If you know anyone who was prominent in the 1980s in fields such as music, design, fashion, science or politics, and you think they would be happy to answer some questions about their experiences/memories of the 80s, please nominate them online.

We are looking for Australian people who were in bands, ran clubs and bars, record labels, record shops, fashion designers, notorious partygoers, minor celebrities, subcultural icons, early hackers and phreakers, designers, film makers, artists, actors, scientists, political activists and more – the kind that might generally fall beneath the radar of a museum exhibition. Memorable people with a good story to tell.

(Any contact details gathered via the nomination form will be used only for the purposes of the Q&A and will be kept strictly confidential.)

We plan to start posting the responses before the exhibition opens, and adding more to portray a broad picture of the 1980s during the run of the exhibition. We are hoping for a mix of serious and light responses, aiming to build an engaging and revealing microsite. The more people who agree to participate, the better the site will be – enabling a broader and more meaningful picture of the 80s to emerge.

Some sample questions alongside biographical questions might include –

- Were you ever able to solve a Rubik’s Cube?
- Was there one event/party/pub session/nightclub of the 80s that stands out?
- What historical event of the 1980s has most resonance for you? Why?
- Any memories (fond or foul) of what you were wearing in the 1980s?
- What were you listening to – and was it on a Walkman?
- What did you do for entertainment/leisure then and now?

Nominate someone!

If you have any questions about the nomination process you can either ask in the comments or email Irma Havlicek, who’ll be running the q&a (irma@phm.gov.au) or call her on +61 2 9217 0344.

Evidence? Well, the Go-Betweens consistently applied a sound based on acoustic guitars (and outstanding songwriting). They ignored musical fashions and were utterly dedicated to their art. They only had one chart hit, ‘Streets of Your Town’ (1988), but their reputation has grown since the 80s.

Kev Carmody’s debut album Pillars of Society (1989) had acoustic arrangements and protest-style lyrics. It is great that he has just been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.

There was Paul Kelly’s magnificent acoustic album Post. Kelly had disbanded the Dots in 1982 and, after two years without a record deal, he moved to Sydney. I was already a Kelly fan – I loved his first two albums Talk and Manila. I remember seeing him on a succession of Sunday nights at the Strawberry Hills Hotel (it must have been 1985), playing acoustic with Michael Barclay on harmonies and Spencer P Jones on guitar. It was clear that Kelly was writing songs at a phenomenal rate. That’s where I first heard him do ‘From St Kilda To Kings Cross’, ‘Laughing Boy’ and ‘Bradman’. These were brilliant songs — dark, acoustic and intense. Except one night when he sang Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’.

The Lighthouse Keepers recorded country-flavoured acoustic rock for the Sydney independent label Hot. In fact country music became cool at inner city venues, with bands like Dancehall Racketeers, the Happening Thang and Fifty Million Beers. But that’s another post.

What Australian acoustic music appealed to you in the 80s?

When we think of 1980s music, acoustic and folk are not styles that immediately come to mind. We tend to think more of pop music performed by attractive, well-groomed performers accompanied by synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers. Acoustic music was unfashionable. This, for me, made it appealing. I’d like to talk about some of my favourite 80s acoustic music, albums that managed to penetrate the synth pop jungle. Up-to-date production values were not what made these albums good. It was the songs.

In 1982 Bruce Springsteen released Nebraska. He had recorded the songs at home as demos for his band but decided to release them as they were. Pared back to the basics of acoustic guitar and harmonica, his songs held up as haunting narratives of working class desperation.

I remember my friend Tim Toni telling me around 1985 about new British music from Tracey Thorn, Ben Watt and Billy Bragg. Thorn and Watt released acoustic-ish solo albums before joining forces to form Everything But the Girl.

The folk revival of the 1950s accommodated a set of ideological presuppositions from the political left and included minority voices. Billy Bragg conveyed this kind of folk protest sensibility with a solo electric guitar. It wasn’t acoustic, but he was an angry young man standing alone on stage railing against the establishment. I saw him at Selina’s. I think it was in 1988.

Elvis Costello went acoustic in 1986 with his gem of an album King of America (his best work in my book). Then he toured Australia, playing acoustically with T-Bone Burnett at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. I seem to recall that the album flopped, and Elvis went back to recording with the Attractions, quickly releasing the mediocre Blood and Chocolate, which was well received. Go figure.

