I've recently become aware of having begun the process of reviewing my life. I suspect that a number of factors have contributed to this state of being; becoming a father last December, losing my own father two weeks later, hitting thirty-five this summer, watching my baby daughter grow up every day and, very recently, fulfilling a major career goal by finding myself at the top of a software company whose applications I began my working life selling cold, in 1989.
In other words, major life changing stuff. But weren't the 1980's weird?
Over the Christmas break last year and in between cleaning, filling, emptying and then cleaning all over again, bottles of baby milk every four hours, I snatched some time playing Grand Theft Auto : Vice City on my PS2. In the last couple of years I've more or less given up on videogames after many years as a hard-core gamer, but this one title was highly recommended and I have to say it really is quite a masterpiece.
As an aside, Rockstar North, the software house which develops the GTA series was formerly known as DMA Design and are still based in Scotland, as they were when I sold them some hardware back in the olden days when prehistoric 486DX-25 rack servers cost forty grand and I was a 'Computer Sales Executive' and David Jones, their then pre-millionaire founder, still had to deal with people like me. Then. But look at us now.
Anyway, Vice City has the most amazing soundtrack which adds significantly to the whole experience of driving around Miami and creating all manner of totally un-PC havoc. Rockstar cunningly decided to incorporate about 10 or so hours worth of real 80's greatest hits music spanning various genres from pop, rock, jazz, soul, funk etc. and where each song was linked by some amazingly funny and expertly cliched mock DJ segments complete with cheesey advertisements. The idea being you could change the radio station in whichever vehicle you'd nicked and listen to your favourite 80's hit music as you drove. An absolutely fantastic idea and actually well worth the price of the game for the music alone.
At the weekend I picked up the CD box set of the soundtrack for £33 at a local Virgin store, containing 7 CD's packed with all the 80's music from the game. So I loaded up my CD changer in my car and now I'm driving about the place listening to what is ostensibly Vice City music and finding it hard to resist the temptation to get out of my car at traffic lights, grabbing a nearby motorcyclist and punching his lights out before making good with his Harley. Seriously, I almost did precisely that today.
And so, I've been listening to 80's music all week like Mister Mister, Flock Of Seagulls, Bryan Adams, Toto, and all those other names we cringe at the thought of.
But, actually, it's all sounding not too bad. I suppose there's now some distance between us and the 80's and maybe we can at last begin to look at it a little more objectively. Or maybe it's just because I'm ready to welcome the music of that decade back into my life again in the context of all this retrospective contemplation I'm doing.
Today I was trying to decide which 1980's song I'd pick as being the one that tipified the decade as a whole. After some thought I finally concluded that "Crockett's Theme" by Jan Hammer would be close to perfect, and I seem to recall that particular song was used extensively in the retro 80's movie The Wedding Singer everytime the dweeb boyfriend whose name I can't remember but which was most likely "Brad" since all dweeb 1980's movie boyfriends are called "Brad", pulled up in his De Lorean which always seemed to have "Crockett's Theme" on permaplay. Or perhaps it was the theme tune to Miami Vice? I forget which it was.
As if to make a statement about the 80's and about people who liked Miami Vice.
So, "Crockett's Theme" it is. Unless you feel differently, of course.
This new and imaginative way of packaging up old arcade videogame classics looks like a trend I could get used to. They've packaged up the arcade original versions of Pac-Man, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Bosconian and Rally-X into a replica of the Namco arcade cabinet joystick that then just plugs into your TV. Of course, you have been able to play all of those games, and thousands more, for free with emulators like MAME for years now, but this is an excellent piece of marketing strategy, perfectly capturing the imagination of the nostalgia hungry thirty-something market who spilled much of their pocket money into the original machines in the 1980's.