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1980s Music Artists
By Marc "Devil Dog Of The Web" Iseli / Updated Dec. 2025
Music has always been the background noise to my questionable life choices. I’ll listen to anything: soft, hard, easy, sleazy, country twang, or even the kind of rap that makes your OIC nervous. Dad strummed the guitar and wailed on the harmonica, my brother was a local rock star drummer (at least in his own mind), and I tried to play the saxophone until the neighbors started a petition. The thing about music is, you hear a song from back in the day and suddenly you’re time-traveling, right back to the glory days, field days, and the hangovers. That’s me every time a tune from my Marine Corps days sneaks onto the radio. Half these songs I wouldn’t pay a nickel for, but they got burned into my brain by sheer repetition. Strap in, devil dogs, here are a few of the musical landmines that followed me through the 80s.

Right before I got shipped off to Marine Corps boot camp, "Sultans of Swing"; came on the radio in 1979. I never bought the record, never planned to, but that song stuck to me like chewing gum on your spit-shins. Years later, It started popping up at work, and suddenly I was back in the days when my parents were still around, and I was dumb enough to think the Corps would be a vacation. “Love Is The Answer”. Never bought it, but it still manages to ambush me with nostalgia. I sort of got a brake for three months when I found myself being serenaded by the DI singing, " This is my rifle this is my gun".

Rolling into A-school in Millington, Tennessee, the Pittsburgh Pirates were actually winning something for once, and the radio was blaring “We Are Family "; by Sister Sledge like it was the national anthem. Every time I hear that song, I’m instantly teleported back to those glory days: fresh out of boot camp, barely housebroken, and somehow trusted to wrench on multimillion-dollar jet engines. I’d just scored my first boom box, the only piece of gear that survived every PCS, field op, and barracks inspection. Next thing you know, I’m hoarding cassettes like MREs before a field exercise. The Bee Gees snuck in there, too. Yeah, I was a closet Bee Gees fan. Spirits Having Flown, "Too Much Heaven", don’t judge. The cassette pile grew faster than a rack inspection fail list, so I bought one of those carry cases. Don’t lie, you had one too.

First day at MCAS El Toro, and what’s blasting on the radio? Earth, Wind & Fire’s “After The Love Has Gone” That cassette went straight into the case, no questions asked. 1980 rolls around, Christopher Cross drops “Ride Like the Wind,” and I’m cranking it on the boom box in the barracks laundry room, which, by the way, had acoustics that would make Carnegie Hall jealous. 1981, Asia’s “Heat Of The Moment” hits, and you know that tape joined the squad. Vandenberg somehow snuck in with “Burning Heart”, don’t ask, I blame peer pressure. Then, in 1982, Triumph’s “Fight the Good Fight” hit the right chords in the feels. See what I did there? Chord, music, yeah, I’ll see myself out. I played that cassette until the tape was thinner than my hairline after a few months on the carrier deck.

I had a whole arsenal of bands and songs back then, but for some reason, these tracks are the ones that launch me straight back to the days when my knees worked, and my liver hadn’t filed for early retirement. Now that I’m older and allegedly wiser, hearing them makes me nostalgic for a time when the biggest problem was running out of cassette space, not running out of Geritol. Anyone else get hit with the feels, or am I just a washed-up, delusional misfit? Don’t answer that, I already know.

Alright, you glorious Rat Phixers and Phlyers, if we ever survived a TAD, a Det, or a BOHICA, who haven't, and you didn’t think I was the biggest gaff off in the squadron. Got a sea story, or some grainy photos your ex didn’t set on fire, and they’re only slightly illegal? Send ‘em by email, snail mail, or safety wire it to a carrier pigeon. I collect ‘em all, just nothing that would incriminate me.
80svmfp3@gmail.com

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