Everyone believes the time or era they "grew up" in had the best music and overall scene. True, the 60's were like nothing else before, the 70's were everything from the lowest to the highest times, yet it was the 1980's that contained the widest variety of new music, great bands, and of course since it was "my" era, the best times.

I had started really getting into rock n roll about age 11, somewhere around the time in 1977 when punk started to come in and I got tierd of my kiddie "disco" bullshit 45's. I remember getting so revved up when the new Cream magazines came out, I'd seek out the bands they talked about, those bands I'd hear at the local skating rink (Jonquil Skating Rink, Smyrna GA.)- bands like The Cars, Elvis Costello, Blondie. The 70's rock was still hanging on, Led Zeppelin and Kiss, Bad Company and Pink Floyd were still king. Yet on the "new" rock scene, for a pre-teen dude in the then awesome atmosphere of radio in Atlanta, Georgia, a shock wave was brewing. I actually tried to get in the Sex Pistols show when they came through Atlanta, but slipping out my parent's window and hitching a ride to the outskirts of the metro area with some older friends wearing hush puppies and boot-cut jeans, all we managed to do was drink some forbidden beer outside in the parking lot. Still, I had the fever.

1980, from my first teen year of 13 half-way through 14, rock n roll became my gospel. Radio then was killer. Pay-for-play was getting a foothold, yet AOR (real Album Oriented Rock) stations blasted old and new, sometimes complete albums or full sides, day-in-and-out. I vividly remember at age 14, smoking a real columbian gold joint, sitting in my room with Christmas lights of all colors around the ceiling, a black light on far in the corner, and nothing else but the receiver light of my silver technics stereo (it finally quit in 2001) guiding me with the head phones on sitting cross-legged while the totally awesome (and still is) 88.5 FM college station spun Generation X's "Dancing With Myself", then right into Motorhead's "The Chase Is Better Than Then Catch". No ladies and gentlemen, until the brave internet DJ's came into being (and have since mostly been silenced by the music mafia), after the early 80's, that kinda one-two was only the stuff of legend on big-watt radio.

Everyone says the 70's and 80's were "bad drug" times. Let me tell you this, in all honesty, here in 2004, the shit is much, much, worse. And you can thank the idiots who lead the drug war for making it that way, after the just say no laugh-about of the Reagan years began the "drug war", all of a sudden the good columbian gold and panama red, which besides homegrown, became impossible to get, the dealers brought in the Kentucky Blue Grass or Christmas Tree sensimellia. This was before all you could get was cross-bred mexican (which became king around 88 or 89), because mexican was brown dirt weed $5 an ounce, then. After the government started the shit, then the organized crimesters could really make a killing, literally, both by raising the price (went from $20 a half to $40 a quarter within 2 years), and beginning to mess with the powders, making them more readily available to the masses.

Weed wasn't called "dope" much on the scene then, except by the ignorant (well, that much hasn't changed).

The 80's were also the period when rock n roll truly splintered and became a multi-threaded monster. The early 80's saw the hard rock and punk of the 70's fuse into true heavy metal. Punks and metal heads like to say nah, but truth is they both spawned from the same goat back in the mid 70's. By the very early days of 1980, a golden era of heavy music really came into it's own, which in turn spawned many of the hybrids, from so-called "hair" metal (not really a genre, just something the bikers could throw at the pretty boys) to the cross section stuff still evolving today, such as rap metal (sometimes called nu metal today by idiots looking for labels for everything). Hardcore and speedmetal burned such holes that the evil grin of death and black metal started early in the 80's, and today even there are many faces of the devil dog, still very much alive and claiming souls world wide.

Heavy metal music really came on strong from 1980 through the end of 1983. I remember the religious experience I had when I first got Judas Priest's British Steel. It still makes me want to thrash and tear the room apart. My parents hated rock n roll, they were the "older" generation, before the boomers. Funny how now the boomers are alot like them, my mom and dad's "greatest" generation they like to call themselves. Both the boomers and the depression-era folks worked in the greatest boom the US Of A ever had, from the end of world war 2 until the end of the century. I could understand my mom and dad hating rock n roll man. It wasn't their music. They were born in the 20's. I do, however, blame the boomers partially for the bullshit youth has to endure today. The boomers, so many of them, are hypocrits to the max. A majority indulged in the opening societies of the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Now they wanna shut things down, tell us, the X and Y's and the up and comers, it's not cool for the kids to listen to music talking about sex and drugs. Excuse me? It was for you, but not moi? Oh yeah, the majority of boomers I know support all the wars, drug, terror, and the one on you, because they're afraid shit is getting out of control.

