Ah the eighties! Those tumultuous years that saw greed become fashionable and two forms of outlaw music become co-opted. By 1980 punk rock was already turning into new wave (how can you tell a punker from a new waver: a new waver wears pins on their jacket a punker has a pin through her nose) and rap was moving out of the hands of Gil Scott-Herron and Grandmaster Flash into the mitts of Vanilla Ice.
Oh they were heady days alright, so much to celebrate and remember: Oliver North, Tammy Faye and Husband Jim Baker of Pass The Loot our way (All right P.T.L. really stood for Praise The Lord) and Jimmy Swaggert, showing he could be as down and dirty as his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, getting caught with a prostitute in a run down motel.
The Moral Majority was starting to flex their muscles, and they had to shed some of the more "eccentric" of the brethren if they wanted to be taken seriously. Jerry Falwell and friends were quick to distance themselves from Tammy of the blessed eye shadow and Jimmy's penchant for misunderstanding the meaning of the word proselytising.
It was time for the religious right to start being taken seriously, and to prove it Pat Robertson ran for President, well at least the Republican nomination. It turns out America wasn't quite ready for what old Pat was selling and after a good showing in Iowa caucuses he fell quickly by the way side. But it was OK because Papa George was there to succeed King Ronnie who, much to Nancy's chagrin, had to hand over the sceptre of power after eight years.
The eighties were so good that even Great Britain got to pretend it was an empire again. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided to send her armada across the seas and teach the Argentineans who was boss. No wog from South America was going to threaten the British Sheep Farming Industry of the Falkland Islands if Maggie T. had any say in the matter. Which unfortunately for all the people who died in that war she did.
Neither the ghosts of the British and Argentinean sailors who died in that war, nor the soldiers and villagers from the Iran and Iraq war of the same decade, ever seem to get invited to the eighties revival parties and club nights. In fact I sometimes wonder where I was during the eighties because I never recognise any of the music that gets played or the fashions that get worn at these events (Not that I'm very often invited to them either)
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