If you're gonna do the 80's.......

Words by Paul Aston

So we've finally hit 88mph. The Delorean has left its burning tracks and where are we? The 80's. The goddamn 1980's. Like mirror image Star Trek movies, everyone knows that the only good decades are the odd ones.

"But it's retro" I hear you cry, and so it is. "It's cool, just look at the colours", that too is true. There really are the colours. All the colours of the neon artists bin. I think you're missing the point.

Look at the last great retro revival, the 70's. It kicked off in the 90's when, like the 70's there was a new kind of dance music and new drugs sweeping the nation. That was good, we were riding the wave of chemicals and beats and were looking for a little guidance. The 70's provided that with a loose attitude to sexual morals, a love of booty shaking and no small amount of wicked visuals. It was, as the Dame said, a case of history repeating itself.

So what do we have now that warrants such a fascination with a decade that paradoxically birthed both the businessman and the bankrupt? Is it the culture? Is it the prolific amount of cheap cocaine? Or, like that bad old times? is it that we are so culturally bankrupt we're looking to the US for our cool? And this is the thing, the US is leading the way in comics, movies and TV. Especially TV. If you think about it, the only must watch things, the only things that set you apart from your fiends are the cool shows from the US that you found first. It's the modern day equivalent of the dad who goes to the states on business and brings back a pair of Nike Air Jordan Trannyfuckers for his kid, six months before everyone else gets them.

But, if you want to be trip down memory lane, take a Strawberry double dip, take a Purple Ohm. Wear your baggiest pants, cut your hair into a big fat bowl and get nicely toasted. You see, mercifully, the 80's produced the best thing ever, the so called Second Summer of Love. A time of ground breaking musical and cultural convergence, both indy kids and ravers would find themselves in a field, loved up and creating a scene that so scared the government they passed laws to try and stop it. THAT was proper retro, take the idea of free love and drugs and do it with the street smarts of the new generation.

You see, I'm not just writing this because of the visceral urge I feel to disembowel the 19 year old Nathan in the Frankie Says t-shirt down Brick Lane. I'm writing this because I was fucking there, and I don't want to go back.

You're so close, and if you want to do the 80's. Do them goddamn right.