Meanwhile stateside, Michelle Shocked appeared with a punk-folk attitude on her roughly recorded debut album The Texas Campfire Tapes. Suzanne Vega emerged from the New York folk scene to sing smart, poetic songs in a gentle voice. Overseas she is remembered for ‘Luka’, her 1987 song about domestic violence, but here in Australia we had already latched on to her first album, the one with ’Marlene on the Wall’.

Tracy Chapman bobbed up with a cracker of a first album. She was one of the few Americans in the Reagan era who were ‘talking about a revolution’.

The Indigo Girls had a radio hit in 1989 with ‘Closer to Fine’, from their self-titled album. There were other acoustic acts too, like the Roches and Bruce Cockburn. Can you think of more examples? Is it drawing a long bow to call this 80s phenomenon ‘the second folk revival’?

The Violent Femmes used acoustic instruments to play a kind of punk folk. ‘Blister in the Sun’ is one of those 80s songs whose appreciation has grown over the years. Another is Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, which he wrote in the 80s. It appeared on his 1984 album Various Positions. Bob Dylan helped to popularize it by performing it in concert in 1988. Speaking of Dylan, for whom this is regarded by many as a low period, he wrote some of his best songs in the 80s — ‘Every Grain of Sand’, ‘Jokerman’, ‘Blind Willie McTell’, ‘Dark Eyes’, ‘Brownsville Girl’ and the entire Oh Mercy album. When he was persuaded in 1985 to go for a 1980s approach to production, Arthur Baker was recruited to mix the recordings. The result was Empire Burlesque, which, with its gated snare drums and synths, now sounds horribly dated, despite the good songs.

And what of folk music in the 80s? Of course there were artists who had stuck to playing folk styles for decades. But in terms of new music, the label had lost its meaning. Unsupportable notions of authenticity had been exposed long ago. Ethnic or folkloric musical styles from Latin America, Africa and elsewhere were re-branded as world music, enabling record shops to group them in a category. In 1986 Paul Simon introduced world music to the masses with the huge-selling Graceland.

At the end of the decade (November 1989 in fact), MTV Unplugged first went to air in the US. And so began the 90s phenomenon of rock stars who usually use electric instruments reinterpreting their hits with acoustic guitars.

There was the elegant and classy Sade, singing in 1984 about affluent lifestyles on Diamond Life (‘Smooth Operator’ told the story of a jet-setting ladies’ man.) And what about Huey Lewis and the News? ‘Hip to be Square’ was an anthem of 80s conservatism. Even Mick Jagger recorded a sophisticated, dance-inflected, highly produced, solo album, She’s the Boss. (Remember when he performed at Live Aid backed by Daryl Hall & John Oates’ band?)

Australia had its own exponents of 80s adult pop, such as the Eurogliders and Mondo Rock.

You can point to a more specific genre of sophisticated adult-oriented pop, that was smooth and radio friendly, with a jazz tinge. I’m thinking Terence Trent D’arby, Kenny G, Style Council, Matt Bianco, Everything but the Girl, Swing Out Sister, Joe Jackson (post-Beat Crazy), Prefab Sprout, Level 42 and, most prominently, Sting. Australia had new exponents of popular jazz like Vince Jones and James Morrison. And Kate Ceberano went jazzy with her septet.

Then there were those purveyors of new age music on the Windham Hill label, like Vangelis.

Some ageing baby boomers and disgruntled hippies resisted the trend to sophistication in the 80s. They used to argue that mainstream pop music had become more slick, produced, processed, synthetic, manufactured and corporatised. To them, music seemed to have become more dependent on image, style (and classy saxophone solos) than substance, sincerity and songwriting.

Before digital technology allowed for cheap home recording and DIY distribution, multinational record companies were at the peak of their power, ensuring corporate control over music. In 1986 the Electric Pandas appeared in a TV commercial for Coca-Cola and Eurogliders appeared in one for Faberge jeans! I don’t see anything wrong with this – good luck to them! However you can understand why people felt music had gone corporate. Robert Palmer even turned ‘Simply Irresistible’ into a Pepsi commercial. Apologies for the picture quality in this embedded clip but you’ll get the idea.

The 80s was also a time of indulgent celebrity record producers. Kylie Minogue’s hits were produced on the assembly line of Stock, Aitken, Waterman, whose name sounded like a firm of accountants.

Those who tired of synth pop, haircut bands, glam metal, overwrought power ballads, Farnsie & Barnsie and over-the–top gated snare drums sought alternatives, like hardcore punk, dance music, rap and indie rock. Some looked for acoustic music, but that’s another story.

