Somehow, the 80s revival is still in chic and it hasn’t died down. We’re still awash with 80’s nostalgia, not just with music, but with 80s TV shows being made into movies ( The A-Team, 21 Jump Street). In pop music, Madonna could’ve ridden that wave if she could, but being a prominent 80’s icon, she would’ve needed to go back to her Lucky Star / Material Girl phase. Instead, she put on her dancing shoes and leotards, and with her Farah Fawcett hairdo and a couple of Abba track samples, tried to force another 70s comeback. That was shortlived. But at that same moment in time, Gwen Stefani was more successful pushing the 80’s back in, with the ‘oh-mickey-you’re-so-fine’ inspired Hollaback Girl and her uncanny resemblance as a young Madonna, singing songs like ‘Cool’. Even if that were three years ago, the 80’s revival seems to be staying strong.
In the indie music scene, The Black Kids seem to know how to milk the retro 80’s comeback for all that it’s worth. No one can argue that this band is very much influenced by the 80’s. Frontman Reggie Youngblood, tends to sound just like Robert Smith (especially in their debut single ‘I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend’) and with their latest single off their Partie Traumatic album – ‘Look At Me (When I Rock Wichoo)’, he confesses creating the song while failing to learn a Smiths song. ‘Look at Me’ doesn’t sound like The Smiths at all, but it actually sounds a bit like 70’s to early 80’s dance pop. Their music video is a trip down memory lane with a ton of Saturday Morning cartoon references. The video starts with a frame by frame re-enactment of the Dungeons & Dragons intro, coupled with a Silverhawks inspired Black Kids logo. It also shows the band members dressed to represent some kind of 80’s cartoon character (with Speed Racer and Thundercat’s Snarf as the more obvious ones). A dare say, you’d be surprised to find out how much you were addicted to cartoons back in the day with how many 80’s cartoon references you can name.
Check out The Black Kids‘ ‘Look At Me (When I Rock Wichoo)’ video. The video is also embedded after the jump (ugh, I hate MySpace’s autoplay videos).
(edit: It did bug me that they had a Speed Racer reference since it wasn’t much of an 80’s cartoon. But then again, why would they make a girl speed racer anyways…unless it was Tess from Pole Position. There you go!)
