I'm moved to post by ISBW's very entertaining missive about that awful Now That's What I Call 1983 TV programme that was on last Friday. I'm sure this was meant for an early Saturday night slot, but with it being so execrable, ITV sensibly buried it late-night. From this, and other Eighties-skewed disaster like Reborn In the USA and Hit Me Baby One More Time (which I went to, and which also featured Howard Jones), they have surely learned a lesson that revivals of this nature do not make good TV. They just make one want to die of shame and despair.
It has made me embarrassed to be a part of the Eighties, for that is what I am. I love Eighties music, but I think - the marvellous OMD aside, who are far too good to appear on any nostalgia tours or TV shows - I like to remember it all as it was. I learnt my own lesson going to see Fairport Convention a few years back, who disappointed me by not looking like they did in 1969.
I've been asked a million times to go to one of those package tours with Altered Images, ABC, Human League, etc., and, much as I like the music of all those bands, I realise I do not want to see them as they are now. Looking at Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw on the NTWIC83 show has really put the tin lid on it. As ISBW rightly pointed out, Nik Kershaw appears to be modelling himself on Gary Glitter '08, and Howard Jones looked like he now runs an ailing natural shoe company near Glastonbury. Both looked bored and bitter and like they needed the cash. But isn't this the case with any of the bands of this ilk who put themselves through this Hell?
Kim Wilde did herself no favours on those Holland & Barrett ads. Where there was once grace and beauty, pouting in a Breton top to Kids In America was a tubby dullard in ill-fitting mum-wear. No one wants to see her on stage like this.
I'm not keen on the way the Eighties are being remembered. It's all been lumped into one moment in time, whereas those of us who lived through it know better, as do a lot of the better bands of yesteryear. What must younger generations think? It's mortifying.
Enough already, before I burn my boiler suit.
