The Eighties Online

The mountain’s crater had been rumbling and steaming for several weeks. I was camping near a mountain stream in the Cascade Mountain Range over 300 air miles from the mountain when it blew. What I heard sounded like blasting nearby.

Odd for early Sunday morning. But our party didn’t think much of it until we boarded our rigs for the trip home and tuned in the radio.

As it turned out, a tremendous explosion of trapped gases, generating about 500 times the force or the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, blew the entire top off Mount St. Helens.

In a single blast Mount St. Helens was transformed from a picture-perfect symmetrical cone 9,667 feet high to a flat-top 1300 feet lower. Clouds of hot ash made up of pulverized rock were belched twelve mile into the sky.

The force of the prolonged energy burst rocketed into the upper atmosphere and slapped the skies. Vertical ripples spread through the atmosphere causing lazy fluctuations in the air. Hours later in Washington D.C., scientists would record gravity waves from Mount St. Helens crossing the Eastern Seaboard.

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It was the beginning of the New World the beginning of the information age. Perhaps never had the mood of a decade reversed itself so totally. The 1980s began with the worst U.S. inflation in 60 years in the deepening dread of nuclear annihilation.

As the 1980s came to an end inflation was making a last and unsuccessful assault on an economy that had found new resources, the Berlin wall was tumbling down, and the Soviet empire was dissolving.

The Cold War was over and the West won!

Ronald Reagan reversed the direction of government policy recasting social programs and cutting taxes. Unmatched by spending reductions, however, those cuts and deficits soaring to unheard-of highs, and the double-digit inflation of 1980 was cured only by double-digit unemployment in 1982.

The economy revived, but an outside share of the benefits seemed to flow to Wall Street. Mergers proliferated wildly, mostly, it seemed, for the enrichment of a few financial manipulators.

But unlike in the irrationally exuberant 1920s, disaster did not strike as it did in the depression that started in 1929. Those stocks fell even faster on October 19, 1987, than the hat in 1929, they bounced back higher than ever, setting the stage for the roaring bull market of the 90s. Something fundamental had happened to the boom and bust cycle of the 20th century.

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We grew up on 80`s music and we are still listening to 80`s music today.

Though much of the music was inspired by punk rock, only a fraction of it sounded much like that aggressive, revolutionary format.

MTV, one of the ’80s most singular, well-known phenomena, served as a backdrop and venue for much of the pop music of the ’80s.

By popularizing the music video format for the masses, the cable network allowed audiences a visual intimacy with their pop music idols never possible previously.

New wave’s blend of punk, power pop, mainstream rock and disco constituted the first fresh genre to emerge in the Reagan Era. MTV, one of the ’80s most singular, well-known phenomena, served as a backdrop and venue for much of the pop music of the ’80s.

As a unique and distinct subgenre of new wave, synth pop was quite a force in mainstream and underground pop music during the first half of the ’80s. It helped standardize the use of synthesizers across genres as well, among its several influences on pop music moving forward.

One of new wave’s biggest stars, the Cars boasted a sound that encompassed several styles, including pure pop, power pop, classic rock and punk.

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