Australia in the 1980s

As part of our online work complementing The 80s are back exhibition, we’ll be running a Q&A series.

If you know anyone who was prominent in the 1980s in fields such as music, design, fashion, science or politics, and you think they would be happy to answer some questions about their experiences/memories of the 80s, please nominate them online.

We are looking for Australian people who were in bands, ran clubs and bars, record labels, record shops, fashion designers, notorious partygoers, minor celebrities, subcultural icons, early hackers and phreakers, designers, film makers, artists, actors, scientists, political activists and more – the kind that might generally fall beneath the radar of a museum exhibition. Memorable people with a good story to tell.

(Any contact details gathered via the nomination form will be used only for the purposes of the Q&A and will be kept strictly confidential.)

We plan to start posting the responses before the exhibition opens, and adding more to portray a broad picture of the 1980s during the run of the exhibition. We are hoping for a mix of serious and light responses, aiming to build an engaging and revealing microsite. The more people who agree to participate, the better the site will be – enabling a broader and more meaningful picture of the 80s to emerge.

Some sample questions alongside biographical questions might include –

- Were you ever able to solve a Rubik’s Cube?
- Was there one event/party/pub session/nightclub of the 80s that stands out?
- What historical event of the 1980s has most resonance for you? Why?
- Any memories (fond or foul) of what you were wearing in the 1980s?
- What were you listening to – and was it on a Walkman?
- What did you do for entertainment/leisure then and now?

Nominate someone!

If you have any questions about the nomination process you can either ask in the comments or email Irma Havlicek, who’ll be running the q&a (irma@phm.gov.au) or call her on +61 2 9217 0344.

Not all Australian bands were punk-inspired indies, suburban oz-rockers or paisley-wearing jangly guitar bands. There was an acoustic revival here too.

Evidence? Well, the Go-Betweens consistently applied a sound based on acoustic guitars (and outstanding songwriting). They ignored musical fashions and were utterly dedicated to their art. They only had one chart hit, ‘Streets of Your Town’ (1988), but their reputation has grown since the 80s.

Kev Carmody’s debut album Pillars of Society (1989) had acoustic arrangements and protest-style lyrics. It is great that he has just been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.

There was Paul Kelly’s magnificent acoustic album Post. Kelly had disbanded the Dots in 1982 and, after two years without a record deal, he moved to Sydney. I was already a Kelly fan – I loved his first two albums Talk and Manila. I remember seeing him on a succession of Sunday nights at the Strawberry Hills Hotel (it must have been 1985), playing acoustic with Michael Barclay on harmonies and Spencer P Jones on guitar. It was clear that Kelly was writing songs at a phenomenal rate. That’s where I first heard him do ‘From St Kilda To Kings Cross’, ‘Laughing Boy’ and ‘Bradman’. These were brilliant songs — dark, acoustic and intense. Except one night when he sang Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’.

The Lighthouse Keepers recorded country-flavoured acoustic rock for the Sydney independent label Hot. In fact country music became cool at inner city venues, with bands like Dancehall Racketeers, the Happening Thang and Fifty Million Beers. But that’s another post.

What Australian acoustic music appealed to you in the 80s?

Quote: ‘I’ve always wanted to do a collection of my acoustic numbers with the London Philharmonic.’ (David St Hubbins, This Is Spinal Tap, 1983)

When we think of 1980s music, acoustic and folk are not styles that immediately come to mind. We tend to think more of pop music performed by attractive, well-groomed performers accompanied by synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers. Acoustic music was unfashionable. This, for me, made it appealing. I’d like to talk about some of my favourite 80s acoustic music, albums that managed to penetrate the synth pop jungle. Up-to-date production values were not what made these albums good. It was the songs.

In 1982 Bruce Springsteen released Nebraska. He had recorded the songs at home as demos for his band but decided to release them as they were. Pared back to the basics of acoustic guitar and harmonica, his songs held up as haunting narratives of working class desperation.

I remember my friend Tim Toni telling me around 1985 about new British music from Tracey Thorn, Ben Watt and Billy Bragg. Thorn and Watt released acoustic-ish solo albums before joining forces to form Everything But the Girl.

The folk revival of the 1950s accommodated a set of ideological presuppositions from the political left and included minority voices. Billy Bragg conveyed this kind of folk protest sensibility with a solo electric guitar. It wasn’t acoustic, but he was an angry young man standing alone on stage railing against the establishment. I saw him at Selina’s. I think it was in 1988.

Elvis Costello went acoustic in 1986 with his gem of an album King of America (his best work in my book). Then he toured Australia, playing acoustically with T-Bone Burnett at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. I seem to recall that the album flopped, and Elvis went back to recording with the Attractions, quickly releasing the mediocre Blood and Chocolate, which was well received. Go figure.

Meanwhile stateside, Michelle Shocked appeared with a punk-folk attitude on her roughly recorded debut album The Texas Campfire Tapes. Suzanne Vega emerged from the New York folk scene to sing smart, poetic songs in a gentle voice. Overseas she is remembered for ‘Luka’, her 1987 song about domestic violence, but here in Australia we had already latched on to her first album, the one with ’Marlene on the Wall’.

Tracy Chapman bobbed up with a cracker of a first album. She was one of the few Americans in the Reagan era who were ‘talking about a revolution’.

The Indigo Girls had a radio hit in 1989 with ‘Closer to Fine’, from their self-titled album. There were other acoustic acts too, like the Roches and Bruce Cockburn. Can you think of more examples? Is it drawing a long bow to call this 80s phenomenon ‘the second folk revival’?

The Violent Femmes used acoustic instruments to play a kind of punk folk. ‘Blister in the Sun’ is one of those 80s songs whose appreciation has grown over the years. Another is Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, which he wrote in the 80s. It appeared on his 1984 album Various Positions. Bob Dylan helped to popularize it by performing it in concert in 1988. Speaking of Dylan, for whom this is regarded by many as a low period, he wrote some of his best songs in the 80s — ‘Every Grain of Sand’, ‘Jokerman’, ‘Blind Willie McTell’, ‘Dark Eyes’, ‘Brownsville Girl’ and the entire Oh Mercy album. When he was persuaded in 1985 to go for a 1980s approach to production, Arthur Baker was recruited to mix the recordings. The result was Empire Burlesque, which, with its gated snare drums and synths, now sounds horribly dated, despite the good songs.