Synth pop was popularised by British artists like Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Joy Division/New Order, the Human League, Tears for Fears, the Pet Shop Boys, Eurythmics, the Bronski Beat, Howard Jones and many others.

With liberal doses of hair gel, make-up and marketing, snazzy groups like A Flock of Seagulls, the Thompson Twins and Haircut 100 were suited to the new video medium. They came to be denigrated as ‘haircut bands’.

Synth pop’s use of new technology came with the rise of video games and computers. In fact New Zealand synth pop outfit Mi-Sex wrote a song about ‘Computer Games’ and cultivated a computerised, futuristic image.

Australian major record companies found their own synth pop talent. One act was Real Life, who had an international hit with ‘Send Me an Angel’. Another was a Melbourne outfit called Pseudo Echo, whose early fans identified themselves as part of a goth subculture. Influenced by Ultravox, Duran Duran and Japan, the band came to be labelled as new romantic. Although they did not have a record contract, in 1983 Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum put them on Countdown. Quickly signed by EMI, Pseudo Echo became known as Australia’s foremost exponents of synth pop. By the end of 1983 they had gone Top 5 with their debut single, ‘Listening’. Dig the classic 80s drum and synth sounds on this clip.

Expect to see some original 80s gear from Pseudo Echo in our 1980s exhibition. The band has generously agreed to lend some great stuff, like one of those 80s keyboard guitars (‘keytars’), some drums, clothing and awards. Singer/guitarist Brian Canham, who runs a studio in Melbourne, even has the shirt he wore in the video clip for ‘Funkytown’, which was an international hit for Pseudo Echo in 1986. The video is living proof that this band could rock.

The 1980s exhibition will feature an exclusive interview with Brian, in which he reveals that the band took its name from one of the settings on a synth.

They say that the ‘new romantic’ look emerged from the nightclubs of London, inspired by the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, who launched her ‘Pirate’ collection in 1981.

A contrast to the drab punk fashions of the late 1970s, this was a shift towards glamour, fantasy and dressing up. The new romantic look included androgynous clothes, frilly shirts, velvet, smart suits, make-up, eyeliner and quaffs. It made reference to historical dress, c1700s (pirates, tricorn hats etc). Check out Adam Ant’s ‘dandy highwayman’ clobber in this video clip.

‘Antmusic’ certainly had a different sound. To me it sounds strangely unmelodic. The backing sounds like the Glitter Band with extra tom toms.

As well as Adam Ant, the new romantic fad was associated with English bands like Visage, Duran Duran, Ultravox and Spandau Ballet. I have tried but cannot differentiate a ‘new romantic’ sound from the rest of the synth pop that ruled the charts in the early 80s. The songs were conventionally structured and performed without the anarchy and angst of punk. New romantic bands espoused no particular ideological messages and were unthreatening. Ergo, it was more about the look.

Culture Club are often cited as new romantic but the label is inadequate to describe the incredible style of Boy George. By the time they had conquered the charts, the distance between Culture Club and punk was so great that Dave Rimmer titled his 1986 book Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop. I never read it but I could understand the title.

I used to buy blank 90 minute cassettes (C90). Most LP record albums were about 40 minutes, so a C90 could hold an album on each side, usually with space to add a few carefully selected bonus tracks. Making these tapes was a solitary pleasure and an end in itself, just as much fun as listening to them later.

Some people created special covers for the cardboard sleeves that went inside the transparent cassettes boxes. Here is a picture of some of Adam Takesce’s beautifully decorated cassette sleeves. Sometimes he would copy the album cover art, others were his own creations.

I avoided buying pre-recorded cassettes, thinking it was better to own the LP and tape it for the car. Cassettes in the car were exposed to sunlight and rough treatment. And there was the hazard of having tapes chewed up by cassette players. LPs lasted longer, sounded better (no hiss) and were more substantial artefacts. Not everybody agreed. Pre-recorded cassettes accounted for more than 50% of global music sales in the mid-1980s.

Launched in 1979, the Sony Walkman was a groundbreaking personalised wearable hi-fi product that boosted the boom in cassette sales.

The Walkman was the iPod of its day, although cumbersome and heavy by comparison. It had clunky buttons, short battery life and no shuffle mode. But people loved it. It was the perfect accessory for the 80s exercise craze.

I had a sporty yellow version of the Sony Walkman when I was working in Europe in 1984 and 1985. It was comforting on cold alpine nights to listen to my Elvis Costello tapes, the Jam and a precious mixtape of Big Chill-ish 1960s songs sent by a friend.

