Music Mondays - La Roux "Bulletproof"

Let's start off the week with the recent hit by the British singer/producer duo La Roux:





I first heard this song through my mother, believe it or not. It was her and my sister's new favorite song, and has since become mine. Of course, this song and its music video simply ooze the 1980s, but if you're still not convinced just check out the album cover:

Seeing her perform on a great deal of variety daytime shows has really given me insight into the mindset that predominated that time period. I quite frankly used to hate the eighties. I felt the music was bad, the clothing was worse and I saw it as awkward transition between the seventies and the nineties. Recently, though, I've come to the conclusion that the opposite is true. The eighties were the iconic time whilst the seventies and nineties (though they did have their own distinct styles) were more transitional.

New Romantics such as Boy George incorporated 19th century clothing into their wardrobe, inspiring designers such as Vivienne Westwood to do the same.

The 1980s saw many great cultural changes across the globe. Calvin Klein began featuring racy clothing and underwear commercials in gigantic public billboards. Synthetic music was invented and exploded into pop culture. The punks of the 1970s would dovetail into the New Romantics and the Goths. Rap, Hip-Hop, Techno, and Rave were all subcultures that have their origins in the 1980s. Globalization began taking jobs from the United States and stores like Walmart and Kmart began to flourish under a stream of cheap products from Asian countries. The movie "Wall Street" epitomized the no-holds-barred attitude held, not only towards the economy, but also to almost every aspect of life.

Apparently Brooke Shields says she can still fit into the jeans from that controversial ad - Shields was 15 years old at the time.

When I saw La Roux perform on the Ellen Degeneres show, I was taken aback by how amazing this all seemed. I was also hypnotized by that drummer; the way he danced while he played. For a teenager coming of age in the 1980s, it must have been absolutely breathtaking... Nothing like this sort of music had ever been seen. Of course, synthesizers were used in disco, but this was not just about the music. It was a lifestyle. The music videos featured bizarre non sequitors. The bands wore crazy outfits and did crazy things. Imagine a pop culture permeated with Lady Gagas. That was the 1980s.
In retrospect, it's no wonder we all have this stigma with the shoulder pad and synthesizer culture. However, many signs indicate that the 80s are coming back. Music and fashion have reflected this, and I think the arrival of Lady Gaga has opened the doorway for other artists to help push the envelope in artistic expression.
Christina Aguilera is already getting flack for her video "I'm Not Myself Tonight" (Not Safe for Work), but she was already trying to push limits with her video for "Dirrty" (NSFW). She was completely bashed for being so hyper sexual in the 90s, but now she's following Lady G's lead and letting her hair down a bit.

Perhaps this means that we are, in fact, entering a new period like the 80s, where we will see behavior and statements that we could never have imagined. If a raw meat dress at the VMAs isn't enough to give that general impression, then I'm not sure what is. Hopefully, though, we'll learn our lessons from the past and avoid running the economy further into the ground through the near complete deregulation of Wall Street - but I promised I wouldn't get political, so I won't. In short: I'm excited for the coming decade - I hope you are, too!


Thanks for reading,
Nostalgically Yours

Food for Thought - Politics

Since the beginning of deficit spending, the party out of power uses the promise of cutting back spending to get into office. When the party is in power, it then realizes that to complete all its other campaign promises, it must increase spending, while the party that is now out of power begins campaigning on the premise that it will cut back the wasteful spending of the opposing party...

Hooray for the two-party system!

Nostalgically Yours

The Case for New Orleans

Those of you who read my blog know that I was in New Orleans last week checking out my family's new home down there. It was truly heartwarming to see the Crescent City still pretty much unaffected by BP's criminal oversights in the Gulf, and to see residents banding together in unified hatred:

T-shirt Captions, clockwise from top: "FUBP", "Plug the Oil Leak with BP Execs!", "I Want my Life Back" (under a sad, oil-covered pelican)

I still believe what BP did is criminal, and I'm glad people like Susan Spicer are standing up for themselves. This situation is really a case of big business against the regular joe. Think of it this way: had I personally gone to the Deepwater Horizon drill and made an irreparable hole in the piping, I would be the most hated man in America. I would have been sentenced to a lifetime in prison, maybe even extradited to Texas so they could gas me. However, since it was a corporation, blame is tossed around like a hot potato and no one suffers but the victims of BP's criminal negligence. Yes, some (like me) will boycott BP, but mark my words: they will survive to somehow profit from the worst coporation-caused Ecological disaster in our country's history.

"How could they possibly make money off of us now?" you may ask. Simple: the new safety legislation that will hopefully soon be put into place will mean a whole lot of expense in a very short amount of time. Guess who's going to be footing that bill? Tony Hayward? Nope, his yacht is wind-powered. Americans will pay the brunt of the oil companies' oversight in gas prices, which are only staying low right now to avoid any more trouble.

The worst part is that all of this was completely avoidable. Most every major conflict and human-based disaster is, but we simply don't learn. Time after time as a civilization we make the same mistakes, then wonder how we possibly end up in the same bad situations again.

1928: Laissez-Faire is the policy for our economy!
1929: Those damn commies ruined the economy!!!

2001: Laissez-Faire is still the policy for us!!!
2010: What did this hippie/nazi/commie Obama get us into!?!?

Are we really so short-cited?

Nostalgically Yours

Food for Thought - Thoughts on the Fourth of July

I truly believe that under all the fireworks, barbeques, and swimming pools, Independence Day should be a day of reflection on how far we've come as a nation since the Declaration of Independence was signed 244 years ago. We've seen a lot in our almost two and a half centuries of being American, and we've changed a lot, too. We've expanded from a small group of 13 colonies to a massive 50 states spanning across an entire continent (and beyond!). We've contributed a lot to the world: electricity, labor unions, motion pictures... However many of us forget the cost at which we were able to get where we are today. Many Americans look outwardly to find villains: communists, nazis, fascists, yet we've collectively committed crimes that are equally abhorent: like the trail of tears or the centuries of slavery that ended only to be followed by decades of civil injustice. It's important to recognize and remember these darker aspects of our story not only to avoid repeating these atrocious mistakes, but to truly understand who we are as a people. Don't get me wrong, I think America is swell! I'm not trying to dampen your celebration. All I'm saying is we can't lose our perspective on who we really are. We can't pick and choose the parts of our history we wish to remember. We must take the good with the bad, learn from our mistakes, make amends, and move on.

Another manner in which we've changed greatly is the idea of America being the land of freedom. It's something we tout even in our national anthem. I believe that America is the land of the free in that it unshackled itself of unfair British rule, but I disagree with those who say we are a land of Freedom. This isn't because I'm one of those people who believes in small government. Most of what I'm talking about has its roots in social behaviors. An adult cannot talk to a child that is not his own without being suspected of being a pedophile. A woman cannot wear even tastefully revealing clothing without being called a lot of names. A person cannot talk about religion without being labeled a zealot. We've come to repress ourselves so much that it's practically impossible to do things people considered perfectly normal even 50 years ago. Here me out - I believe that instead of the land of Freedom we should really emphasize the fact that America is the land of Opportunity. This has always been true throughout our history, and I hope will always be a facet of American life: that any person can, through hard work, a little ingenuity, and more hard work achieve just about anything he or she sets out to do. Great examples include the Vanderbilt family, the Hoover Dam, or Thomas Edison. This is what makes America great - not our military history or our football teams - but the welcoming arms of Opportunity.

Think about it.
Happy Fourth of July!
Nostalgically Yours