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Must Haves in the 1980's

Albums, not politics…

Terry Barr
5 min readJun 3, 2022
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Musing over a 20 oz cup of Red Diamond medium roast coffee (Birmingham’s finest), I just finished playing the Stones’ Goat Heads Soup, and wondered how many people were listening to “Angie” at the same time as me. Now I’m playing Rain Dogs, from a year and a player to be named later, and wondering the same thing. Am I the only person in the world who can be here now with this one?

The 1980’s: the decade when I married, when I finished two grad degrees, when I went to New York City for the first, second, and third time and bought my No War t-shirt which my wife has saved in her special box since I was wearing it on the day we met.

The ‘80’s, when music expanded, and in many ways for this raucous decade, it still is. I’m hoping to at least score a Mission of Burma LP today, and you already ought to know how I feel about Sonic Youth. But the revered and the strange have a way of mixing, and that’s why I prefer Felix’s Oyster House in New Orleans to any Emeril eatery. Get me?

Losing the 80’s feel, so let’s move on to my favorite LP’s from each year of this Morning in America decade, where 1000 points of light mean the decay of drive-in movies.

Winners in BOLD.

1980: Well, the decade begins with gale force winds. Peter Gabriel III, Making

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Terry Barr
Terry Barr

Written by Terry Barr

I write about music, culture, equality, and my Alabama past in The Riff, The Memoirist, Prism and Pen, Counter Arts, and am an editor for Plethora of Pop.

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