Most telling of all, Rhino Records has just released “Like Omigod! The 80’s Pop Culture Box (Totally)”: seven CDs packaged in black vinyl with Day-Glo lettering. Not just such songs as “Bette Davis Eyes,” “Valley Girl” and “White Lines,” but bits of aural memorabilia–the “Hill Street Blues” theme, Billy Crystal’s “You look marvelous” routine, a dismal speech on trickle-down economics by the Gipper himself. And a how-to chart of ’80s club moves, from the King Tut (“hands in, knees out”) to the Mannequin (“lock elbows and knees, right arm in front of chest”).
The enclosed book has an essay, a pictorial timeline–the rise of the Buggles, the fall of the Berlin wall–and deep background on each song. Did you know the second lead singer for Animotion married Richard Marx after the band’s hit “Obsession” peaked in 1985? With such vital information, $99.98 seems a small price to pay. Rhino sure hopes it seems that way. And it’ll probably make a bundle. The label’s ’70s box set, “Have a Nice Decade,” covered in green shag carpet, sold 50,000 units at $100 a pop.
It took producer David McLees four years and two coproducers to choose tracks for the collection. “This is definitely not a scholarly survey of ’80s trends,” he says. “It’s more like skimming a stone over the decade and hitting the highlights, with an obvious emphasis on kitschiness. It hopefully makes people smile when they hear something they haven’t heard in years, whether it’s Melissa Manchester or the Cure. Then there’s some Pac-Man, ‘Miami Vice’ and ‘Bosom Buddies’ bits. It should remind the listener of whatever their skinny-tie new-wave experience was.”
To folks over 30, the ’80s may not seem quite long enough ago to be quaint, retro and bygone. (They wish.) But as pop culture recycles itself faster and faster, there seems to be an insatiable appetite for all things once deemed, like, totally over. “I think we’re already experiencing ’90s nostalgia to some degree,” McLees says. “And it’s only 2002.” So how long will it be until we see a plaid-flannel-and-denim-covered box set called “Smells Like Angst and Irony”? Hold your breath.