Although the consumption of recorded music was dominated by albums and cassettes until the end of the 1980s, the arrival of the CD was a major shift. Cassettes were quickly cast aside or stashed in the back of the wardrobe, where mine still languish today. I just can’t bring myself to throw them out. They are part of me.

A revenge tragedy saga with far-fetched storylines, Return to Eden was influenced by the lavish, melodramatic American soaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, using plot devices like nightmares, amnesia, plastic surgery, bitchiness, hysteria and rich people. The production design helped to give Return to Eden its high gloss glamour. Throw in some outback Australian imagery, some Indigenous characters (with few lines) and, with Australia regarded as flavour of the month in the US, you have an overseas hit.

It was told from a woman’s point of view through Stephanie’s voiceover. There was lots of gratuitous male flesh. Rebecca Gilling (as Stephanie) is savaged by a crocodile, then has plastic surgery and returns to avenge her evil lover (James Reyne as a kind of yuppie tennis pro) with nobody recognising her even though she looks the same.

Produced by Hanna Barbera-McElroy and McElroy, Return to Eden was a critical flop but one of the most successful mini-series of the 1980s. It became a 22-part series in 1986.

Australians love to watch locally made drama but it is expensive to make. It has always been cheaper to import American programs. However the introduction of a tax concession (known as 10BA) for film and television productions encouraged investment in telemovies and mini-series. It allowed independent producers like Kennedy Miller and Crawfords to make high-budget mini-series, giving commercial networks access to prestige product for a fraction of its actual cost.

The historical mini-series became the boom TV genre of the 1980s. It brought national myths to the small screen, with quality, nation-defining drama, often about colonial settlement, the outback or war — essential aspects of Australian identity. Most of the obvious Australian historical legends, stories and themes were dramatised.

The genre is ideally suited for the screen adaptation from literary sources (think of Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South and Poor Man’s Orange), although many were written specifically for television. Some were fictionalised versions of true stories.

A preferred, but not necessary, ingredient was Sigrid Thornton. In Crawford’s 1983 adaptation of Nancy Cato’s novel All the Rivers Run, Sigrid became the captain of her own riverboat, the Philadelphia. All the Rivers Run had all the typical qualities of a mini-series – an historical, rural setting, action, romance and a heroine overcoming adversity to fulfil her destiny.

I liked John Jarratt as Ned Kelly in The Last Outlaw (1980). Nothing like his scary character in Wolf Creek!

Now let’s see, there was Sara Dane (remember the wonderful Juliet Jordan?), Waterfront (with Jack Thompson), My Brother Tom, The Cowra Breakout, Vietnam (with a young Nicole Kidman), ANZACS (starring Paul Hogan), Nancy Wake, A Fortunate Life, Water Under the Bridge, The Dismissal …and on it goes.

Can you remember any other 1980s Australian historical mini-series? What were their good and bad points?

As the 10BA tax concessions were progressively reduced, the historical mini-series was displaced in the late 1980s, exacerbated by a collapse that saw the Seven and Ten networks in receivership and Nine in great debt. Networks found that ongoing drama series were cheaper to make than lavish mini-series. Historical drama almost vanished from Australian television as program makers sought new inspiration for telling contemporary stories. Mini-series have returned only occasionally to our screens.

British hard rock groups of the 1970s such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were popular in Australia well into the 1980s. However, it was really, in the early 1980s, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bands, as the movement was known in the music press, which started the culture of headbangers or metalheads in the suburbs of Australian towns and cities. Bands like Iron Maiden, Saxon, Def Leppard and Motorhead spoke to teenagers, primarily male, and primarily European, in a language that was distinct from, and in opposition to the benign pop music of the time. The local band scene was slower to react to what was happening in the UK though. Sydney bands like Surrender and Cobra were still playing Deep Purple, Rainbow and Jimi Hendrix covers and sticking to the 70s hard rock formula.

In the early to mid 1980s, American metal bands were becoming hugely popular: Van Halen, Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken, and WASP offered a more polished, though still heavily guitar driven sound. These bands also put emphasis on stage show and image – drawing on the earlier 1970s glam image, but cutting it with the leather and studs of bands like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. These American bands showcased innovative and skilful guitar playing, and this inspired local headbangers to practice what chops they had non-stop. Although these bands had limited exposure here in Australia, the Sydney metal scene responded with bands like Shy Thunder, Lightning Rock, Roxx, Assassin, Lotus, and White Widow – all aspiring to be the Australian Van Halen or Ratt. These bands played in Sydney pubs regularly and gathered a following. The metal scene was born.