And what of folk music in the 80s? Of course there were artists who had stuck to playing folk styles for decades. But in terms of new music, the label had lost its meaning. Unsupportable notions of authenticity had been exposed long ago. Ethnic or folkloric musical styles from Latin America, Africa and elsewhere were re-branded as world music, enabling record shops to group them in a category. In 1986 Paul Simon introduced world music to the masses with the huge-selling Graceland.

At the end of the decade (November 1989 in fact), MTV Unplugged first went to air in the US. And so began the 90s phenomenon of rock stars who usually use electric instruments reinterpreting their hits with acoustic guitars.

It’s Friday afternoon and here’s my latest theory. In the 1980s baby boomers grew up and took pop music with them. As they gained employment, many enjoyed the benefits of the economic surge. Boomers sought music more suited to their newfound adult sensibilities. As a result, the decade saw the rise of suave, well-dressed singers like Robert Palmer, whose ‘Simply Irresistible’ video encapsulates the suave yuppie 80s ethos.

There was the elegant and classy Sade, singing in 1984 about affluent lifestyles on Diamond Life (‘Smooth Operator’ told the story of a jet-setting ladies’ man.) And what about Huey Lewis and the News? ‘Hip to be Square’ was an anthem of 80s conservatism. Even Mick Jagger recorded a sophisticated, dance-inflected, highly produced, solo album, She’s the Boss. (Remember when he performed at Live Aid backed by Daryl Hall & John Oates’ band?)

Australia had its own exponents of 80s adult pop, such as the Eurogliders and Mondo Rock.

You can point to a more specific genre of sophisticated adult-oriented pop, that was smooth and radio friendly, with a jazz tinge. I’m thinking Terence Trent D’arby, Kenny G, Style Council, Matt Bianco, Everything but the Girl, Swing Out Sister, Joe Jackson (post-Beat Crazy), Prefab Sprout, Level 42 and, most prominently, Sting. Australia had new exponents of popular jazz like Vince Jones and James Morrison. And Kate Ceberano went jazzy with her septet.

Then there were those purveyors of new age music on the Windham Hill label, like Vangelis.

Some ageing baby boomers and disgruntled hippies resisted the trend to sophistication in the 80s. They used to argue that mainstream pop music had become more slick, produced, processed, synthetic, manufactured and corporatised. To them, music seemed to have become more dependent on image, style (and classy saxophone solos) than substance, sincerity and songwriting.

Before digital technology allowed for cheap home recording and DIY distribution, multinational record companies were at the peak of their power, ensuring corporate control over music. In 1986 the Electric Pandas appeared in a TV commercial for Coca-Cola and Eurogliders appeared in one for Faberge jeans! I don’t see anything wrong with this – good luck to them! However you can understand why people felt music had gone corporate. Robert Palmer even turned ‘Simply Irresistible’ into a Pepsi commercial. Apologies for the picture quality in this embedded clip but you’ll get the idea.

The 80s was also a time of indulgent celebrity record producers. Kylie Minogue’s hits were produced on the assembly line of Stock, Aitken, Waterman, whose name sounded like a firm of accountants.

Those who tired of synth pop, haircut bands, glam metal, overwrought power ballads, Farnsie & Barnsie and over-the–top gated snare drums sought alternatives, like hardcore punk, dance music, rap and indie rock. Some looked for acoustic music, but that’s another story.

The music and style of late 70s punk had a back-to-basics aesthetic that rejected anything synthetic, artificial and embellished. However by the early 80s many new wave bands were moving beyond punk’s limited musical palette and trading in their guitars for synthesizers (synths) and drum machines. Synths were a major part of the sound of the 80s.

Synth pop was popularised by British artists like Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Joy Division/New Order, the Human League, Tears for Fears, the Pet Shop Boys, Eurythmics, the Bronski Beat, Howard Jones and many others.

With liberal doses of hair gel, make-up and marketing, snazzy groups like A Flock of Seagulls, the Thompson Twins and Haircut 100 were suited to the new video medium. They came to be denigrated as ‘haircut bands’.

Synth pop’s use of new technology came with the rise of video games and computers. In fact New Zealand synth pop outfit Mi-Sex wrote a song about ‘Computer Games’ and cultivated a computerised, futuristic image.

Australian major record companies found their own synth pop talent. One act was Real Life, who had an international hit with ‘Send Me an Angel’. Another was a Melbourne outfit called Pseudo Echo, whose early fans identified themselves as part of a goth subculture. Influenced by Ultravox, Duran Duran and Japan, the band came to be labelled as new romantic. Although they did not have a record contract, in 1983 Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum put them on Countdown. Quickly signed by EMI, Pseudo Echo became known as Australia’s foremost exponents of synth pop. By the end of 1983 they had gone Top 5 with their debut single, ‘Listening’. Dig the classic 80s drum and synth sounds on this clip.

Expect to see some original 80s gear from Pseudo Echo in our 1980s exhibition. The band has generously agreed to lend some great stuff, like one of those 80s keyboard guitars (‘keytars’), some drums, clothing and awards. Singer/guitarist Brian Canham, who runs a studio in Melbourne, even has the shirt he wore in the video clip for ‘Funkytown’, which was an international hit for Pseudo Echo in 1986. The video is living proof that this band could rock.

The 1980s exhibition will feature an exclusive interview with Brian, in which he reveals that the band took its name from one of the settings on a synth.

When you think early 80s, ‘new romantic’ bands come to mind. What was it all about – music, fashion or both?

They say that the ‘new romantic’ look emerged from the nightclubs of London, inspired by the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, who launched her ‘Pirate’ collection in 1981.

A contrast to the drab punk fashions of the late 1970s, this was a shift towards glamour, fantasy and dressing up. The new romantic look included androgynous clothes, frilly shirts, velvet, smart suits, make-up, eyeliner and quaffs. It made reference to historical dress, c1700s (pirates, tricorn hats etc). Check out Adam Ant’s ‘dandy highwayman’ clobber in this video clip.

‘Antmusic’ certainly had a different sound. To me it sounds strangely unmelodic. The backing sounds like the Glitter Band with extra tom toms.

