Red Mosquito

I've got American Dream spinning currently, and the production really got me thinking about the weird musical climate of 1988, and the trends that came with it. Even the hippies couldn't resist playing around with synthesizers and airy production. All the while, bands like Sonic Youth and The Beastie Boys were cutting through that haze and making some pretty forward thinking music with the era's latest technology.

So, I've designed this thread as a sort of free-for-all to discuss anything and everything about the year 1988 in music and art.

Ah yes. The year of my 1st birthday.

I don't like the way that this thread is going.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:M ... ed_in_1988

311 formed in 1988.

1988, and with it the release of his brilliant Even Worse album, was the year Weird Al Yankovic really started to hit his stride.

I'd put a @SkitchP tweet up against 311's 1988 output any day of the week.

311 are baseball fans?

Hairway to Steven!

Seemed like a weird time musically. Still a lot of hair metal and Paula Abdul/boy bands crap on the radio and TV, but clearly everybody was fucking sick of it. The college music/alternative scene was doing something and it was starting to bubble over into the mainstream just a bit.
Somethings I kind of remember...
REM's Stand got a lot of airplay.
Same for that Sweet Jane remake.
I remember being hugely excited about Morrissey's first solo album, which was fantastic.
I heard The Pixies (Surfer Rosa) for the first time.
Soul Aslyum's (back when they were called Replacements ripoffs) Hang Time got a lot of play from me.
That crappy U2 movie and album came out. What a shitfest that was.
I dropped acid for the first time.
A great Bad Religion album came out.
Seemed like everybody (even the wavers and metal kids) was listening to that N.W.A album.
That Living Colour song/video was everywhere.
I think it was a full year after Dreamday Nation came out, before I actually heard it.
USA Network's Nightflight ended, which sucked because they would show lots of cool music documentaries.
It was a weird time. I was starting to break out of my punk/new wave phase. I guess a lot of kids were and that's why grunge/alternative did what it did.

Edit: Maybe breakout is the wrong word. I was just looking for something... something else.

Yo! MTV Raps first aired in 1988. Great show. And, hugely influential in the spread of hip-hop around the world.

Leonard Cohen- "I'm Your Man"
The Sugarcubes- "Life's Too Good"
Dinosaur Jr.- "Bug"
My Bloody Valentine- "Isn't Anything"
Bad Religion- "Suffer"
The Pogues- "If I Should Fall From Grace With God"
Morrissey- "Viva Hate"
Talking Heads- "Naked"
Pixies- "Surfer Rosa"
Siouxsie and the Banshees- "Peepshow"

No one mentioned Jane's Addition's Nothing Shocking. I love this album. Most of the rest of the year has never really sat with me so well, but this seems like it was some of the beginning of alternative ideas about rock music breaking through - I guess in that it wasn't just Def Leppard and Bon Jovi dominating the airwaves, but bands like Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sonic Youth were starting to make some noise.

It's telling that Thomas Kinkade's only canvas completed in 1988 was Christmas on Main Street, arguably his most violent piece.

Malloy wrote:

ooooo.

theplatypus wrote:

Malloy wrote:

ooooo.

help me unpack that statement

I was 5.

I admit to having quite a bit of love for Kim Deal.

surface the north wrote:It's telling that Thomas Kinkade's only canvas completed in 1988 was Christmas on Main Street, arguably his most violent piece.

The most Reid post of all time.

This came out:



As did:



As did:



Great, great stuff.