It’s alive!

You may rightly be wondering why this blog seems to have suddenly disintegrated, going from a mildly entertaining collection of musings on the 1980s—and opera and bird watching—to…nothing. I have a very good reason for that: I haven’t been writing anything! To be fair, I spent a month this summer zooming about various extremely rural places in Florida and France (fun fact: it’s essentially the same in both places, except that one has a Denny’s). But that was all the way back in July, and we’re now into the deep and honeyed sunshine of September, and even my procrastination has limits.

The good news is that I finally received my Masters degree, so I am officially over-educated. Yes, folks, I am now a Master of New Wave-ology! (Technically, a Master of Letters in Music History, but I like the first title better.)

The bad news is that this particular post won’t have much substance to it, as it’s really more of a way to break radio silence before I begin writing again in earnest. However, I do have a few topics up my sleeve, to whit: the idea of ‘fluid’ masculinity vs. the idea of the New Man, both topics that came to the fore in the repressed and remarkably-dressed 1980s, rock’s ‘authenticity’ and pop’s ‘artificiality’, and perhaps a retrospective on the many hairstyles of Simon Le Bon. I don’t know, we’ll have to see.

Again, I apologize for the long silence on the blogfront (oh god, I sound like a character out of Juno), but I hope you’ll stay tuned.

And just to sweeten the deal, here’s a little something from the days of music video’s infancy for you to enjoy.

Wall of Voodoo, ‘Mexican Radio’ (1983)