As well as Adam Ant, the new romantic fad was associated with English bands like Visage, Duran Duran, Ultravox and Spandau Ballet. I have tried but cannot differentiate a ‘new romantic’ sound from the rest of the synth pop that ruled the charts in the early 80s. The songs were conventionally structured and performed without the anarchy and angst of punk. New romantic bands espoused no particular ideological messages and were unthreatening. Ergo, it was more about the look.

Culture Club are often cited as new romantic but the label is inadequate to describe the incredible style of Boy George. By the time they had conquered the charts, the distance between Culture Club and punk was so great that Dave Rimmer titled his 1986 book Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop. I never read it but I could understand the title.

Through the 1980s (and beyond), I loved recording cassette tapes of my favourite albums. I also enjoyed making my own customised mixtapes, especially if I was about to go away on holidays. Cassettes provided mobility that Long Playing records (LPs) did not have. Most cars were fitted with cassette players. In fact, until a few years ago, my car had a cassette player, not a CD player. I still miss it. When I bought a new car in 2005, I asked the dapper young Honda salesman at Rick Damelian’s if the car came with a cassette player and he looked at me like I was an idiot.

I used to buy blank 90 minute cassettes (C90). Most LP record albums were about 40 minutes, so a C90 could hold an album on each side, usually with space to add a few carefully selected bonus tracks. Making these tapes was a solitary pleasure and an end in itself, just as much fun as listening to them later.

Some people created special covers for the cardboard sleeves that went inside the transparent cassettes boxes. Here is a picture of some of Adam Takesce’s beautifully decorated cassette sleeves. Sometimes he would copy the album cover art, others were his own creations.

I avoided buying pre-recorded cassettes, thinking it was better to own the LP and tape it for the car. Cassettes in the car were exposed to sunlight and rough treatment. And there was the hazard of having tapes chewed up by cassette players. LPs lasted longer, sounded better (no hiss) and were more substantial artefacts. Not everybody agreed. Pre-recorded cassettes accounted for more than 50% of global music sales in the mid-1980s.

Launched in 1979, the Sony Walkman was a groundbreaking personalised wearable hi-fi product that boosted the boom in cassette sales.

The Walkman was the iPod of its day, although cumbersome and heavy by comparison. It had clunky buttons, short battery life and no shuffle mode. But people loved it. It was the perfect accessory for the 80s exercise craze.

I had a sporty yellow version of the Sony Walkman when I was working in Europe in 1984 and 1985. It was comforting on cold alpine nights to listen to my Elvis Costello tapes, the Jam and a precious mixtape of Big Chill-ish 1960s songs sent by a friend.

Although the consumption of recorded music was dominated by albums and cassettes until the end of the 1980s, the arrival of the CD was a major shift. Cassettes were quickly cast aside or stashed in the back of the wardrobe, where mine still languish today. I just can’t bring myself to throw them out. They are part of me.

While on the subject of TV mini-series, there is an Australian classic that epitomises the 1980s. Does anybody remember Return to Eden (Ten, 1983)? It sort of broke the mould of the mini-series by having a contemporary setting.

A revenge tragedy saga with far-fetched storylines, Return to Eden was influenced by the lavish, melodramatic American soaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, using plot devices like nightmares, amnesia, plastic surgery, bitchiness, hysteria and rich people. The production design helped to give Return to Eden its high gloss glamour. Throw in some outback Australian imagery, some Indigenous characters (with few lines) and, with Australia regarded as flavour of the month in the US, you have an overseas hit.

It was told from a woman’s point of view through Stephanie’s voiceover. There was lots of gratuitous male flesh. Rebecca Gilling (as Stephanie) is savaged by a crocodile, then has plastic surgery and returns to avenge her evil lover (James Reyne as a kind of yuppie tennis pro) with nobody recognising her even though she looks the same.

Produced by Hanna Barbera-McElroy and McElroy, Return to Eden was a critical flop but one of the most successful mini-series of the 1980s. It became a 22-part series in 1986.

We are going to look at television culture in our 1980s exhibition and it strikes me that there is something unique about Australian TV drama in the 1980s. Towards the end of the 1970s a new narrative genre emerged — the Australian historical mini-series. The convict drama Against the Wind (Seven, 1978) was one of the first of these produced for commercial television.

Australians love to watch locally made drama but it is expensive to make. It has always been cheaper to import American programs. However the introduction of a tax concession (known as 10BA) for film and television productions encouraged investment in telemovies and mini-series. It allowed independent producers like Kennedy Miller and Crawfords to make high-budget mini-series, giving commercial networks access to prestige product for a fraction of its actual cost.

The historical mini-series became the boom TV genre of the 1980s. It brought national myths to the small screen, with quality, nation-defining drama, often about colonial settlement, the outback or war — essential aspects of Australian identity. Most of the obvious Australian historical legends, stories and themes were dramatised.

The genre is ideally suited for the screen adaptation from literary sources (think of Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South and Poor Man’s Orange), although many were written specifically for television. Some were fictionalised versions of true stories.

A preferred, but not necessary, ingredient was Sigrid Thornton. In Crawford’s 1983 adaptation of Nancy Cato’s novel All the Rivers Run, Sigrid became the captain of her own riverboat, the Philadelphia. All the Rivers Run had all the typical qualities of a mini-series – an historical, rural setting, action, romance and a heroine overcoming adversity to fulfil her destiny.

I liked John Jarratt as Ned Kelly in The Last Outlaw (1980). Nothing like his scary character in Wolf Creek!

Now let’s see, there was Sara Dane (remember the wonderful Juliet Jordan?), Waterfront (with Jack Thompson), My Brother Tom, The Cowra Breakout, Vietnam (with a young Nicole Kidman), ANZACS (starring Paul Hogan), Nancy Wake, A Fortunate Life, Water Under the Bridge, The Dismissal …and on it goes.

Can you remember any other 1980s Australian historical mini-series? What were their good and bad points?

As the 10BA tax concessions were progressively reduced, the historical mini-series was displaced in the late 1980s, exacerbated by a collapse that saw the Seven and Ten networks in receivership and Nine in great debt. Networks found that ongoing drama series were cheaper to make than lavish mini-series. Historical drama almost vanished from Australian television as program makers sought new inspiration for telling contemporary stories. Mini-series have returned only occasionally to our screens.

