1980 JUXEBOX SHUFFLE (in three parts)
I knew the eighties were hot, but I didn’t know they were THAT hot. When I threw my 1979 mix on the web last month, the amount of downloads reached another peak. And that wasn’t funny. My provider closed down my site and I had to pay a shit load of money to get my bandwidth in business again. Anyway, I liked the response so much (thanks for emails ands suggestions) that I will continue this trip through my record collection with a 1980 mix. Again, this is not a decisive mix, for I do not have all stuff of that period. As a poor man I could only buy a limited amount of music and for other records I had to rely on my deejay friends. So this is all I can do. I tried to put in a lot of variety and I tried to make a mixtape that would be interesting to listen to even today. A lot of stuff I liked then turned out to be so bad or boring now that I often felt embarrassed I ever loved it (Perhaps I’ll do a whole mix of embarrassing songs one day). However, some records still stand tall: the Dead Kennedys are great, The Feelies are awesome (never heard a guitar band like them), Pablo Gad rocked all dance floors in 1980, and those 4AD 7”s were a genuine musical treasure. I think Bauhaus was one of the best 7”/12” bands of that period (unfortunately their albums sucked). There’s a Dutch band included too (Mecano) and a legendary Belgium posse (De Brassers). 1980 differs from 1979. I guess 1979 was more fresh, more optimistic and more ‘multicultural’ (both in sound and words). It seems to me, looking back now, that 1980 was very, very serious and bands started to take very, very different directions – also in a racial sense. The distance between black and white artists seems to have widened in 1980 (many white kids were suffering from New Wave ‘Weltschmertz’ now and black kids just wanted to dance – that’s why I close down with Mykel Board’s devastating critique of new wave culture in “Boat People”). Anyway, I hope you’ll dig this sampler too. (I’m preparing two more volumes: 1981 and 1975-1978. And that will be it. 1982 and the following years were just too awful to make a mixtape.)