Beyond here lies nothing - how bad was the 80s?

You peak when you're sixteen.

Someone ruefully told me the other day how she thought contemporary music had peaked at the turn of the century and gone downhill since then. Funny, I thought it'd rather improved.

A recent survey* reveals that for most consenting adults, music is best in the year we turn sixteen and crashes and burns straight after than. Try making an honest list of your favourite artists/songs/albums and see what I mean. Go on. Really.

My decade from hell was the 1980s, as Hall & Oates arose from the ashes of Ian Curtis. With the glorious exceptions of the Pixies and the Pogues, these were the years where everything went seriously cactus, and stayed fallow until the mighty Stone Roses blossomed at the end of the decade. With the 80s riding an undeserved revival, I figured I'd start the reassessment here, and give them another listen.

So let's see what, if anything has changed. Let's take a random spin, starting with the least promising category, commercially successful acts.

Culture Club: a golf club member's idea of radical music. White man's reggae/soul lite - think Police without the musicianship or songwriting. Like Spandau Ballet, Rick Astley or Dexy's Midnight Runners, they're hard to even picture without crushing your own toes into your mental Kickers.

Similarly it's hard to see the word Bono without retreating behind the your own sofa in embarrassment. However, (and it pains me to say this) he and his mates made some surprisingly good music on their way to becoming laughing stock stadium rockers. Early singles, not bad. Half of The Joshua Tree is very good. There was a time Simple Minds were neck and neck for megastardom. But then there was a time I thought it would be a good idea to go and see the Minds in concert. Then again I saw Desperately Seeking Susan, the highlight of Madonna's career. Maybe she’s the perfect 80s artist. In terms of singing, songwriting - and indeed acting - she’s a good dancer.

Next up is music we actually thought was good. Sad to report, The Jesus and Mary Chain give only novelty value, and now sound like a bunch of nice tunes run through a cement mixer. Happily, The Pixies still move, despite the constant repetition. Shane MacGowan's songs have rarely been bettered. Springsteen kicked off the decade with some of his finest moments, until he found himself in baseball stadiums and his anger bizarrely turned against him by the GOP.

Which brings us nicely to the last category, the dinosaur acts from previous decades. Dylan, Bowie, Floyd and the rest of the royalty counters. The sad thing isn't so much the risible output (Stones' Dirty Work anyone? And don't start me on Empire Burlesque) but the way almost all survived the decade to run even sparser material in the 90s - and beyond. Maybe that's the true measure of how bad things really were. The cauldron years that preceded the decade (late 50s and 60s, mid-70s) not only threw up new (or just exciting) music, they speared their share of timeservers. Not so the 80s. In the land of the blind, the bloated kings slept easy.

Song that sums up a decade: Elton John - Passengers. Non-commercial native/It's tattooed in your veins/You're living in a blood bank/And riding on this train. Without a fresh idea since 1972, Reg limboed to the lowest point of his career. 25 years later, it looks like a creative peak.

Verdict: I knew I was right. Sorry, it really was that bad.

Next up, the decade that taste forgot, the 1970s.

* Made up by me.

Weekend lost and found

Friday to the Fitz where I’m backing up from celebrating a new play read in London; an opening night and a mate’s 1,000th birthday. Won’t make it to the NIDA library today.

The Queen of Holland sets the tone early, accidentally returning not with lunch but a mammoth glass of strong German beer. She shines in the splintered sunlight and by the time Withnail arrives, there’s a party in my head and everyone’s invited. So Iggy joins.

We’re all on the cusp of change. The Queen to a new palace, Iggy’s eying up The Dam, and Withnail’s firmly on the conveyor belt of life’s biggest adventure. It’s Fitz Friday mixture of significance and ephemera and then back out into what is passing for night and a determinedly ordinary spell of cooking.

Saturday it’s Tamarama for late dinner with the Irish maddos and Sunday it’s Neutral Bay lunch all day with a starring role for a wheelchair-bound iron man who’s shamingly positive.

Two successive weekends in Sydney puts me on my back. Time to get back up the coast, pick up the new script and tip my ageing carcass into the sea. More on change next time. It’s jasmine in the air.

Four uses of the knife

On Monday my short play Catch a Falling Knife appears in the inner sanctum of RADA - the bar. Like any parent I'm proud of my offspring even when I can't be there to check out how it's behaving on the other side of the world (it's probably as well my own parents are no longer around to fact-check that one).

A playwright friend of mine reckons that the second time your show is performed it's like a cover band doing your work. But I mumble goodbye to the show in the rehearsal room - if not before. That's why Jo Punter's second most common question about an upcoming play (is it how you imagined it?) is always to be answered in the negative. It will never match the fabulous red-draped surroundings of the inside of your head. Much as we hate it (and make no mistake, there are many times we do) theatre is collaborative. Which is how it should be.

The alternative, the equivalent of thrusting the sulky teenager who sits alone in his bedroom into a spotlight and letting him do his own thing, gives us worthy, earnest, unwatchable shows.
It's the third different production and the fourth outing in six months for the play. Not bad for an idea that spent longer than most on death row. Like reading Mamet, there's a knack to chucking the chaff. And I have no idea what that is. But I'm still happy about Monday.