Big Bad Hair does not play the actual music of bands or artists discuss. That stuff is copyrighted. I hope you already have these albums, or know these songs. If you don’t, you can find them — some are still in print and some are in iTunes and other, lesser, musical services, while others might have to be found by digging through the LP bins at used record stores. There’s also YouTube, an interesting place to find low-fi music videos that usually turn out to be worse than you remember.

Here’s a quick runthrough of the music I listened to in the 1980s. Some of it dates from before that, but I discovered it when I was in high school, so it counts. It really is all about me, people.

• The Cult
• The Mission
• Balaam and the Angel
• Sisters of Mercy
• The Cure
• The Smiths
• The Godfathers
• Masters of Reality
• Guns ‘n’ Roses
• Metallica
• Motley Crue
• AC/DC
• Def Leppard
• Quiet Riot
• Cinderella
• Ozzy
• Blue Oyster Cult
• David Bowie
• Led Zeppelin
• Pseudo Echo
• Platinum Blonde
• Glass Tiger
• Haywire
• Honeymoon Suite
• Payola$
• REM
• Gene Loves Jezebel
• Iggy Pop
• 54-40
• Rick Astley
• Robert Plant’s solo stuff
• Phil Collins
• Michael Jackson (my girlfriend was right into him. She liked Terence Trent D’Arby a lot, too)

…. and a lot more. This ought to give you a taste of how messed up my musical taste was, and is. I listen to everything, and I like most of it. You’ll hear me talking about these bands, their music, their videos and their look a lot. This music had a big, and lasting, influence on me. Hell, I spent years dressed up as Billy Duffy, what does that tell you … ?