Hi, I’m an assistant curator working on the 1980s exhibition, and I’ve been asked to guest-blog about heavy metal in the 1980s.

British hard rock groups of the 1970s such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were popular in Australia well into the 1980s. However, it was really, in the early 1980s, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bands, as the movement was known in the music press, which started the culture of headbangers or metalheads in the suburbs of Australian towns and cities. Bands like Iron Maiden, Saxon, Def Leppard and Motorhead spoke to teenagers, primarily male, and primarily European, in a language that was distinct from, and in opposition to the benign pop music of the time. The local band scene was slower to react to what was happening in the UK though. Sydney bands like Surrender and Cobra were still playing Deep Purple, Rainbow and Jimi Hendrix covers and sticking to the 70s hard rock formula.

In the early to mid 1980s, American metal bands were becoming hugely popular: Van Halen, Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken, and WASP offered a more polished, though still heavily guitar driven sound. These bands also put emphasis on stage show and image – drawing on the earlier 1970s glam image, but cutting it with the leather and studs of bands like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. These American bands showcased innovative and skilful guitar playing, and this inspired local headbangers to practice what chops they had non-stop. Although these bands had limited exposure here in Australia, the Sydney metal scene responded with bands like Shy Thunder, Lightning Rock, Roxx, Assassin, Lotus, and White Widow – all aspiring to be the Australian Van Halen or Ratt. These bands played in Sydney pubs regularly and gathered a following. The metal scene was born.

In America, the flashiness of Motley Crue and Ratt (who had gotten progressively glammier) wore thin on fans. Enter San Francisco band Metallica. The band’s 1984 debut album Kill ‘em All was raw, honest and addictive to metalheads. Other bands quickly followed: Anthrax from New York, Megadeth from LA, and Slayer (much heavier and rawer than the others) all started to garner massive followings.

In Sydney, the only place to obtain heavy music not on major labels was Utopia Imports in Martin Place. The tiny shop was always full of headbangers, some of whom would travel hours to get there. The shop was a micro-scene itself. The latest metal from OS would be playing through the stereo, and the guys who worked there were aficionados of all things metal. Metallica, et al, were discovered there by countless ’bangers.

The Sydney scene too was bored of would-be guitar heroes and men in tights. In the Western suburbs – Blacktown, Parramatta, guys started jamming much heavier, less pretentious stuff. Slaughter Lord, Death Mission, Massive Appendage all started gigging at the same places Roxx, Lightning Rock, and Lotus, et al had been playing, and bringing crowds that got drunker, looked heavier, and had a far more conspicuous good time than previous hard rock crowds had. Other bands joined the scene: Addictive, Detriment, and Mortal Sin – who went on to lead the scene, getting a major record deal with Polygram and scoring big supports (Metallica, Anthrax), and touring Europe with burgeoning thrash group Testament.

The scene revolved around several pubs and clubs: The St James Tavern in the city had metal every Thursday night, The Hills Inn at Seven Hills every Saturday night, The Coogee Bay had metal bands regularly, The Sutherland Inn was a regular, as was The Den at Penshurst and The Bexley Hotel; The Cobra Club at Parramatta had metal on Fridays, and other smaller pubs regularly had metal bands: The Lewisham Inn, The Vulcan Hotel, The Teacher’s Club in the city, The Lansdowne, The Hopetoun, The Mortdale Hotel, The Wagon Wheel at St Marys. Crowds and bands alike inevitably moved afterwards to someone’s house for a party. All headbanger group-houses were decorated with the trophies of such parties: tens, even hundreds of consumed bourbon and vodka bottles!

The metal scene was mortared together by a deep passion for heavy music and like-mindedness, but it ran on alcohol – the drug of choice. A close second was marijuana, and then speed. There were very rarely fights though. If there were they were over girlfriends – who were in limited supply in the scene. Self mutilation was something some headbangers practiced as a ritual at gigs: Some headbangers had to be carted off in ambulances several times when the glass-inflicted cuts on their arms and torso bled uncontrollably. Every weekend there were parties or a gig somewhere. No one cared how wasted you got. It was a badge of honour. No one cared how poor you were. Heavily worn and ripped clothes were preferred. There was camaraderie in ‘chucking in’ with your mates to buy a case of beer and a ‘stick’ of pot, and consuming the above while listening to Slayer. Band T-shirts, tight black jeans or faded blue jeans, white hi-tops, denim or leather jacket, and long hair was the uniform. Though the hair was an option, most ’bangers grew it as long as they could. Mundane society was to be laughed at. As were pop music, pop culture in general, politics, and the police. Sydney headbangers in the 1980s aligned themselves with the punk movement. There were a few bands that crossed the punk/metal divide: Death Mission, Mass Appeal, The Hard Ons. Headbangers saw themselves as anti-establishment, and as a definite sub-culture. The hair band trend that saw a resurgence in the US and subsequently in the Australian mainstream charts – bands like Bon Jovi, Europe, Poison and Whitesnake (post 1987) – brought metal out of the underground, but by and large these bands were ignored by the Sydney metal scene, or were at least laughed at. Headbangers still wanted harder and heavier bands. Mortal Sin, Addictive, Detriment, and Frozen Doberman – all ‘thrash’, street clothe image metal bands – were the biggest crowd drawers in Sydney during the hair band era. Death Metal took the metal scene into the 1990s, where it remains the predominant metal genre for the current scene. Glammier bands have seen a resurgence, though really purely for a nostalgic aesthetic. Mortal Sin have continued, in one form or another, through the 1990s to now.

To all you 1980s headbangers – the Powerhouse Museum would like to hear from you. Tell us about your experiences of gigs, parties, life as a ’banger in the 1980s in Australia. We’d also like to see any photographs you may have kept, or if you’ve kept any of those 80s metal T-shirts, old jeans, hi-tops or jackets, we’d like to know about them as well.

It is amazing how when I say to people that we are preparing an exhibition about the 1980s, one of the first things they mention is Commodore 64 computers. Surprisingly, the Powerhouse Museum does not have one it its collection. Does anybody have a Commodore 64 they would like to donate? With games? We’d like one with an interesting history of ownership and use. We are looking for a Commodore 64 on which we can run games in the exhibition as a working exhibit, rather than to be acquired in the collection. Can you help?

