The 1980s are a confusing - and confused - decade musically. For many they equate to industrial quantities of hairspray, stentorian drum machines, echo-y overproduction and thin, bleepy sound effects that sound like they were crafted on a kids Bontempi keyboard. Serious musos sneer at a decade that prized superficiality, glitzy excess, crass commercialism and the primacy of the three minute pop single over the earnest, conceptual triple album. In actuality, of course, the revolution had been in progress for a few years. The twin threat of punk and disco eviscerated the rock establishment in the mid to late '70s, shifting the focus from the cohesive, long-form artistic statement of the album to the dizzy rush of the individual song. Even pompous post-punk artists put out singles; something which Led Zep in their heyday never did. Punk soon bought itself a skinny tie and rolled its cheap suit sleeves up, morphing into the more commercially minded new wave at the end of the deca