The internet is fun because you get to be like, “Cyndi Lauper is good” and someone in your mentions will go, “Um, I’m sorry but my brother is married to a punk and this is a harmful view” and then someone else pops up going, “Your silence about Goth is extremely telling”
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Fumes in two tone…
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I demand to know your opinions on skiffle!
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You’ve probably never heard of it…
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I wouldn’t like it even if I did,
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Except none of that is… I’d argue that plenty of people, especially here are paying that mind. I do that myself in my own work.
Okay, now who is assuming things in bad faith? I’m not “defending” shit here. I’m saying that YOUR experience of the 80s listening to more esoteric or underground music isn’t any more or less valid than the poppier stuff that say some teen girls were into. BOTH are worth historical investigation and archiving because both tell us something important about that era. Neither are more the “real 80s” than the other, both were products of their time and helped shape the era.
And yes, popular stuff CAN be lost to historical memory - it happens far more than people understand, because historical memory is shaped not just by what people remember as individuals, but what historians (professional and amateur) decide to study and by what the general public decides to honor.
Take the example of the post-war popularity/historical memory of the Blues. You say the the BLUES, and what springs to mind is artists like Robert Johnson. But it was the consumption of country blues by white consumers (especially Robert Johnson) for years that led to the historical assumption that that kind of music was the most popular blues among African Americans back in the day. That was in fact NOT the case at all. City blues and the Blues Queens sold the most records, played the biggest venues, and drove the biggest demand.
You’ll be pleased to know that I have not done that, and instead I have written both a thesis and dissertation on the history of punk. 
You’re welcome.
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While we are waving our indie cred about obscure 80s bands…
nobody has mentioned one of my favorites introduced to me by some fun guys in my dorm who worked in a record shop over the summers.
Einsturzende Neubauten.
Also I got a lot of oooh they are cool from 120 minutes which was a regular watch when in the dorms.
And because I am sucker for jangly psychedelic guitar
Also via some more punk dorm dwellers.
Which put me on the path of really liking surf instrumental music. And still my favorite version of this song. Sorry Dick Dale but yours is a close second.
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Under the Milky Way is my favorite The Church song. Heard it today for the first time in ages because my Tones on Tail streaming radio station had a freak out, and decided to play everything from my other 80’s adjacent channels. 
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@erroneus was writing about the “terrible garage” of the 70’s. Apologies for any confusion.
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Repost because that was quite the 80’s banger:
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1980 Headbanger
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Now you’re talkin’!
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But my cred! I mentioned them! 
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Then you have my apologies for missing it and thanks for getting there before me.
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I heard in the grocery store of all places recently. I am never sure about hearing songs of of my younger days there casue it means I am now officially old.
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Terrible garage? No! This is the f**king den! You think the 70s would let you off easily with a shitty looking garage? Add yellow shag carpet in there and you have a true 70s interior designer nightmare.
Now throw in a few boxes of randomly drawn estate sale 70s vinyl. Take a long hard look at the band members’ brown and yellow toned clothing with extra large shirt collars. And they’re matching! Nice: I know exactly where to bury this.
Jokes and fake outrage aside, my point was that there’s a large set of normalized styles (music or whatever) from the 70s that aged particularly badly, but nobody talks about it because it’s more useful to pay attention to good things. I think the music industry was trying to find its way after the 60s came crashing down. For some reason, this involved disco, but eventually some good things came out of it.
Movies are similar. The vast majority of 70s movies are terrible, but I frequently argue that this is the decade that helped define modern film in terms of visual story telling. Framing, for instance, in the 70s changed substantially from the 60s, the latter of which seems to closely follow standards established in the 40s/50s.
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Hearing them taken out of context can be funny, though. I still laugh remembering how Walmart used “Ring My Bell” in their delivery ads. I kept wondering if I’d hear “Pull My Strings” from some company advertising window blinds. 
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