80s News Today

Good Lord, people! Do you remember the sheer, unadulterated buzz? The hum of the VCR! The pristine, plastic clamshell case, hot off the factory floor, promising glory! Yes, on February 5, 1987, the very air itself crackled with a new, distinctly American energy. It was the day Top Gun , that shimmering, testosterone-fueled ode to speed, swagger, and the sheer, intoxicating power of the United States Navy, landed not in theaters, but right in your suburban living room. And it wasn’t just any landing. Oh no, my friends, this was no gentle taxi to the gate. This was a MACH 2 POWER DIVE into the very heart of how we consumed, how we owned, our cinematic dreams. This was a WATERSHED MOMENT so seismic it reshaped the very topography of Hollywood’s profit margins, sending shockwaves through every mom-and-pop video store from Bethesda to Burbank! Before this fateful day, buying a movie on VHS was an act of almost monastic devotion. These were not impulse buys, these were investments. A single ...

The Beverly Center mall opened its doors on February 4, 1982, and Los Angeles, that great chrome-plated dream factory, paused for a moment—only a moment—to witness the arrival of something new, something monumentally, unapologetically itself. Here was the future, or at least a version of it that cost $100 million and rose eight stories high on the old site of kiddie rides and cotton candy, where once the Ferris wheel spun lazy circles above Beverly Park and now the parking structure itself became the plinth for retail nirvana. Picture it: the intersection of La Cienega and Beverly Boulevard, that throbbing artery where the traffic never quite stops and the billboards scream in primary colors. Developers A. Alfred Taubman, Sheldon Gordon, and E. Phillip Lyon had taken the triangular plot—8.8 acres of former pony rides and mini-roller-coasters—and piled upon it a brown monolith, a great angular box wrapped in glass escalators that climbed like transparent veins toward the Hollywood Hill...

(The wind howls outside, a mournful, hungry sound. It rattles the windowpanes of this old house, sounding like the ghost of a thousand drowned men. And tonight, friends, tonight it brings to mind a story, a true story, of two ships, too much ambition, and the unforgiving maw of the Bering Sea. Pull up a chair, won't you? It gets cold out there, and some stories are best told with the chill of dread pressing at your back.) In the winter of '83, a cold, hard year that felt like the earth itself was holding its breath, two ships vanished. Not just any ships, mind you. These weren't rickety old trawlers held together with spit and baling wire. These were the Americus and the Altair , twin sisters, state-of-the-art beauties, the pride of Anacortes, Washington. Steel behemoths, designed to conquer the brutal, bottomless pockets of the Bering Sea and bring home the king's ransom in crab. They were strong, they were fast, and they were, everyone thought, damn near unsinkable. ...

The wind outside isn’t just cold; it’s the kind of cold that feels like a razor blade with an aftersplash of rubbing alcohol. It’s February 2, 1981, a Monday that feels like a Tuesday, and in the record stores, a certain vinyl disc is sliding out of its sleeve. It’s called Killers . And let me tell you, the name isn't just hyperbole. The cover art gives you the first jolt. There’s Eddie. You remember Eddie, don’t you? That skeletal, grinning mascot with the hair like a dry hayfield and eyes that have seen the inside of a furnace. This time, he’s standing under a streetlamp that casts shadows long enough to hide a dozen sins. He’s clutching a hatchet—dripping, of course—and his victim is reaching up, fingers clawing at Eddie’s shirt in a final, useless plea. It’s a nasty bit of business. It looks the way a scream sounds. The first rock band apparel I ever bought? A black Iron Maiden jacket with this album cover emblazoned on the back. It doesn't get any better than that. But wh...

On February 1, 1983, Journey did two things rock bands virtually never do, and one they rarely do. Every successful rock band promises their follow-up to their breakthrough hit album will be rawer and heavier. Journey actually did it, cranking up the guitar crunch and drum hits, and Steve Perry taking a more aggressive approach vocally. Every successful rock band promises to take a new direction stylistically on their next record. Journey actually did it, with no song on Frontiers resembling their 1981 megahit "Don't Stop Believin.'" And rock bands who have success on the level Journey did with previous platter Escape rarely can sustain that level of sales and popularity on their follow-up disc. Yet Journey was among the few to stay at least as hot on Frontiers. Lead single "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" arguably became as iconic of an 80s cut as "Don't Stop Believin.'" Despite having an easy blueprint for repeat success, Journey took a ...

Ah, the late '80s, that glittering, gaudy vortex of excess! Los Angeles, the Sunset Strip – a neon-lit jungle where dreams clawed their way up from the gutters, enveloped in hairspray and leather pants, electric guitars screaming like banshees in the night! And into this maelstrom, on January 31, 1989, bursts Warrant , those Hollywood hustlers, unleashing their debut album Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich upon an unsuspecting world hungry for hooks, for heartaches wrapped in power chords, for anthems that could make the stadiums shake and the groupies swoon. Pow! There it was, certified platinum, storming the charts with its sleazy swagger, peaking at number 10 on the Billboard 200, spawning hits that blasted through car radios and MTV screens like fireworks in a fireworks factory explosion! The title alone encapsulating the 80s zeitgeist! But while Warrant visually resembled the glam bands that were a dime a dozen in the wake of Poison and Theatre of Pain -era Motley Crüe, the b...

The snow had started falling again in late January 1980, the kind of wet, clinging snow that sticks to everything like bad memories you can't quite shake. In living rooms across America, people were still arguing over whether the picture on their new television sets looked better with the lights on or off, and the machines—those big, clunky VCRs and Betamax players—sat like squat, patient animals in the corners of dens and family rooms, waiting for something to feed them. Up until then, if you wanted to see a flick like Deliverance , you had to wait for it to show up at the local cinema or pray the network censors didn’t chop it into confetti for the Saturday Night Movie. But around January 30, 1980, the world shifted on its axis just a hair. Warner Home Video dumped a whole bucket of titles onto the market—VHS and Betamax—and suddenly, the cinema wasn't a place you went; it was a thing you owned. Imagine it. You’re sitting there in your wood-paneled den, the smell of stale Pal...