100 Hits Of The 80’s To Change Your Life

You never know which day is going to change your life, and I certainly never expected the 21st of January to change my life! But it did. The day started off fairly normal, I woke up late, tripped over the dog, went to the shop, cashed in R28 worth of lottery winnings, came back home, had writers block, cruised the internet, went to exchange a broken computer screen, then watched Bustin’ Down the Door (Aaaaaaah Gaz got me a copy…all the way from Canada! We’ll talk about that later, and we owe Gaz more than we can give!)

So anyway for those of you not in the know I grew up in Pinelands which is a dry suburb and there is no bottle store there, but funnily enough the people of Pinelands consume their body weight in papsak each morning. My parents liked the odd drink (That being in odd numbers…so they’d sip their first drink, down their second, sip their third, down their fourth and so on…) and the parties that used to go down were quite something. But this was in the 80’s, and by the end of the 80’s I was only 5…inches…from the ground! No but seriously, I was too young to even know what the sky was, but somehow the music from the 80’s was stuck in my head.

We stayed in Pine Close in Pinelands, the house right at the end of the cul-de-sac, that’s where I grew up. To me that was the biggest house in the world and I distinctly remember running like a mad child down that garden because there was just so much space. My bedroom was upstairs and looked out onto the garden, and we could also climb onto the roof above the ‘Games Room’ Now the games room was where all the shenanigans went down, because it led onto the garden and into the pool.

To say the neighbours were kept awake would be an understatement, I think they nearly died. Which is common in Pinelands because everyone is so damn old. They could probably find some Egyptian tombs there.

So my folks would party up a storm while I slept, or whatever I did, and sometimes at parties my mom would carry me around, but I wasn’t really into the whole party scene around the age of 5, so I used to just dos while she carried me. But I’d hear the music, and to this day music from the 80’s still brings me back immediately to those parties, me in my moms arms just sucking my thumb! Wondering about the point of life…

So I was at the V&A Waterfront yesterday, because about two weeks ago I had seen a CD with hits from the 80’s. I cruised in yesterday to buy it, hammered back home in The Beast and slammed it into the player.

How do you like my two butlers? RAD!

Well slap me around and call me Susan!

It is honestly one of the most mind blowing CD’s I’ve ever in my life purchased! I didn’t recognize the names of the songs when I read them, but listening to them was like opening up the memory bank and realising I’m loaded! If you were born in the 80’s, this is simply the CD you have to own, well it’s actually 5 CD’s. For R223! That’s a steal. From what I gather you can only get this CD set at Exclusive Books in The V&A Waterfront, they have a small music section near the tills. There were only about 5 of these bad boys left, so I’d hurry if I were you, because this will simply blow your mind apart. I don’t even know where to start, but if you’re an 80’s kid, or just loved the music from that time, then how about some of these pearls:

• A-Ha — Take On Me
• Men At Work — Down Under
• Tell It To My Heart — Taylor Dayne
• Jump For My Love — The Pointer Sisters (Hugh Grant dances to this in Love Actually I believe)
• Loco In Acapulco — The Four Tops
• She Drives Me Crazy — Fine Young Cannibals
• La Bamba — Los Lobos
• Walk Like An Egyptian — Bangles
• Footloose — Kenny Loggins
• You’re The Voice — John Farnham (CLASSIC from my youth!)
• Drive — The Cars

It makes such a refreshing change from music nowadays which is all digitally altered, crap, uses sex to sell utterly crap songs and is emotional to the point of me wanting to kill myself. And I also hate musicians that try to change the world, you’re a musician, I just want to hear your music. I don’t want you preaching to me about starving slave kids driving the worlds clothing industry and how if I buy your CD $1 will be donated to little Pablo to sew his his two fingers back on that were lost while sewing a pair of overpriced jeans. The 80’s were the happy days before everything turned to global warming and other stuff to distract us from living awesome lives. Now we’re so worried about everything, we take out life insurance, travel insurance, household insurance, insurance for our insurance, we have airbags in our cars, we get scanned before going anywhere, we have camera watching us, there is crime, drugs(Well bad drugs…cough…tik)…the 80’s were just free and it scares me to think that my kids won’t be able to experience the world like I did. Because it was awesome. At like 6 years old I used to walk to the shops in Pinelands (There by Magica Roma), buy sweets, and walk back. And no one dared touch me.

Because they knew that in 18 years I would be editor of this battleship!

I think it’s time the clubs in Cape Town have a proper 80’s party, only old school beats, I’d completely lose my composure. As long as bush stays out of this…we’re good!

The only thing about this CD is that it brought a tear to my eye, knowing we’ll never live in a world like we did in the 80’s. With all our technological advancement, we just seem to be going backwards. Famine. Pollution. Hate. All these bad things, and as good as things are now, I would literally do anything to go back in time.

Because back then we had it all, we had enough. Sure, we now all have much better ‘things’ than we did in the 80’s. We’ve got PVR, Blu Ray, 3D movies, better cars, easier travel, cellphones, but have these things made us happier? I really don’t think they have. Because the more ‘things’ we acquire, the more we want.

What we didn’t realise in the 80’s was that what we had was perfectly enough.

And I miss that.