Don't You Forget About Me

I was scrolling through a GenX Facebook group the other day when I ran across a post of someone watching Stranger Things, who noted they had zero recollection of “Running Up That Hill” despite their teen years landing squarely in the early 1980s. I realized if you weren’t steeped in new wave and “British Invasion Redux” of that time, you wouldn’t be soaking in artists like Kate Bush. That realization got me thinking about how I discovered new artists and music before internet algorithms began shaping what crossed my path.

In our house, cable television played a real role. We relied on a print version of TV Guide to know when shows were coming up, learn about new programs and show renewals, and read interviews with famous TV stars. We also had VCRs by this point, which allowed us to record shows we’d want to watch later.

We did not have the cable package that included MTV, but we did have Nickelodeon, which in the early 1980s was still experimenting with what it could be. Alongside shows like You Can’t Do That on Television and The Tomorrow People, Nickelodeon aired a short-lived evening concert series called Off the Record. The series featured live performances by British new wave artists, presented without context or explanation. The shows aired when they aired. If you happened to be watching, you saw something new.

One summer evening in 1983, that is how I encountered Duran Duran for the first time. I frantically thumbed through TV Guide to figure out when it would air again and ended up recording most of the Off the Record shows, which also included Talk Talk, Depeche Mode, and Haircut 100. The concerts were recorded in 1981, so the music featured is from each artist’s earliest catalog.

On this site, we’ll look back at that pre-Internet, pre-SoundScan alternative music ecosystem. The goal is not to elevate one era over another, but to understand how those conditions shaped listening habits, taste, and memory in the post-punk era that spans the late ’70s through the early ’90s.