“Nostalgia” is always a big buzzword, looking in the rearview when things were supposedly simpler – like right now with the ‘90s. It could manifest as a movie evocative of the decade or one that’s straight-up banking on the legacy of a franchise. Maybe it’s a Britpop band singlehandedly thrusting the genre back into the spotlight. Sometimes, albeit rarely, it’s an act who’ve decided to release an entire album of covers from the year they themselves peaked in popularity.
Then there’s the ‘80s, which have somehow stopped being nostalgic, instead turning into an era that is always in fashion. Dress up a party as a themed event that doubles as an excuse to get decked out in all things neon or stonewashed jeans, but the irony of busting a move to Young MC suddenly doesn’t seem like such a laugh when everyone is legit into it.
Take, for instance, Lost 80’s Live, which has been going on for well over 20 years and bills itself as North America’s longest-running retro music tour. Headlined by A Flock of Seagulls, the 2025 edition cabbage patches into The Wang this Friday (August 1), with support from a laundry list of new wave one and two-hit wonders like The Vapors (“Turning Japanese”), Big Country (“In a Big Country”), General Public (“Tenderness”), and many more. And if you’re going to throw an ‘80s party, there’s no better host than UK export Richard Blade, who came up introducing the masses to all those artists in the first place as a DJ at the iconic Los Angeles radio station KROQ beginning in 1982…
Read the rest of this piece over at Vanyaland, where Blade and I spoke about why the music of the ’80s resonates generation after generation, the biggest festival moment for U2, and what Depeche Mode songs he would play for someone who’d never heard the band.
The Chronicles of Michael Christopher 
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