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What were you listening to 30 years ago?

The thing that made the biggest impression on me in 1984 was The Art Of Noise, which made the "boring bands from Grimsby" on the John Peel Show sound a bit lame.
 
Yep, same era here, uni in Edinburgh, where I have very fond memories of a storming REM gig where they did an acoustic encore of Pale Blue Eyes. Listening at that time was a combination of The Smiths, Bunnymen, Icicle Works, The Fall (the Brix Smith incarnation played a great gig), plus older songwritery stuff like Van, Joni, Laughing Lenny.

Those cassettes from the NME also figured, a Blue Note comp and a fab vintage R&B selection from Aladdin and Imperial they titled The Little Imp. The likes of a pre-sellout Aswad and Gil Scott-Heron (before he hit The Bottle too hard himself) were regular live attractions too.

Then somebody lent me a copy of Kind of Blue and the Glenn Gould 1981 Goldbergs and my horizons expanded considerably...much to the benefit of the city's 2nd hand vinyl emporia at that time. Vinyl Villlains at the top of Leith Walk still going strong though!
 
There should've been a rule on this thread that you have to list bands starting with the least cool.
 
From 1984:

Agents aren't Aeroplanes - The Upstroke
Dr Calculus - Programme 7
Frank Chickens - Blue Canary
Frankie goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the pleasure dome
Men they couldn't hang - Night of a thousand candles
Orange Juice - Texas fever
Penguin Café Orchestra Folk - Broadcasting from home
The Pixies - Surfa Rosa
Echo & the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
Everything but the Girl - Eden
Wah! - Come Back

Along with Robert Wyatt, Frank Zappa, and a whole load more...
 
In 1984 I was still listening to cassettes, recorded from the radio or from LPs borrowed from the public library.
Lots of classical: Bach, Bartók, Beethoven, Berio, Brahms, just to name some of the Bs.
A bit of jazz: Errol Garner, that sort of thing.
Blues came later in 1985 or 86, when I got the record deck.
Pop/rock came mostly from kindly friends trying to educate me beyond Pink Floyd and Genesis. So: the Doors, Zappa, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Robert Fripp...
Didn't like Dire Straits, Patti Smith, Police, Blondie in those days. I have changed my mind on some of those; perhaps a nostalgia thing.
 
I had just got married and we were buying our first house so money was tight and I ended up selling quite a lot of the vinyl that I had collected over the previous decade. The LP12 suvived, though, as my wife was a musician and we couldn't live in a house without music. We were playing lots of Joni, Neil Young, Steely Dan and quite a bit of jazz (Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, Keith Jarrett, Sonny Rollins, Coltrane, Davis) plus I suspect I was still playing a lot (prog/rock) of the stuff from my student days.
 
Very little. I remember a limited and curious selection of my stored LPs I'd managed to transfer to cassette (which I still have) and a very few new pop things on cassette that I'd come across living in a Midlands 80s smalltown wasteland.

Old
Henry Cow & Slapp Happy
Charlie Haden
Wha Ha Ha
Residents - early singles
Troutmask
Harry Partch
Van Dyke Parks

New
Sonic Youth Death Valley 69 12"
Foetus - Scraping Foetus of The Wheel - 'Hole'
Smiths Hatful and 1st
Some New Order 12" singles.
A Holger Hiller I can't remember
John Zorn - the Morricone interpretations
The new Velvet Underground 'VU' compilation was a mainstay of those years.
 
mr.datsun said:
Very little. I remember a limited and curious selection of my stored LPs I'd managed to transfer to cassette (which I still have) and a very few new pop things on cassette that I'd come across living in a Midlands 80s smalltown wasteland.

Old
Henry Cow & Slapp Happy
Charlie Haden
Wha Ha Ha
Residents - early singles
Troutmask
Harry Partch
Van Dyke Parks

New
Sonic Youth Death Valley 69 12"
Foetus - Scraping Foetus of The Wheel - 'Hole'
Smiths Hatful and 1st
Some New Order 12" singles.
A Holger Hiller I can't remember
John Zorn - the Morricone interpretations
The new Velvet Underground 'VU' compilation was a mainstay of those years.
Click to expand...

Was the Holger Hiller 'A bunch of foulness in the pit' (can't remember the German tltle)??

I love that and it's follow up 'Oben Im Eck'....Still play the 2 LP's on 1 CD regularly now- Thanks J. Peel.
 
At age 11, I was just expanding my musical horizons past The Beatles and (don't laugh) the Art of Noise. I think I was discovering (again, don't laugh) Jean Michelle Jarre, and really liked much of the (now embarrassingly awful) music of the day - Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Wham, that sort of thing. Of these bands, the only one I still get as much out of now as then are of course the Hey Jude Hitmakers....
 
Jan 2015 hi-finews and RR has a fascinating article about the Hacienda, Manchester. I was far too old and in the wrong place, but it did look fun. The bit about Einsturzende Neubauten and the pneumatic drill in 1985 was hilarious. Did anyone go there?
 
Thirty years ago? I was likely listening to 7.568 metric tonnes of Rush.

I went through a long phase afterward of hating Rush, but I recently rediscovered the band and find that they really are pretty decent after all. I still have no use for the Ayn Randian-inspired lyrics or the mullety / keyboardy crap after Moving Pictures or maybe Signals, but no one can screech on key like Geddy when he's being sucked into the black hole of Cygnus X-1.

Spinning, whirling
Still descending
Like a spiral sea
Unending

Sound and fury
Drowns my heart
Every nerve
Is torn apart

Joe
 
XTC, Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark, The Jam, Elvis Costello, The Stranglers, Pink Floyd, New Order, The Cure, Oingo Boingo, B-52s, Talking Heads, Danish new wave stuff, Japan, The Clash, Kraftwerk, Tom Petty, Shriekback, Was Not Was, Siouxsie and Banhees, and the list continues.

Re "Einstürtzende Neubauten": On a Wednesday night in 1983 or 84, over-tired from work, I travelled by local train to Copenhagen to watch them at the now demolished "Saltlageret" including pneumatic drill, iron bars and train tracks etc. Brilliant noise I suppose but not particularly to my liking. And despite the noise (eh "music") I had a very hard time keeping my eyes (and ears) open - not only due to the number of beers that I drank that night, mind you. And everyone somehow connected to the Danish punk and new wave scene was there as well. Interesting ight.

Peter
 
They are still going it seems -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstürzende_Neubauten

Apparently at the Hacienda they attacked the main concrete pillar holding up the roof with their pneumatic drill. Blood was shed in the ensuing fight and they were banned for life. I must check out their 'music' :)

(I like what I'm seeing on YouTube. I wonder if they are up for a gig at the Edinburgh Festival next year)
 
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