Matthew Urango) has been described as a combination of disco and soft rock. After listening to his lead off album, Prosthetic Boombox, I find that description perplexing. It seems as if the critics (or marketing) people tasked with writing about Cola Boyy’s work have never experienced real disco. To use the term “disco” in the context of […]

80s-music 90s Alternative Dance Music Euro New Music New Wave Punk
April 9, 2021

So Much New Music I’m Going to Explode

Sometimes I go weeks without hearing anything interesting. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by waves of new music released practically on top of each other. Last week saw a brilliant release from St. Vincent and a decent, though uneven, EP from Foxes. This week, there is more new music goodness than I can describe. It’s as if the buffet was getting depleted so the kitchen decided to […]

80s-music Dance Music Indie Pop
April 8, 2021

New Foxes EP is Hit and Miss

You may have heard the artist Foxes (real name Louisa Rose Allen) on the radio and thought “Now there’s an 80s band I don’t know.” That’s because Foxes could sit well in amongst the effervescent dance pop of the 80s. Her most well-known hit “Better Love” from 2016’s All I Need has the same type of bouncy hooks common in artists like mid-80s dance pop […]

80s-music Dance Music Euro Modern Rock New Music New Wave
April 1, 2021

Christine and the Queens – A Gift from France

Throughout my life as a music lover, I’ve listened to artists from outside the English-speaking world. Whether it was world music from Africa, such as King Sunny Ade, German 80s dance music (think: Falco), or Scandinavian metal, I’ve always trawled the places outside the American and British music scenes for great tunes. This includes the French-speaking world as well. Back in the late 70s, one […]