*It's getting that way because those two generations are mostly in control, and they had things easy. After world war two the economy boomed, most of them had life long jobs if they wanted them, plush retirement, assured old age pensions and social security. They became the corporate raiders and thieves, the ones who run the huge media conglomerates that hide things in gloss and rhetoric to sell it to you and I. The one who know it's the "game" for radio and cable to pay for content, and not accept the free or cheaper stuff 'cause they don't own it out right. If they don't control it, they want to kill it, imprison it. They grew up, had all the fun they wanted. Now, we're not allowed to, because they say they were lucky to have made it, that they did wrong and don't want us to.

Well, all of you above 50, fuck off if you want to control my life, tell me how to live, because I grew up in the 80's, and knew then the older folks, most of them didn't understand, and that was cool. You do understand, and want to play the politically correct fool. Nah, you're time is coming to an end. Those in the below 50 sect whose minds you've poisoned with your glitter, gold, corporate and high tax money wheeling and dealing, they might be trying to follow you down glory road, but listen up. We don't have the luxury of the never ending stream of new jobs and money you did. There's too many people, and you've become your parents, and became apathetic has you gained control. Revolution is coming, and you "might not" get an assured check. That is, why would we want to take care of you, with our money, when what you're wanting to do is control us, tell us what to do, how to live?*

Between * and * above....sound familiar. Yup, it was heard in the mid fifties through the mid 60's. That attitude was called counter-culture then, or subculture. The old ones called it rebellion. In the 80's we called it rock n roll. Now, the do-gooder and weak minded sheep want to call it unpatriotic, unamerican. Well, things are different, but every 20 years or so seems like a cycle comes around. While it's not "cool" to realize those taking your money and spending it on drug and other wars are stupid, people are starting to remember that in the 80's, that fact was a given. Somewhere along the line, we got rich, lazy, and started to believe mom and dad know about rock n roll. Wake up, they still don't. See, the powers that be want you to believe you are less secure today, so they bomb you with "alerts" and 24/7 right-wing media madness. Sounds just like the 50's, so I am told. We all know what happened after that? Rock N Roll. They say it's "different" today. Different weapons of mass destruction, worst drugs, worst morality in the media and commercial institutions. Excuse me? In the 1980's, we partied down just knowing the russians were gonna start a nuclear war "any" day. A more deadly WMD than a 100 megaton thermonuclear head knocker? You say yeah, I say deal with reality. You say the "drugs" are ruining and killing our youth? Well, you've been running a full out drug war for 20 years now, and it seems before you started all that shit, weed and beer were mainstream, now it's meth and X? Sounds like your war has been a disaster, don't think I'll buy any bonds for that conflict. You run the media and the play for play rackets, the government lobbied and licensed "smut" and "degrading" of cable and mainstream tv. Remember MTV in the 80's? Remember when it was cool. When they actually showed great videos instead of stupid marketing "reality tv" ploys. Remember when Ozzy was kinda scary to the "uncool". Remember when you went to see Ozzy then, in the 80's. The hardest thing around was acid, and you laughed and rocked all night, not ran and hid from the helicopters? Remember when radio played the heavy Metallica stuff from like Puppets or Justice? Remember when your local music club was really an "underground" club, and you heard hardcore punk and metal, before the whimpy glossy metal and cliched "grunge". Remember when it was OK to wear different clothes than your buds? Remember big blocks with 750 double pumper 4-barrels? Camaros, firebirds, air shocks? Remember the Talking Heads? Remember good and varied music on the radio, cheap beer and cheaper weed? Remember when you could legally (or illegaly) cruise the strips and boulevards of America and millions of us did, with stereos super loud blasting original music? Remember when the police let keg parties go for hours before they busted them, if they even messed with you? Remember when most people did not have cable TV or computers? Remember when ordering pizza delivered was the latest thing, and they cost over $15 before the tip? Remember the 80's? I do.