Well, it’s Friday afternoon blogging time again and I’m going to ramble. I’m sitting here pondering a conundrum — does nostalgia have anything to do with history? Or is it a product of the imagination?

What is nostalgia? A desire to return in thought or fact to an earlier time? The wistful longing for something in the past that is imagined in an idealised form? The bittersweet yearning for a time that is perceived as more perfect than today? The memory of past times purged of the bad bits?

A dictionary tells me that the word is made up of two Greek roots ( nostos ‘returning home’, and algos ‘pain’), to refer to ‘the pain a sick person feels because he wishes to return to his native land, and fears never to see it again’.

Nostalgia constructs a narrative of a utopian ideal. Each generation longs for the time of its youth and imagines it as a golden age. The negative aspects of those times are forgotten and the positives are sanctified and magnified. Consider the baby boomers’ nostalgia for the 1960s.

I am convinced that the 80s was a period of remarkable creativity that gave form to many positive aspects of the lives we lead today. But I’m not feeling nostalgic about it. Who is nostalgic for the 1980s? Those for whom it was a more innocent time, who were young and experiencing life’s richness for the first time? But not those of us who are trying to live down our own 80s, to atone for the bad things we did.

Some of the key collective memories of the decade are sensational ones that contrast with the gloom of the 70s, with its inflation, strikes and unemployment. I have discerned from people who were young and ‘in the know’ during the 80s certain mythologies of hedonism, transgression, excess, extravagance, decadence, promiscuity, glamour, narcissism, yuppiedom and underground designers. I have to confess that much of this seems superficial to me, as though people were living on the surface.

I wonder if nostalgia has more to do with the present than with the past. Could it be a critique of the inadequacy of the uncertain present? Is 80s nostalgia a retreat from the crises of the current decade? Are we seeing today a post 9/11 yearning for a period of perceived innocence, stability, peace and certainty? An age when Australia was asserting itself internationally, when a sense of national identity was taking shape, when the nation’s leaders were proud to proclaim a multicultural society? A longing for a return to a time when pub rock ruled, nightclubs flourished and pleasure seemed less fettered. An age before global warming, suicide terrorist attacks, the world wide web, mobile phones, facebook and blogs. Is this fantasy of a less complicated time just a critique of the mundane yet scary present?

I have been reading a fantastic piece by Professor Andrew Higson, writing about English ‘heritage films’ of the 80s, those Edwardian or 1920s period dramas such as A Passage to India, A Room with a View, Heat and Dust, Maurice, Another Country see his chapter ‘Re-Presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’, in the book Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, ed Lester D Friedman). He argues that nostalgia is implicitly a narrative of loss that yearns to return to a comfortable, closed past. ‘The past in all its perfection’, as he describes it.

He discusses how the 80s cinema audience might have found refuge in these films from ‘the radical and often problematic transformations of the 1980s’ (p107). I can see parallels between this and how people today find refuge in the 80s.

In Germany they have a word to describe the yearning for life in pre-1990s communist East Germany. ‘Ostalgie’ is a contraction of the German words for ‘nostalgia’ and ‘east’. It is often used to describe the popularity of kitsch objects from the German Democratic Republic days, but according to Anthony Enns, it also applies to recent German films. Enns sees the phenomenon not so much as a rose-coloured view of life under an oppressive regime but as a critique of the failure of the unified German state to live up to expectations of bringing socio-economic parity between east and west. Again, nostalgia is often more about the present than about the past.

People’s comments on this blog (and at dinner parties) reveal something of what they hold dear from the 80s. It is amazing how when you mention the 80s, people cite products, toys, clothes, songs, albums, movies, books, rather than people or events. I think we are seeing a new type of nostalgic experience that celebrates the popular culture of the recent past through its objects and commodities. A way of enjoying the styles and pleasures of the past by souveniring past commodities, but without a sense of melancholy that nostalgia implies, without the ‘algos’.

Our 1980s exhibition will push the nostalgia buttons in an upbeat and positive way but it needs to be realistic and hard-edged, showing empathy with the decade of the 1980s but without flattering it; questioning it but not disparaging it, not resorting to the wistful fantasy that implies that life was better back then and something has been lost.

Nuclear apocalypse is a theme that seems to recur through 1980s popular culture. The Day After was a 1983 telemovie that terrified people in the USA. Threads was a 1984 British film about nuclear war. There was a 1986 British animated film called When the Wind Blows, about a Soviet nuclear attack on the UK. The 1988 Japanese film Akira is set in a post-World War II future. The Mad Max trilogy implies a kind of post-World War II landscape where survivors struggle to live in a dystopian lawless society. Can you think of other examples in film and fiction?

There seems to have been a high level of anxiety in the 80s about nuclear annihilation. Little wonder, given the threat that the Cold War posed to world peace.

Did anybody see the historical documentary the other night on ABC TV called 1983: the Brink of Apocalypse? It was a scary, gripping story. It seems that on 8 November 1983, World War III nearly broke out by accident.

Operation Able Archer was a ten-day NATO training exercise that simulated a period of conflict escalation leading to nuclear attack by the west. Soviet military intelligence thought it was for real and the USSR prepared for nuclear war.

The Soviet leadership had believed since 1981 that the Americans were planning a first strike against them. They set up Operation RYAN to determine the intent of nuclear attack and then prevent it. President Reagan’s rhetoric about the ‘evil empire’ was perceived as aggressive and fuelled Soviet paranoia. The Soviets saw the Strategic Defense Initiative (dubbed ‘Star Wars’ by the press) as an escalation and a threat.

A series of events including the shooting down of Korean passenger jet on 1 September and intense paranoia by the KGB, convinced the elderly Soviet leadership, led by the ailing Yuri Andropov, that the Able Archer exercise was a ruse and that a nuclear first strike was imminent. They prepared their vast arsenal for retaliation.

At the Soviet early warning command centre, alarms went off warning of the launch of five missiles from the US heading for the USSR. According to the TV documentary, this was due to something like a Soviet satellite misreading light reflecting from clouds as missiles! A certain Commander Petrov was on duty and had to decide if the threat was real or not.

