My Texts from Last Night moment came after the 80's Flashback Party at Arielle's this past Thursday. There was nothing crazy involved, its just that I had so much fun that I was too tired to properly prepare for bed. I woke up still wearing an armful of silver and black bangles, there was glitter all over me, and the deep plum MAC lipstick that I wore-a sharp deviation from my usually light colored MAC Lipglass, was smeared onto my pillowcase. And before your mind starts wandering, yes I was alone!
I've been sitting here wondering why everyone there seemed to enjoy themselves so much. Of course, the music was great. DJ Hydro and DJ Silence were on point, taking requests and getting even the most diehard sit-in-the-corner-play-on-the-Blackberry folks out onto the dance floor. I had never seen Twist West and Chubby perform before, but I was impressed with their 80's music covers as well as their original tracks. And of course, wearing my publicist/photographer hat, I have to give shouts out to The Prolegend Movement, who closed it out and with Whodini's "One Love" and then one of their own songs, "Take Me Home (One Too Many)" with Lady Blaundee taking the stage.
We danced like it was 1985 at Eastside High. The Running Man, Kid n' Play, the Cabbage Patch, you name it, we did it. We even busted out with the Electric Slide (shouts out to Kim Norris for starting that one). And there was this one bad sister who took over the dance floor and did a Michael Jackson segment that was simply awesome, complete with moonwalk and all.
A few of us serious 80's kids dressed the part as well. One brother came in with tight rolled jeans, a jeans jacket, high tops and a boombox. He looked liked he had stepped straight out of Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" video. Yours truly was rocking leggings, high heels and legwarmers, and a ponytail pulled up and to the side. Laf Legend from Prolegend had on a blazer, white pants, and shoes with no laces. It doesn't get much more 80's than that.
But when I really think about it, it wasn't just the music, or the clothes, that made the 80's so special to us. It was the feelings. Looking back, we now realize that the 80's was the last decade before our world changed in many ways. Timothy McVeigh was unheard of and we couldn't even spell Al-Qaeda. 9/11 was just another day on the calendar and liquid soap and shampoo were toiletries in your luggage, not potential bombs. The King of Pop was moonwalking his way to superstardom and we were planning our MJ outfits to wear to his concerts, not to his memorial tributes. We were not witnessing the slow death of an ocean due to an oil spill. Closer to home, Duval County wasn't the murder capital of Florida or one of the counties with the highest HIV/AIDS rates, and if you lived on the Northside, Gateway was a real mall, and not just an almost abandoned shell.
The world just seemed simpler. Children weren't turning into miniature mass murderers, no Columbine or Jonesboro, Arkansas. We still played outside until the street lights came on and rode our bikes to the corner store. Boys passed notes to you that said, 'do you like me?' and girls played Teddy Bear and Hot Peas on jump rope. We still minded our teachers for the most part, and didn't curse around adults.
Yes, we had our fears. We wondered what would happen if the Cold War with Russia turned hot, and this new thing called HIV had us afraid to go the dentist, and banning innocent little boys from school because they had the unfortunate luck to have hemophilia and get tainted blood during a transfusion. No, in those respects, the 80's were definitely not perfect.
But what the 80's did have, was a lot of fun, a sense of hope, amazing music. Artists still looked at their music as just that, an art, and not just simply a quick way to make money. People went into the studio and did jam sessions with live bands. You could spend your money on an album and know that the whole thing would be worth listening to and not just the tracks they played on the radio. We fell in love with hip-hop, and like the end of Brown Sugar, it loved us back.
I don't think that the guys from Prolegend realized the irony of their song choices the other night. I play Black Diamondz to no end and "Take Me Home" is one of my favorite tracks, so I'm perfectly aware that the song refers to a woman at the club, but for the purposes of the 80's party, it had a deeper meaning to me. I think we went home to the 80's that night, to the last decade of a semblance of normalcy and innocence. And what better way than to describe the great feelings that we had back then than with the words, "One Love"?
So I say, if you had the privilege to experience the 80's, then you were truly blessed. Lipstick stains on my new sheets were worth the fun that I had recreating that time period. Now its time for us 80's kids to recapture some of that magic today.
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