September 27, 2000

1980s rock NMC

Music historian gives multimedia presentation

By JUSTIN CARINCI
Herald staff writer
       The decade that gave us the phrase "greed is good," President Reagan and compact discs changed popular music forever.
      Rock historian Barry Drake gave the multimedia presentation "80s Rock: Music in the Video Age" at the Dennos Museum Center of Northwestern Michigan College last Wednesday. Sponsored by the NMC Student Government Association, the presentation featured slides, interviews and music videos from the most famous rock 'n' roll personalities of the time.
      The 80s, Drake noted, marked the end of a socially aware era in music and a renewed focus on the supremacy of style over substance.
      "For most Americans, the 1980s officially began with the election of Ronald Reagan," Drake told the crowd of around 100, mostly NMC students. "It was the beginning of a very conservative era in America, which takes emphasis off being young and having ideas about art, music and culture and puts it on business, commercialism and traditional values."
      Another blow to the earlier aesthetic that rock 'n' roll should be an important part of our culture came a month later, when John Lennon was killed.
      Drake believes the time was ripe for something to fill this cultural void and give the new decade its own identity: music television.
      "The single greatest revitalizing factor that put rock 'n' roll and the music business back on its feet in the early 80s was MTV," Drake said. "MTV gave us all a brave new way to experience music - with our eyes as well as our ears."
      This new medium defined musicians as entertainers. Drake credits MTV with changing the way musicians presented themselves to the people. Video-friendly performers such as the Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel and Michael Jackson gained incredible success during the 80s, while acts like Christopher Cross and Joe Jackson languished.
      "In the 80s, there were no more ugly rock stars," Drake said. "The pure rock bands of the 70s, who really didn't put on a show, who were great musicians ... they were finished."
      Drake never set out to study this kind of music. In fact, he never intended to go in to music at all - he went to college to study medicine. Growing up in New York City during the early days of rock 'n' roll, though, it was music that fascinated Drake most.
      "When I was doing my pre-med stuff, my head was definitely going somewhere else," he said.
      That somewhere else was back to the music he had grow up with. While Drake has no formal training, he gives this simple advice to aspiring rock historians: "You have to be the right age, grow up in the right place, and be in the right state of mind to do it."
      Drake started presenting 1950s rock on college campuses and has gradually taken on the 60s, 70s and now the 80s. The National Association of Campus Activities has named him "Campus Lecturer of the Year" for the last five years. In presenting the decades individually, Drake notices the larger trends in the music of an era. So what did the 80s do for rock 'n' roll?
      "Music has gotten progressively worse, while the presentation of mediocre music has gotten much better," Drake said. "It would have been nice if the Beatles and the Rolling Stones would have been presented the way people are presented now: perfect videos, perfect sound. Brittney Spears gets that. The Who never got that. Which is a shame."
      For all that, Drake still expresses an affection for the decade's musicians: "I love Dire Straits. I love U2. I love 10,000 Maniacs.
      "There was a lot of great music in the 80s but it was overshadowed by the ability to present it visually. If you could do it, and you were good, great. If you couldn't do it and you were good. Well - too bad."
      For NMC student Pat Feak, the presentation revisited the music he remembers growing up.
      "I got into the heavy, heavy metal stuff like Metallica in the late 80s," Feak said. These days, he listens to the new wave bands of the 1980s, bands such as Blondie, the Eurythmics and the Go Gos.
      Feak, who is 25, has some perspective on the music: "We're in the year 2000 already, and now we're looking back on the 80s and it seems like yesterday."
      To NMC sophomores Amelia Spenser and Alison Hester, however, Drake's presentation covered new ground. Neither had MTV growing up.
      "My mom never let me watch MTV until I was much older," Spenser said. "We were just born in the early 80s. We don't know a lot about the 80s but we thought it would be fun to come" to see the music presented.
      Even for those who did not live through it, the 1980s left a far-reaching musical and cultural legacy.
      "What the 80s gave us is what we're living with right now," Drake said. "Very cute, attractive people dancing around on stage."