This massive misunderstanding was allowed to occur because leaders of the USA and USSR didn’t communicate with each other. It was the spies who worked out what was actually happening.

The threat of nuclear war abruptly ended with the conclusion of the Able Archer 83 exercise on November 11, Armistice Day. It seems that sheer luck averted a nuclear exchange.

Fortunately we don’t yet live in the dystopian future predicted in novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer and in the films Blade Runner and Brazil. But have any particular aspects of these fictional post-disaster societies become a reality?

Erika’s comment got me thinking about classic quotes from 1980s movies. Here is what I came up with. There must be heaps more. What can you suggest?

‘These go to eleven’ (Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel discussing his new guitar amplifiers, This is Spinal Tap, 1984).

‘I’ll be back’ (Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator, 1984)

‘Luke, I am your father’ (Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker, The Empire Strikes Back, 1980)

‘Lunch is for wimps’ (Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, 1987)

‘The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. (Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, 1987. I’ll have to check the movie, but I’m not sure he actually uttered the words ‘Greed is good’.)

‘Doc, you built a time machine … out of a Delorian?’ (Michael J Fox as Marty McFly, Back to the Future, 1985)

‘Be excellent to each other and party on dudes!’ (Keanu Reeves, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, 1989)

‘E.T. phone home’ (E.T., 1982)

‘We’re on a mission from God.’ (Dan Aykroyd as Elwood Blues, The Blues Brothers, 1980)

‘We got them and shot them under Rule 303,’ Edward Woodward as Breaker Morant, 1980)

‘Nazis. I hate these guys’ (Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, 1989)

‘Don’t call me Junior!’ (Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, 1989)

‘Good morning Vietnam’ (Robin Williams as Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning Vietnam, 1987)

‘I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way’ (Kathleen Turner as Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, 1988)

‘I’ll have what she’s having’ (Estelle Reiner as woman in deli in When Harry Met Sally, 1989)

‘Pray he’s out there’ (tag from one of the Mad Max films, Mad Max II, I think)

‘From a place we’ll always remember comes a story you’ll never forget’ (tag from Gallipoli, 1981)

‘Who you gonna call?’ (tag from Ghostbusters, 1984)

‘The 90s are going to make the 60s look like the 50s’ (Dennis Hopper as Huey Walker, Flashback, 1990. OK it’s not the 80s but I love it. I highly recommend this little-known gem of a comedy).

Just a quick Friday afternoon post about something that’s on my mind. You may have noticed that our current decade (the noughties) has seen a revival of interest in the eighties. You can see it in fashion, music, graphics, even in politics. It can’t all be due to the Bangles re-forming for their 2000 tour. Since then we have seen Rick rolling, the return of the Hoff and retro computer games. I mean, you can buy hypercolour t-shirts again. Current local bands like Van She use analogue synthesizers as an ironic homage to the 1980s. It was great to see the Presets at the 2008 ARIA awards, self-professed synth nerds who are so into the 80s.

We want to include in our 80s exhibition references to the 80s revival. What items should we display?

I am starting to gather some classic quotes from the 1980s. Most of the ones I have found are from politicians, but I am looking for quotes from other areas of public life and popular culture. Here are some of the quotes I have found so far from real people (as opposed to film and TV characters):

‘We want to be respected again.’ (Ronald Reagan, 1980)

‘Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.’ (Ronald Reagan, August 1980)

‘The eighties will belong to the computer’. (Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter in Australia, 1981)

‘Yes … whatever that may mean.’ (Prince Charles, when asked if he was in love, after the announcement of his engagement to Lady Diana Spencer, 1981)

‘How does it feel to have blood on your hands?’ (Richard Carleton interviewing the new Opposition Leader Bob Hawke, 3 February 1983)

‘Any boss who sacks a worker for not turning up today is a bum’. (Prime Minister Bob Hawke, after the America’s Cup, 1983)

‘We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.’ (Leona Helmsley, hotel owner and the ‘queen of mean’, October 1983. She was convicted in 1989 for tax evasion.)

‘I guess in a way they are counterrevolutionary, and God bless them for being that way. And I guess that makes them contras, and so it makes me a contra, too.’ (President Ronald Reagan, March 1986)

‘We did not — repeat, did not — trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we’. (President Ronald Reagan, November 1986)

‘From this day onwards, Howard will wear his leadership like a crown of thorns, and in the Parliament I’ll do everything to crucify him’. (Treasurer Paul Keating, 1986)

‘By 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty’. (Prime Minister Bob Hawke, 23 June 1987)

‘I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty.’ (Imelda Marcos, 1987)

‘Read my lips: no new taxes.’ (George H W Bush, 18 August 1988)

‘That’s Lazarus with a triple bypass.’ (John Howard, on the day he lost the leadership of the Liberal Party, when asked if he could make a comeback, 9 May 1989)

Can you think of more classic 1980s quotes?

Development of the 1980s exhibition is proceeding fairly well. We hope to have it up and running by December 2009. I am having a little Christmas holiday break but have been working on a kind of ‘vision statement’ (I hate the term. It sounds so institutional but I can’t think of a what else to call it). I guess I’m trying to sum up what this exhibition is going to be all about, to get it clear in my mind. Anyhow, how does this sound for starters?

‘This exhibition takes a light-hearted look at Australian popular culture in the 1980s. It examines the cultural activities, pastimes and entertainments practised and enjoyed in mainstream society. This period shaped the so-called Generation X, and the exhibition will have a strong focus on youth culture.

‘It will interpret the 1980s through subcultures, movements and trends expressed in music, film, television, magazines, celebrity, design and street fashion. It will address the broad sweep of popular culture, placed into historical context through a timeline of newsworthy events. While the emphasis is on the everyday experiences of ‘ordinary’ young Australians, these experiences are contextualised within a global setting.

‘This is conceived as a fun exhibition, but based on a substantial framework of research and knowledge. Its content will draw heavily on the Powerhouse Museum’s collection. The 1980s exhibition will resonate with visitors whose formative years were in the 1980s.’

