(ot)in search of 80's inspirado

[jollyninja]

me and some friends are shooting an independent film this weekend, it's set in the eighties. what i need are things to get me into that eighties mood. music, fasion, basicaly anything you might suggest. with urls would be great but if i have to hunt that's ok to. i have to provide my own wardrobe so don't look for this one in theaters. the title has not been finalised and alot of the dialogue is improvised.

obscure hair metal bands would be best for my character (if it's not more obscure then "shotgun messiah" i probably have allready heard of them but feel free) but anything eighties would be fine. i need help refining my fuzzy memory (damn youth, curse it!) of the eighties into more specifics. for example things from the eighties that were exclusive of each other (did people listen to both motley crue and duran duran or depeche mode?)

if you were old enough to live them, tell me what you were into, and how you dressed ect.

 

[fba827]

I was a couch potatoe during my younth-filled years of the 80s. So, in terms of music bands, I really am not going to be much help (the only ones I'd know are the ones that ae overly obvious... Bangles, etc..)

I could prattle off 80's cartoons until I am blue in the face, however. - though, that doesn't seem to be what you're going for since you're movie won't be about people sitting and watching cartoons all day

But, if you do want a little piece of flash-back... try renting "The Wedding Singer" (Drew Barrymore, Adam Sandler - cutsie little romantic comedy set in the 80s) it has several 80's memorabilia and jokes scattered through it (not to mention the entire sound and extensive track, more or less)... even if you don't like those sorts of movies, just watch the set, the costumes, and listen to the soundtrack...

 

[jollyninja]

anything will help. the more relivant 80's refrences i have in my head the better. and actually i think there is a character who just sits on the couch watching tv. if nothing else it would give us some less obvious answers to the question "what you watching?"

edit: i have seen the wedding singer and the "brat pack" movies i have watched alot of 80's b-movies as well (perhaps to many).

 

[Moulin Rogue]

80s hair bands that never really broke all that big:

Bang Tango
Chrome Molly
Danger Danger
Diamond Rexx
Dogs D'Amour
Hans Naughty
Helix
Icon
Keel
Killer Dwarfs
Pretty Boy Floyd
Roxx Gang (an 80s glam list has just gotta have a double 'x' in it somewhere!)
Tigertailz (ditto a 'z' to denote plural!)
Tuff
Vinnie Vincent Invasion
White Tiger
XYZ

many of those like Pretty Boy Floyd and XYZ are quite late in the decade, '89ish, when that genre was the most saturated.

Motley Crue and Duran Duran did not have a big overlap in fan appeal during '83-'84, I'm guessing. Motley Crue was pretty heavy and scary for their day in the "Shout At the Devil" era, and the majority of female metal fans were of the 'metal chick' variety (remember them)? The more 'hard rock' than 'metal' bands like Def Leppard and Van Halen in 1984 had more crossover appeal, I think. But Motley Crue started going more mainstream with "Theatre of Pain" and then metal entered a REALLY commercial age around '86 with all the overproduction and keyboards and power ballads and the teenyboppers moved in.

Yesterdayland '80s fashion:
http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/decades/fashion_1980s.php (oops, I see that that thing I won at a county fair game as a kid in the mid-80s was a feathered roach clip and not a Native hair accesory as I thought!)

 

[Dog Faced God]

obscure hair metal bands would be best for my character (if it's not more obscure then "shotgun messiah" i probably have allready heard of them but feel free) but anything eighties would be fine. i need help refining my fuzzy memory (damn youth, curse it!) of the eighties into more specifics. for example things from the eighties that were exclusive of each other (did people listen to both motley crue and duran duran or depeche mode?)

Metal bands roughly as, or more, obscure than Shotgun Messiah:

Crimson Glory, Lizzy Borden, Pretty Boy Floyd, Kix, Dangerous Toys, Savatage, Grim Reaper, Overkill, Saxon, Saigon Kick, Manowar, Vinnie Vincent Invasion, E-Z-O, Loudness, King Diamond, Chastain, Guy-Mann-Dude, Fastway, Accept, Krokus, Metal Church.

I'm sure that there were some girls who listened to Motley Crue and duran duran and depeche mode. However, if you're playing a guy who is a big metal-head, you wouldn't be caught dead listening to duran duran or depeche mode. Duran Duran and Depeche Mode is for fags. In the late eighties there was a big division between glam rock and heavy metal (and the many sub-genres thereof). Fans of bands like Motley Crue, Ratt and Kix were looked down on by fans of 'heavier' bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Overkill.

if you were old enough to live them, tell me what you were into, and how you dressed ect.

I graduated from High School in 1992, so that kind of makes me a child of the late 80's I guess. Said High School was in a small mountain town in Colorado. I was (and still am) a huge metalhead. Here's what I remember doing with my friends, and in my downtime:

shooting pool and playing pinball at the bowling alley
trying to find someone over 21 to buy us beer
driving out of town to start a small bonfire and drink beer
hackey sack (a.k.a. Stoner Aerobics) on the courthouse lawn
cruising the gut in my 74 Vega
listening to metal
playing guitar
oh yeah... D&D

I usually wore jeans with as many frayed holes as possible (never just cut your jeans with scissors... cut them, run them through the dryer once or twice, use a pencil or a pen-cap to pull the denim apart ... better yet just wear them until they're full of holes), sometimes over black spandex pants. My favorite t-shirt was a black t-shirt with the grim reaper painted on the front. Usually wore a black leather motorcycle jacket (wummer or winter), sometimes with a jeans jacket vest (with a Metallica backpatch) over the top. More often that not wore motorcycle or engineer boots.

Suggested movies:
The Light of Day
The River's Edge
Trick or Treat
Decline of Western Civilization part II: The Metal Years

Hope this helps!

 

[jollyninja]

guy-mann-dude? are you serious? that was a band and i missed it? dang.

most of the lists are a catalogue of the tapes my brother (the complete basis for my character and my own personal rock god at the time) gave me. also moulin, alot of your list is canadian. i can actually still sing the chorus of a killer dwarfs tune. i had completley forgotten vinnie vincent invasion (I used to be such a huge kiss freak) this is awesome, it's all coming back. you guys RULE!

keep em comin if you got them, i gotta go to bed

edit: any specific "headbanger" phrases would be appreciated i was not old enough to really differentiate who said what.

 

[Moulin Rogue]

Canadian, yep. I wrote that before checking where you lived jollyninja, do you remember KICK AXE from Regina?

 

[jollyninja]

i remember the name kick axe but didn't know where they were from. also i just downloaded a little guy-man-dude. nice! ah, the days when muchmusic had a daily metal show hosted by the late great dan gallagher. how i miss them.

 

[Dog Faced God]

Guy Mann-Dude:
http://www.chedsey.com/list/mann.htm

Most headbanger phrases I can remember involve too much profanity to post here. Curse as much as you can. We used 'choice', 'bitchin' or 'wicked' (usually preceded by f@*kin') instead of 'cool'. Oh yeah... if something was really cool it ruled, but you got that one already. If something sucked big-time it ruled something bad (i.e. Duran Duran rules... my dog's arse!!!) Can't really think of any other headbanger catch phrases. Just don't say 'phat,' 'homey' or anything that punk kid in Terminator 2 said.

 

[Dog Faced God]

Some more bands that VH1 probably won't do a 'Behind the Music' special on:

Dirty Looks
Scatterbrain
Roxy Blue
Gwar
Riot
Hurricane
Vicious Rumors
Black and Blue
Zebra
Skew Siskin