Double standards who me? LOL

Hmm  remember a time not so long ago when the 1980s were universally reviled for their incredible lack of palatable music and general hilarity in that anyone would ever be seen dead in legwarmers and a ra-ra skirt.  Yet how soon we are to forget... or maybe it was all a media confection anyway, as is much of the so-called popular imagination of the 80s.  So I have to admit that I was surprised to find that some of my now favourite bands existed in the 80s and produced surely some of the most compelling music ever committed to vinyl and cassette, now CD and iPod (perhaps even mini-disc if that cute format had not been relegated to the Betamax pages of technology history).  It seems that others have been thinking along the same lines and now the lies have been swept away.  Saxophone solos are not necessarily the work of Satan as we are discovering - although not strictly from the 80s, Hiroshima Mon Armour by Ultravox! showed that saxophones can be tasteful, it was only over-use by Trevor Horn and others that destroyed its credibility (perhaps).  Over-indulgence in the studio (drugs as well as music) would not necessarily result in a cringing unlistenable mess as long as the creative impulse was not completely shot to pieces - step forward Sulk by Associates which is near as dammit the most perfect album ever and it comes out of the 80s ha ha!  And so a new generation of young persons are reclaiming the good elements of the 80s that have so long been subsumed beneath the dross loved by the media - so instead of Japan we have Duran Duran, instead of Propaganda we have Frankie Goes to Hollywood, instead of Associates we have Wham and instead of Ultravox! we have Ultravox (okay this is where it gets confusing so post-Foxx Ultravox to be more precise).  Why can't we have them all?  I say we should fight for an alternative history of music!  And fall in love with those falling in love with the true spirit of the 80s... Ladyhawke, Late of the Pier, Ladytron, These New Puritans, Wild Beasts.  That should be enough to get the Recession party started...