Some of the recent comments posted here by Wendy and Christen mention fads or crazes from the 1980s, like yo-yos, Sunnyboys and sherbet-filled straws. For me this is déjà-v revisited all over again. You see, I have to fess up to being a mouldy old, dyed-in-the-wool baby boomer. That’s why I need your help on 1980s childhood stuff. The weird thing is that yo-yos, Sunnyboys and sherbet-filled straws were all the rage at my school around 1966. Years later, Peter Allen wrote a song called ‘Everything Old is New Again’ and he was right. As well as Sunnyboys (frozen orange drink in a pyramid-shaped pack, right?), there was Razz – frozen red drink, supposedly raspberry-flavoured. These were highly prized in the school playground on a hot day. I was just wondering if they still exist, did a quick google and voila! There was a suburban myth in my neighbourhood that if you ripped open the empty packaging there was some kind of serial number printed inside that could land you a free Sunnyboy.

It is reasonable to assume that Sunnyboys inspired the name of Jeremy Oxley’s post-punk band from the early 1980s, the Sunnyboys. They had a great song called ‘Alone with You’ around 1981, but I digress.

By my definition, fads are products or practices that come into sudden popularity and disappear just as quickly. And in many cases they return and fade again some years later. Sometimes you think a product is just a fad, but it never goes away. I think the Twister game might fall into this category. It was a big craze when I was a kid in the 1960s, along with were hula hoops and Scanlen’s bubble gum cards dedicated to a particular TV show (I still have a complete set of cards from the Japanese TV series The Samurai – what a show!) And also those slightly bizarre things that were advertised on the back of American comic books – Sea Monkeys, X-Ray Specs and Bullworker body building kits. They were fads, weren’t they? Oh, and folk music.

Anyhow, back to the 80s and its fads and crazes. There was Rubik’s Cube, of course, Trivial Pursuit, Scratch ’n’ Sniff products and some of stuff mentioned here recently under ’1980s toys and games’. What other fads or crazes were there in the 1980s?

Octopus

In the Powerhouse Museum’s collection there are a few Game & Watch games dating from the early 80s. The one shown above is called Octopus and came to the Museum from Barbara Palmer, who remembers playing the console in the school playground in the early 80s, when she was in Year 7 or 8.

The other four, Turtle Bridge, PopEye, Donkey Kong Jr and Fire, were donated to the Museum by a generous guy called Michael Henry, who was given Donkey Kong Jr for his 9th birthday in 1982. I wonder if anybody else has kept Game & Watch games from the 80s. Do you remember playing with them?

We also have this game called Shuttle Voyage, which is a bit of a mystery. Michael Henry said it was a cheap Chinese-made imitation of Nintendo games and we think it dates from around 1983.

Does anybody know more about these Chinese hand-held games from the early 80s?

Wow, I’ve been busy. My days have been too clogged to blog. I’ve been trying to make some solid progress on this 80s exhibition before the Xmas break. I’m really getting excited about this project.

I have been asking lots of people what they would like to see in an exhibition about the 1980s and have received some interesting responses. People who were children at that time often suggest toys and games. It seems to me that toys were shifting from being things that mimicked adult life (trains, guns etc) towards more reliance on fantasy, science fiction and TV cartoons. They were increasingly made of plastic, rather than metal or wood.

There are many toys that people talk about that we don’t have. Does anybody remember playing with any of the following things in the 1980s, and do you still have them?

Slyvanian families (plush toys), Glo Friends, Koosh balls, a corporate Barbie doll or Barbie and the Rockers, a troll doll. We are on the lookout for toys and merchandise from cartoons like Rainbow Brite, He-Man and She-Ra, Smurfs, Care Bears, Gummi Bears, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Popples, Muppet Babies, Pound Puppies, My Little Pony, Teddy Ruxpin, Strawberry Shortcake & Friends.

We want to include children’s fads from the 80s. Two things that are frequently mentioned are Cabbage Patch Kids and Rubik’s Cube. Luckily we have one of each in the Powerhouse Museum’s collection. Here is the Cabbage Patch doll.

Cabbage Patch Kid

Talking about 80s fads, I am also looking for a Hypercolour t-shirt (so many people mention these!) and flourescent clothing.

What other classic 1980s toys and games were there?

So, what were your favourite Australian clips of the 80s and do you know who made them?

Before he became a Hollywood film maker, Russell Mulcahy produced some imaginative clips, despite having lower budgets that his overseas counterparts. Mulcahy made clips for people like Air Supply, Little River Band, Icehouse and Richard Clapton. He moved to London and made videos for Elton John, Paul McCartney and most other members of the English rock royalty.

Crowded House and INXS always seemed to have great clips. ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ and ‘Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)’ come to mind and I recall that they were both made by Alex Proyas’ production company Meaningful Eye Contact. Proyas was a prolific clip-maker and he too became a Hollywood film director (The Crow, Dark City, I Robot).

Richard Lowenstein made an amazing clip for the Hunters and Collectors song ‘Talking to a Stranger’. My namesake Peter Cox made a stack of excellent music videos, including the clip for Cold Chisel’s ‘Cheap Wine’. There was an adults-only clip for the Stephen Cummings song ‘Gymnasium’, directed by Kimble Rendall. Midnight Oil’s classic ‘Beds Are Burning’ had a great clip directed by Claudia Castle.

On the humorous side, there was that clip where Paul Kelly was driving a taxi – was it ‘Before Too Long’? — and just about anything that involved Mental as Anything.

Some of the notable clips that I recall from overseas artists in the 80s are ‘I Wanna Be Loved’ by Elvis Costello, ‘Cry’ by Godley & Crème, ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ (Cyndi Lauper), ‘Relax’ (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), ‘Sledgehammer’ (Peter Gabriel), ‘Money for Nothing’ (Dire Straits), ‘The Boys of Summer’ (Don Henley), ‘You Might Think’ (The Cars), ‘Take on Me’ (A-Ha), ‘Dancing in the Street’ (Jagger and Bowie), ‘Rockit’ (Herbie Hancock) and ‘Jump’ (Van Halen). There are literally hundreds, thousands of others but the big daddy was Michael Jackson’s epic clip for ‘Thriller’.

And what about those Robert Palmer clips? Does anybody epitomise the suave, affluent 80s more than that guy?

I love the literal versions of 80s video clips that have appeared on the web, with revised, banal lyrics that match what’s happening on the screen. Check out literal versions of ‘Take on Me’ by A-Ha and ‘Head Over Heels’ by Tears for Fears.

