Metro Pulse/Gamut/'80s Music

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Is it too soon for '80s nostalgia? Not according to Knoxville's newest oldies station.

by Joe Tarr

I went to an all-boy's Catholic prep school, where if you were a scrawny stick of a kid, it took a bit of effort to avoid getting beat on and ridiculed in the hyper-machismo atmosphere of teenage boys.

I managed this feat by becoming a clown, and the cruel kids more or less left me alone (if you mock yourself, those prone to mocking won't feel the urge, I found).

In my senior year during finals week, we had half-days—tested in the morning, we were given the afternoons off to presumably study. Most of the students spent it at the beach, enjoying the first few warm days of summer and, if we were lucky, getting the questions off the next day's exam from a classmate who'd swiped it from a teacher's desk. On the verge of adulthood, I wistfully imagined that my days of being an insecure geek would soon be behind me and I would no longer have to worry about the humiliations that are so much a part of adolescence.

But Dave Ott quickly stomped those illusions for me. Dave—or, Otter, as he was known—was one of those kids who have the build of a man by the time they're 14. Aware of his physical dominance, he liked to remind smaller classmates of his superiority, although he rarely had to use muscles to do so.

He more or less tolerated me throughout school, and once even warned another bully to leave me alone. But that afternoon in late May, he was really stoned or wanted to impress someone or maybe on the verge of graduation, and I just got a little too cocky for him. For whatever reason, he decided to bully me one last time. Clenching a fistful of hair at the top of my scalp, he lifted me off the ground for several minutes, while I clung to his forearm in order to lessen the pain and prevent him from yanking all the hair out of my head. My eyes were closed but I imagined several cute girls gawking at my legs flailing, and the guys chuckling. After a few minutes and protests from friends, Otter relented and put me down.

The number one single that month was Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All." Also on the top 20 charts were "Why Can't This Be Love," by Van Halen, "Addicted to Love," by Robert Palmer, "All I Need Is a Miracle," by Mike + The Mechanics, and "West End Girls," by the Pet Shop Boys.

I relate this story not to evoke pity. But it's the best way I can think of to explain to you why I can't imagine anyone in my generation being nostalgic for the '80s. There were plenty of good pop songs to come out of the decade of my adolescence, some of which I still listen to. But to me the period will forever be poisoned by the likes of Otter, high school, acne, Ronald Reagan, gym class, and, well, Poison.

However, there are apparently people out there who find a certain charm in the decade. And they've become one of the latest niche markets, one that WXST, 105.3 FM, began broadcasting to in April with its all-'80s format.

The format sounds surprisingly familiar, in both tone and structure, because it mimics the oldies stations that broadcast music from the Golden Age of rock 'n' roll—roughly the late '50s to the early '70s. How in the world did we ever make the nostalgic jump from the Beatles to Duran Duran? A few years ago, radio stations tried '70s formats, but they failed, says Mike Beverly, WXST's program director.

"The '70s just didn't work. There's a lot of theories why. My own is that in the '70s there wasn't one type of music," he says; among other genres, there was album oriented rock, confessional folk singers, disco and punk. "The '80s had a lot of good pop music in that it was pretty accessible to a lot of people."

A radio station in Portland, Ore., was the first to try the '80s niche, about a year and a half ago, Beverly says. It was huge success, causing an immediate ratings jump to number 2. Since then, about 35 stations around the country have switched to the format.

WXST used to be a talk radio station. At 6,000-watts, the small operation can't afford a consultant to program its own songs, so Beverly says they've been winging it. Not all '80s songs are clearly identified with the decade—for instance, ZZ Top's "Legs," and Fleetwood Mac's "Little Lies," could be heard on a number of other local stations. WXST aims to have at least one of every three songs clearly identified with the Reagan era: Depeche Mode's "People are People," Duran Duran's "Rio," Nina's "99 Luftballons," Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus."

A lot of the songs aren't strictly '80s—you might hear Blondie's "Dreaming" from 1979 or Bryan Adams' "Can't Stop This Thing We Started" from '91, though both feel like '80s tunes. And some '80s music is avoided—the sappy adult stuff (Lionel Richie, Peter Cetera), or the sappy kids stuff (New Kids on the Block, Debbie Gibson) or late '80s heavy metal and hip hop (Poison, Soul II Soul), which reflected a fragmentation of popular tastes.

