Herb Sundays: The Biggish '80s

Strafing the decade with non-hits, alt versions, and unfinished gems. - SV4

Herb Sundays: The Biggish ‘80s (Apple, Spotify). Art by

Michael Cina

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As a good follow-up to last week’s dive into 80s/’90s memories, I present The Biggish ‘80s. Not the Big ‘80s of melodious megahits, but the Biggish ones, AKA a panoply of sounds that arguably don’t belong together but give me that distinct feeling. The least cool decade to most, lacking the perceived substance and grit of its bookends is rich Herb territory to mine.

Some of my favorite (re-)discoveries via Herb have indeed been ‘80s tunes, ones that rocket to the top of my private mode listening. Whether it’s Billy Idol on Trevor Jackson’s (Herb 17) mix, The Associates on Mark Fell (Herb 116), Thomas Dolby on Philip Sherburne’s mineral grade set (Herb 80) the whole dang thing from Veronica Vasicka (Herb 62), it is a cold rush of pleasure. It may be because my formative years were spent soaking in the sounds of that decade, but there is always a familiarity there.

The forecast calls for heavy gated reverb, be advised.

As someone who thinks about music production a bit, I’m always mystified by how sound changes over time. For a long time, I thought it was purely the conditions of the gear and technique used to record sound, sort of a “laboratory” mindset, but I’ve come to see production as both the marriage of that aspect stretched across the moment’s imagination and fears, or societal norms and needs. In short, you can never really remake the sound of the past even with the same technical setup, because our minds and our world keep changing.

It also helps that the ‘80s was arguably the beginning of the Producer Era, as studio technology and studios themselves became increasingly emblematic. The tension between analog and digital, the application of synths and drum machines to live bands, and most of it crushed to beautiful tape—it’s the sound of people learning new skills.

The decade kicked off with producers like Factory Records co-founder and in-house maverick Martin Hannett (Joy Division, OMD), the architect and the “Manchester Sound,” who created a sonic tableau that helped post-punk transcend into something steely and futuristic. Alex Sadkin (Grace Jones, Duran Duran), who helped define the Compass Point Studio sound thanks to a world-class Wrecking Crew-esque band in the Bahamas, who died at only 38. The maturation of Hip-Hop from the live environment to records under the masterful Larry Smith (Run DMC, Fat Boys) who found a new minimal template with a big Oberheim DMX drum machine and live accompaniment. On the big stage, the virtuosic Prince was aided by producer/engineer Susan Rogers, who kept pace with the Purple One, allowing him the freedom to produce from his own space at his own clip.

From the RBMA lecture:

SUSAN ROGERS: With him, it was typically anywhere between 16 and 24. 16 would be a fairly short session, but we frequently did 24 hours. That was fairly common. That was how long it took, because he never wanted to come back to a song. If he started it, he wanted to do all the overdubs and mixing it as we went, and then print it, and then it would be done, and then we’d sleep for a few hours and then start another song.

What is now often seen as overindulgence, the best ‘80s songs are simultaneously featherweight and tuff, airtight but smeary in the right places. With fresh ears, they become landscapes in themselves.

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