When most readers in their 20s or younger think of the ’80s, heavy syths, sleek production and over-the-top looks come to mind. Well, that wasn’t what the landscape of music really looked like in 1982 when MTV was still new and so was Moose. Up until the summer of ’83 I’d never questioned the bland straight world of soft and hard rock of my youth. Then MTV hit my ‘hood and the first video I saw was The Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams.” It featured a beautiful, buzzed redhead in a man’s suit named Annie Lennox with her cow. I thought she was gorgeous but apparently Americans thought she was a freak, by standards at the time. About 30 minutes later Culture Club popped up with a hit they’d had earlier in the year, “Time (Clock of the Heart) “. Now I’d just purchased that debut LP but had no idea Boy George was basically a fancy drag queen of the British kind. He raised a similar stink, but oddly at that time, very few mentioned anyone’s sexuality, just “androgynous” and “gender-bending.”
At the time, when MTV was new, visuals weren’t important. The biggest pop stars of the past few years before were Air Supply, Kim Carnes and Christopher Cross. Go look up their videos. Not pretty. Then the handsome acts came: Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Kajagoogoo. But Boy and Annie took it to a new level — gorgeous and shocking. There was a new batch of kids coming up who’d grown up on the pan-sexuality of Bowie, Marc Bolin, and Patti Smith. They found gender rolls and soft looks boring and longed to push the buttons, much like Madonna was doing, only not as obvious.
Before them, the kids in America were dull copies of the last generation. With Boy and Annie, our minds and ears were opened to fuck with gender and sex and our parents. We’d never be the same again.
Come hear Moose and Voxbox spin the best of Annie Lennox and Boy George on Fri., Sept. 24 at Wild Pug. www.danceaboutarc.wordpress.com