In America, the flashiness of Motley Crue and Ratt (who had gotten progressively glammier) wore thin on fans. Enter San Francisco band Metallica. The band’s 1984 debut album Kill ‘em All was raw, honest and addictive to metalheads. Other bands quickly followed: Anthrax from New York, Megadeth from LA, and Slayer (much heavier and rawer than the others) all started to garner massive followings.

In Sydney, the only place to obtain heavy music not on major labels was Utopia Imports in Martin Place. The tiny shop was always full of headbangers, some of whom would travel hours to get there. The shop was a micro-scene itself. The latest metal from OS would be playing through the stereo, and the guys who worked there were aficionados of all things metal. Metallica, et al, were discovered there by countless ’bangers.

The Sydney scene too was bored of would-be guitar heroes and men in tights. In the Western suburbs – Blacktown, Parramatta, guys started jamming much heavier, less pretentious stuff. Slaughter Lord, Death Mission, Massive Appendage all started gigging at the same places Roxx, Lightning Rock, and Lotus, et al had been playing, and bringing crowds that got drunker, looked heavier, and had a far more conspicuous good time than previous hard rock crowds had. Other bands joined the scene: Addictive, Detriment, and Mortal Sin – who went on to lead the scene, getting a major record deal with Polygram and scoring big supports (Metallica, Anthrax), and touring Europe with burgeoning thrash group Testament.

The scene revolved around several pubs and clubs: The St James Tavern in the city had metal every Thursday night, The Hills Inn at Seven Hills every Saturday night, The Coogee Bay had metal bands regularly, The Sutherland Inn was a regular, as was The Den at Penshurst and The Bexley Hotel; The Cobra Club at Parramatta had metal on Fridays, and other smaller pubs regularly had metal bands: The Lewisham Inn, The Vulcan Hotel, The Teacher’s Club in the city, The Lansdowne, The Hopetoun, The Mortdale Hotel, The Wagon Wheel at St Marys. Crowds and bands alike inevitably moved afterwards to someone’s house for a party. All headbanger group-houses were decorated with the trophies of such parties: tens, even hundreds of consumed bourbon and vodka bottles!

The metal scene was mortared together by a deep passion for heavy music and like-mindedness, but it ran on alcohol – the drug of choice. A close second was marijuana, and then speed. There were very rarely fights though. If there were they were over girlfriends – who were in limited supply in the scene. Self mutilation was something some headbangers practiced as a ritual at gigs: Some headbangers had to be carted off in ambulances several times when the glass-inflicted cuts on their arms and torso bled uncontrollably. Every weekend there were parties or a gig somewhere. No one cared how wasted you got. It was a badge of honour. No one cared how poor you were. Heavily worn and ripped clothes were preferred. There was camaraderie in ‘chucking in’ with your mates to buy a case of beer and a ‘stick’ of pot, and consuming the above while listening to Slayer. Band T-shirts, tight black jeans or faded blue jeans, white hi-tops, denim or leather jacket, and long hair was the uniform. Though the hair was an option, most ’bangers grew it as long as they could. Mundane society was to be laughed at. As were pop music, pop culture in general, politics, and the police. Sydney headbangers in the 1980s aligned themselves with the punk movement. There were a few bands that crossed the punk/metal divide: Death Mission, Mass Appeal, The Hard Ons. Headbangers saw themselves as anti-establishment, and as a definite sub-culture. The hair band trend that saw a resurgence in the US and subsequently in the Australian mainstream charts – bands like Bon Jovi, Europe, Poison and Whitesnake (post 1987) – brought metal out of the underground, but by and large these bands were ignored by the Sydney metal scene, or were at least laughed at. Headbangers still wanted harder and heavier bands. Mortal Sin, Addictive, Detriment, and Frozen Doberman – all ‘thrash’, street clothe image metal bands – were the biggest crowd drawers in Sydney during the hair band era. Death Metal took the metal scene into the 1990s, where it remains the predominant metal genre for the current scene. Glammier bands have seen a resurgence, though really purely for a nostalgic aesthetic. Mortal Sin have continued, in one form or another, through the 1990s to now.

To all you 1980s headbangers – the Powerhouse Museum would like to hear from you. Tell us about your experiences of gigs, parties, life as a ’banger in the 1980s in Australia. We’d also like to see any photographs you may have kept, or if you’ve kept any of those 80s metal T-shirts, old jeans, hi-tops or jackets, we’d like to know about them as well.