Posts Tagged ‘1980s’

40 Years Ago Today: Genesis Releases “Mama”

Saturday, August 19th, 2023

Forty years ago today, August 19, 1983, Genesis released their self-titled album (their twelfth), and “Mama” was the first single released off that.

As a fairly new convert to classic Prog Rock Genesis at the time, I wasn’t a fan of Genesis’ move toward more mainstream pop, but “Mama” caught my attention, as it’s a pretty interesting song. And far from being an average pop song, it was weird and sinister.

And it has perhaps the most memorable laugh in any song, ever.

Peter Gabriel-era Genesis had a lot more overtly sinister songs (“The Waiting Room” comes to mind), but “Mama” was distinctly different from Genesis’ 1980s output, or indeed, just about anything else on mainstream radio in 1983. Between the sparse drum loop, the eerie high synthesizer wash, and Collins’ urgent, hungry vocals about a young man’s unrequited love for a prostitute, it still has power four decades on.

TV Horrors: The Phoenix

Saturday, October 29th, 2016

If you were trying to construct The Most Painfully 1970s SF TV Show Ever, you might come up with The Phoenix, and never mind that it debuted in 1981.

I mean, look at the intro footage, and tell me it doesn’t reek of the 1970s:

I mean, ancient astronauts, pyramid power, ESP, big medallions and feathered hair! How much more 70s can you get?

This arrived after my “I’ll Watch Any Damn SF/F/H Show On TV” phase, and it actually came and went so quickly (only five episodes aired, including the pilot) I wasn’t even aware of it.

Someone has put up a fairly crappy quality video of the complete pilot:

Hope you like flute music. The writing isn’t very good, but Judson Scott (who I remember best as Khan’s second-in-command) is surprisingly tolerable as Hunky McSunAlien.

For more on similar subject, see Decade of Weirdness: The 1970s and Retro TV Memories: The Fantastic Journey.

Shoegazer Sunday: Dominique Fricot’s “I Miss the 80s”

Sunday, April 17th, 2016

This is probably more pop than Shoegaze, but Dominique Fricot’s “I Miss the 80s” is a fun little song that has a dream pop vibe to it.

Having lived through the 1980s, my only caveat is that these are not the cultural referents I would have personally deployed. Even given that, the song still evokes a bit of wry nostalgia. But part of the point of the song is that it’s not first-hand nostalgia, it’s second-hand nostalgia refracted through the prism of the popular music and movies of the era by someone who was “too young to really know.”

It’s also probably the finest song to ever talk about Jennifer Grey’s nose…