What do you remember as the iconic 80s music video clips of the 80s?

I’m hoping we can show some classic video clips in this 1980s exhibition we are planning. Video clips were crucial to the development of both music and television in the 1980s. This was the decade when, as the Buggles had predicted, ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. In fact when MTV, the 24 hour-a-day music television cable channel, commenced in the USA in 1981, the first item shown was the Buggles’ prophetic clip. From this time music was consumed increasingly on TV rather than just on radio. It came with an explosion of imagery and movement, as artists would use clips to parade their style and update their look. Celebrated as an original way to promote recording artists, video clips had a profound influence on record and concert sales and shifted the place of music in daily life.

I found some useful internet resources associated with the USA’s Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. There are some great 80s music web links here.

Music video existed for years before MTV, in the form of film clips inserted into TV shows, as far back as Brian Henderson’s Bandstand . Without buying into insoluble arguments about what was the first music clip, I would point to Crash Craddock’s ‘Boom Boom Baby’, which got a lot of airplay on Bandstand around 1960. It made the singer a star in Australia, although he was relatively unknown back in the States. In terms of creativity and originality, the trail was blazed by Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, a clever black and white clip filmed in 1965 by D A Pennebaker. Included as the first scene in the film Don’t Look Back, it didn’t get much TV airplay until later but was highly influential.

In Australia, the ABC’s Countdown is remembered as a 70s phenomenon but it was equally an 80s thing, as it continued until 1987. Aimed specifically at a teenage audience, Countdown helped to consolidate the age of music video by screening the latest clips from overseas. It introduced hundreds of Australian performers to a mass audience and developed a capacity to create stars and hit records. Being a national program, it had the power to make Australian acts well-known all around the country.

Also in the 1980s, a lot of clips were seen on the Saturday morning TV show Sounds. It was an important vehicle for promoting music but rarely receives the recognition that Countdown gets. I think I am right in saying that in 1974 Graham Webb had started The Sat Today Show, which only showed music video clips. Sydney DJ Donnie Sutherland took over as host and the show became Sound Unlimited (later Sounds) and ran until December 1987, live for three hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Sounds not only introduced a generation of Australians to rock music, but, in the years before MTV hit American screens, it ushered in the era of music video. Sounds could not compete with Countdown’s insistence on the right to premiere new clips, but it presented an unparalleled breadth of Australian and overseas talent. Check out this 1980 promo for Sounds.

Around the time of Countdown’s demise in 1987 (I won’t mention the short-lived Countdown Revolution!), the ABC launched its long-running weekend music program Rage, playing clips through the night and into the morning. Rage remains an important platform for emerging Australian talent, screening videos from various genres and eras without commercial pressures.

Just weeks later, the Nine network launched its new music program MTV, a kind of local, free-to-air franchise of the American cable channel. You will remember Richard Wilkins as the genial host. Now there’s a character who emerged in the 80s. He was actually a singer in the early 80s and I recall that he toured Australia with Grace Jones. More about her later!

What are your memories of music video on TV in the 80s?

Decades cannot easily be categorised. They are mathematically arbitrary and have become a clichéd journalistic convention. But I suspect that our audience will latch on to the notion of an exhibition about the 80s as an idea that has legs.

Other decades are defined by slogans – the roaring twenties, the boring fifties, the swinging sixties. What defines the eighties? The greed decade? The mean decade? One big party?

The 1980s have been characterised as a period of consumerist excess, riding on the back of an economic and industrial boom, expressed in a contemptuous flaunting of wealth through expensive homes, cars and designer label fashion. A superficial and frivolous decade. The ‘greed is good’ thing is a stereotype, there is something to it. Business and finance seemed to be dominated by tycoons like Alan Bond, Christopher Skase, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer. In many ways it was a period when conservatism was re-asserted. After all, this was the era of Thatcher and Reagan, monetarism and economic rationalism.

However there is another side to the 1980s. Paradoxically, it was also a period of change. There were significant developments in the roles of women in society. Homosexuality was decriminalised in most Australian states. Environmental issues came to public attention, especially with the aftermath of 1979’s Three Mile Island nuclear accident and 1986’s Chernobyl disaster. Cigarette advertising in cinemas was banned, smoking decreased, cocaine apparently became fashionable. The personal computer appeared, and video games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man became popular. The Walkman and video cassette recorders took off. AIDS appeared and safe sex followed. Cities were redeveloped. Australia celebrated the Bicentennial of European settlement. Brisbane held World Expo ’88. The late 80s saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Cold War, a monumental shift.

I found a useful 80s popular culture site called inthe80s.com. Check it out.

Maybe we should question the ‘greed decade’ and conservative decade stereotypes. Do they do justice to the importance, diversity and creativity of the time. What do you think?

Australia in the 1980s is such a broad subject for an exhibition. I am pondering how to give it a clear focus.

Somebody once said that history doesn’t have to be ancient, just relevant. What would our Gen X audience find relevant? I’m thinking that they would hope to see an interpretation of the 1980s in terms of what they experienced as young people, within the broad sweep of popular culture. An exhibition about their everyday life, making reference to their favourite TV shows, movies, music, products, celebrities, fads and newsworthy events. It is all about how people spent their leisure time, what they ate and drank, the clothes they wore, what shows they went to see, their first encounters with computers etc. The emphasis would be on the experiences of ‘ordinary’ Australian people, not just the great, the powerful, the brilliant and the beautiful.

The idea is for an exhibition about Australian life in the 80s but we cannot ignore what was going on in the world. So there would have to be a global context, a background of national and international events. I wonder what is the best balance. I mean, an exhibition about the 80s needs to at least mention crucial events and people like the trial of Lindy Chamberlain, the death of John Lennon, the wedding of Charles and Di, the Falklands war, the Ash Wednesday bushfires, the AIDS epidemic, the America’s Cup victory, Bob Hawke, Cliff Young, Olympic boycotts, the first Apple Mac, AUSSAT, Allan Border, the Sydney Swans, Chernobyl, the Challenger disaster, the stock market crash of 1987, the Bicentenary and Brisbane World Expo ’88, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square. Maybe we need an illustrated timeline as a kind of backdrop to a bunch of other yet-to-be-determined themes. I’ll keep thinking.