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Archive for the ‘1980s’ Category

1989

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 29, 2007 | 1 Comment »

A most intense year. I fell heavily in unrequited love (we were closest of friends instead, FFS), and I had the worst day of my life. One morning in January I received my call-up papers for the apartheid army — there was no way I’d go, but what to do other than leaving the country [...]

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1988

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 28, 2007 | 4 Comments »

A pivotal year. There were loads of parties, a memorable bus trip to Zimbabwe for the Amnesty International concert, during which I became close friends with people who’d have a profound impact on my life, and I quit the hotel industry in November, not knowing what I’d do next (events in January 1989 would decide [...]

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1987

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2007 | 3 Comments »

In January I returned from a long holiday in sunny South Africa to freezing London. Soon I felt that I had had enough of London. When my best friend, Paul, moved to the US, I decided to return to SA, to reunite with my brother. And so in early September I did, got myself a [...]

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1986

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , on July 24, 2007 | 4 Comments »

Another good year, with fewer concerts and more clubbing. Most memorably I got into Stringfellows wearing my Manchester United t-shirt I slept in (sad, I know) under my jacket after my friend Paul dragged me out of bed to try the supposedly impossible. Telling the bouncer that you are there to meet a fictional diplomat [...]

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1985

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2007 | 3 Comments »

A great year in which I got to see loads of concerts. In 1985 I was a huge U2 fan, and saw them in successive weeks at Milton Keynes, at Phoenix Park in Dublin, and at Torhout in Belgium, and in between saw Bruce Springsteen twice at Wembley Stadium. I rounded off the summer by [...]

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1984

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , on July 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

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What an exciting and traumatic year 1984 was. I fell in unrequited infatuation (Tracey McIntyre, if you’re reading this, I’m so over you), increased my party quotient, observed family crises, moved to London with no contacts or a job there (a crazy idea at 18), and suffered the loss of my mother. Musically [...]

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1983

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , , , , on July 20, 2007 | 4 Comments »

1983 was my least favourite year of the ’80s, personally and musically. I worked inhuman split shifts throughout the year, leaving no time for a social life in a country I had arrived in only a year before. So I was hanging around with fellow hotel people which means that by the age of 17 [...]

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1982

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 18, 2007 | 2 Comments »

And now it’s 25 years ago. The photo on the right was taken in Amsterdam in May that year (note the jersey I’m wearing beneath the army surplus jacket; see 1981. And the ‘tache!). I think it was this week a quarter of a century ago (shit!) that my family dragged me from West Germany [...]

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1981

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , , , on July 16, 2007 | 2 Comments »

And so on to 1981. Again, these are tunes that evoke that year — a year of some fun, several foreign trips, a temporarily close friend named Epstein, shit teachers at a shit school, an idiot of a younger brother (who turned out to be very cool), and the teenage depression most 15-year-olds experience. These [...]

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1980

Posted in 1980s, tagged , , , , , , , on July 16, 2007 | 5 Comments »

Let’s go on a nostalgia trip. This is the first instalment of a journey through the ’80s. These songs represent moments in time; they are not necessarily the best songs of the year, nor my favourites (neither then nor now). These songs evoke for me the feeling of the time, they recreate a time the [...]

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