One day at Amoeba Hollywood I proclaimed that Aztec Camera's 1983 release High Land, Hard Rain was one of the best records of the '80s. This single statement eventually led to over 200 Amoebites ranking their top 10 favorite albums from the ‘80s.

From the beginning we realized that it was impossible for most of us to condense our favorites from all genres into a tiny top ten list. So, we limited our lists to Rock/Pop and its sub-genres like punk, metal, goth, and new wave. Even so, it was a difficult selection process because not only are there hundreds of amazing records to consider, there is also the added dynamic of time.

The '80s were a long time ago and the music has had many years to gestate. We have a deep sense of nostalgia and sentiment with these albums as our fondest memories are associated with them. These are albums we LOVE.

- Henry Polk

P.S. We'll be posting new additions to the '80s list project from Amoeba staff members on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. See all entries in our ‘80s list series.

P.P.S. The '80s List Book is available for sale at Amoeba Hollywood.


Tim Latham
The Smiths – Strangeways Here We Come (1987)
The Jam – Sound Affects (1980)
Specials – More (1980)
The Cure – Disintegration (1989)
Erasure – The Innocents (1988)
English Beat – I Just Can't Stop It (1980)
Minor Threat – Out of Step (1983)
Dexy's Midnight Runners – Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (1980)
Joy Division – Closer (1980)
Morrissey – Viva Hate (1988)

I have been obsessed with biopics ever since I can remember. I even remember liking the 8 hour long movie Ghandi when I was a kid! I loved A Cry in the Dark, Gorillas in the Mist, and Reversal of Fortune. I wanted to see any movie about real people. I also wanted to watch all the TV movies. Melendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills, Sybil, Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story, Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, and The Amy Fisher Story were all my favorites. I love Drew Barrymore in The Amy Fisher Story. I watch this movie many times every year. Not sure why. The movie is not the best in the world, and yet I just can't get enough of it. I put it right up there with Showgirls!

But I have also been obsessed with movies about rock stars. I would probably go see a movie about Kenny G if it was done right. The first movie I remember seeing about a rock star was La Bamba. I probably had no idea who Richie Valens was at the time. He was just the "La Bamba" Guy. I was 13 when La Bamba came out but it was one of my favorite movies. I was also obsessed with the Karen Carpenter Story, which was released as a TV movie two years later in 1989. Cynthia Gibb played the lead role. I was a bit obsessed with The Carpenters. I still can't get enough of them. I find it to be the most tragic, depressing pop music ever. It seems like most of these movies all ended up with the star dying an early tragic death. I also loved Selena starring Jennifer Lopez. I was never a fan of her music until this movie, but it is actually Jennifer Lopez's best role and a pretty good movie with Edward James Olmos as her dad. Angela Basset played roles in two of my other favorites. She of course played Tina Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It and Katherine Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream. But she didn't stop there! She also played the mom of the Notorious B.I.G. in Notorious. She is for sure the queen of the biopic! She also ventured out into some non-music biopics. She played the wife of Malcolm X in Malcolm X and Rosa Parks in The Rosa Parks Story. And you might or might not also remember her as Cheryl McNair in the movie Challenger from 1990.

Les Paradisiers is a musical power-marriage between American underground musician, author, and film director Thomas Nola (et Son Orchestre) and Barcelona-based Mediterranean-Neo-folk artist Demian, aka O Paradis. The duo’s first aural offspring, More Tales From The Garden, was recently released on LP with Free Digital Download Card via Nola’s own Disques de Lapin imprint. The LP features a dozen dark, uneasy and psychedelic trips through Thomas and Demian’s exotic and anachronous universe, where humid locales not only house jungle birds and cats, but also early 20th Century European speakeasies hosting American Vaudeville and Spanish Cabaret acts with 1980’s Goth sensibilities.

Tales’ atmosphere is helped along by the fact that it was birthed into one being in two very separate places-- Demian’s parts were recorded in Barcelona and Thomas’s contributions were captured in Boston, MA. Therefore, the album is also a bilingual affair, split between American English and Peninsular Spanish.

However, much like O Paradis’s collaborative efforts with the now-defunct Austrian neo-cabaret act Novy Svet, Nola and Demian are actually a logical pairing. Both artists are popular among fans of the Neofolk genre but neither of them carry or are weighted-down by any of the problematic dogma that exists within it. The pair’s main respective projects seem to strive to weave new surreal worlds out of the pieces and tatters of this one, rather then anchoring their songs in a particular part of real world history. Where many of their peers’ albums are academic in nature, Nola and O Paradis’s output is usually looser and takes itself less seriously. Les Paradisiers doesn’t stop this trend. 

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When I first moved to Los Angeles 7 or 8 years ago I became obsessed with Six Feet Under. I remember going to work one day and one of my coworkers talked about the show for hours. She couldn't believe that I was not watching it. However, I didn't have HBO and I don't think the show was out on DVD yet. I didn't even have a DVD player yet. VHS releases of TV shows were starting to disappear so I didn't really have any way to watch it-- so it might have been Six Feet Under that made me finally give in and get a DVD player. My first DVD purchase was The Muppet Movie, but I think my second or third purchase was the first season of Six Feet Under. It had been a while since I had been obsessed with a really good TV show. I still managed to watch the entire Twin Peaks series about once a year, but there wasn't much else out there. It was just that I didn't have HBO. I had heard about all these new shows, but still had never watched Oz or the Sopranos. These shows would later become some of my favorites as I started to collect the DVDs and eventually was forced to get HBO again. I don't want to sound like an advertisement for HBO, but it really did change the way I looked at TV and really gave me many enjoyable viewing hours. Six Feet Under came at a perfect time in my life. The show took place in the Los Angeles area and was filmed just down the street from Amoeba at the Gower studios. I somehow felt the show was speaking directly to me. And I somehow felt more involved with it since it was filmed so close to me and took place in a city so close to my heart. It was also nice to see a gay character as one of the lead roles in a drama series. I have always had a love/hate sort of relationship with Los Angeles, but this show made me love it just a little bit more. The five seasons of the show took me on a long and intense journey. I fell in love with all the characters and started to think of them as my family. The show followed me back to San Francisco, where it eventually ended in 2005. This was one of those shows that I really did love but it also just sort of tortured me when I watched it. Not only was every episode dealing with somebody's death, but it was also dealing with all the characters' messed up lives at the same time. It was an intense journey. The thing that made this show so fantastic was the cast. The mix of the brilliant writing with the perfect cast was a magical combination -- and it doesn't really happen that often. The leads were all perfect. Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, and Lauren Ambrose were perfect as the siblings of the house. Frances Conroy was brilliant as their mother. The show just had a list of some of my favorite or soon to be favorite actors -- Rachel Griffiths, Freddy Rodriguez, Jeremy Sisto, Lili Taylor, Kathy Bates, Richard Jenkins, Rainn Wilson, Justin Theroux, Mena Suvari, Veronica Cartwright, Illeana Douglas, and Catherine O'Hara. And Patricia Clarkson and Joanna Cassidy were nothing short of brilliant as the aunt and mother in law. I wish they could have been in every episode, I don't think any TV show will ever get a better cast...although Mad Men comes very close.