The targeted audience of WXST is those in their late 20s up to their 40s, the desirable demographic made up of people who are accumulating lots of stuff and thus spending lots of money. For the same reason, old oldies stations are losing popularity with advertisers. The people who listen to oldies radio don't need to buy as many things.

Unlike the generation reared when Golden Oldies were contemporary, the '80s generation seems almost bred for nostalgia. I grew up reading Rolling Stone magazine, which glorified the '60s and its icons—The Rolling Stones, Dylan, John Fogerty, et al.—who were long past their peaks. Mass media marked the anniversaries of Watergate, Woodstock, Vietnam, and Altamont, and generally romanticized the period.

The first band I really got into or got obsessed with was The Doors, some 10 years after Jim Morrison died. In high school, I would scrawl the names of my favorite bands on my notebooks: Dylan, Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd.

In fact, for the first half of the '80s, I didn't listen to many '80s bands except on the radio and on MTV. It wasn't until I got a bit older that I could appreciate the talent of Prince, Madonna, and Culture Club (When "Church of the Poison Mind" was a hit single, I would have been branded a faggot for admitting I liked it, but that's one hell of a song).

Even '80s bands that struggled for their own identities, like the Replacements (who do not show up on WXST), couldn't quite escape the shadow of the Baby Boomer generation and its resultant nostalgia. Paul Westerberg screamed on "Bastards of Young," Got no war to name us." The video from the song is one of the more amusing ones made during the '80s—the camera focuses on a stereo speaker in someone's home and nothing else; occasionally someone will walk in front of it.

Whether he knew it or not, it was music videos that really defined the decade's music, and that may be why Westerberg remains an obscure musician. Listening to WXST at times is like listening to MTV 15 years ago.

I can't remember any of the details or even the year, but I remember staring at the TV for hours at this new cable channel called MTV. Hosts JJ Jackson and Martha Quinn announced videos by odd groups like Duran Duran, the Buggles, Men At Work, Stray Cats and Hall & Oates (well, Hall & Oates were pretty normal).

A lot of the songs you hear on today's '80s stations were never radio hits in their day, but they were big video hits and have become forever linked with the decade. A classic example is Modern English's "I Melt With You," which didn't crack the radio charts until years after its initial release, but was a big video hit and was used in a number of movies. "This is the beginning of the video generation. Some songs we play or play more often because they were big video hits, not necessarily radio hits," Beverly says.

The video phenomena soon spread beyond cable TV. Whenever I hear Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight," I always think of Miami Vice. It's toward the end of the first two-hour episode that kicked the television series off, and Sonny and Tubbs jump in Sonny's Ferrari on their way toward a showdown with the bad guys. It's night, and the car pulls out onto the street, and you can hear Collins' distorted voice hiss, "Well I remember..." as his echo-y drum slowly throbs like a ghost, and the camera pans down to the wheel and the pavement. The song continues as the boys drive through Miami, a mini-video within the show. I don't remember what happened when the song ended, but that moment of TV is as vivid in my memory as any real thing that happened in my childhood.

In this sense, the video age had one subtle effect on nostalgia. People frequently associate songs to periods in their life—their prom, a summer, cruising their hometown, first kiss, etc. But those memories can be overshadowed by the video images used to market the song. When you hear Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance" it's kind of hard not to picture lead singer Ivan Doroschuk leaping around a Middle Ages wonderland making an "S" with his arms. When you hear A-Ha's "Take On Me" you probably picture the girl getting magically pulled into her sketch pad world. Michael Jackson's "Beat It" evokes gangs dancing in the street (or, maybe Eddie Van Halen in a pool hall or a fat Weird Al Yankovic eating his way through Manhattan). Whereas those who grew up with "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" or "Like A Rolling Stone" probably have much more personal memories of those songs. The trend started long ago (I'll bet a lot of people picture the Ed Sullivan Show or American Bandstand when they hear '60s hits they grew up with), but it was taken further than ever in the '80s.

Nostalgia is never about remembering reality, it's about remembering what you want to remember, or picturing what should have been, so you don't have to think about today. Kids look forward and adults look back—I suppose it's the way of the world. No offense to WXST or the people who like it, but I feel too young to look back. And even though the times gave us some great songs, I wouldn't want to go back again. Cause then I'd have to deal with the likes of Dave Ott.