With his off-kilter sensibility and deep musical grounding, he brought attention to New Wave and alternative artists at the groundbreaking station KROQ.
Category: Nineteen Hundred Eighties
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Clem Burke, Versatile, Hard-Driving Drummer for Blondie, Dies at 70
He provided both the explosive percussion on hits like “Call Me” and the laid-back rhythm on the reggae-influenced “The Tide Is High.”
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The Best True Crime to Stream: 1970s and ’80s Kidnappings
Across television, film and podcasting, here are five stories of child abductions that shook parents across the United States.
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Marty Callner, Director of Comedy Specials and Music Videos, Dies at 78
At HBO in the late 1970s, he established the template for presenting stand-up on the small screen. He then became a mainstay of MTV in its early days.
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J.B. Moore, Producer of Seminal Hip-Hop Records, Dies at 81
He was a magazine ad salesman when he and a colleague, Robert Ford, teamed with Kurtis Blow and helped break rap music into the mainstream.
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Felice Picano, Champion of Gay Literature, Is Dead at 81
At a time when, in his words, “nobody was writing about gay life,” he produced groundbreaking novels and memoirs and published books by Harvey Fierstein and others.
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Barry Michael Cooper, ‘New Jack City’ Screenwriter, Dies at 66
After chronicling the crack boom of the 1980s as an investigative reporter, he had a high-profile but brief second career in Hollywood.
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Alfa Anderson, ‘Chic’ Singer, Dies at 78
She sang the famous refrain “Le freak, c’est chic,” on one of disco’s biggest hits and was a sought-after vocalist for many prominent artists.
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1984: The Year Pop Stardom Got Supersized
In a peak moment of pop monoculture, synthesizers pumped up songs and MTV forever changed how artists were seen. Here’s how — and why.
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Beyond the Blockbusters, 7 Key Songs From 1984
The Pointer Sisters, Minutemen and more sounds from a landmark year in pop music.
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‘You Can Never Look Back’: How ’70s Rockers Rebooted for the ’80s
The year 1984 was a watershed in pop music. The stars who’d made it big the previous decade had to embrace new instruments and MTV or risk being left behind.