Inside the Bubble

Here's the thing nobody tells you about the 80s: they never actually ended. They just got quieter. The songs still work. The radio still glows. Somewhere it is permanently a Friday night in 1986, the charts are counting down, and the best part of the week is deciding what to tape.

That somewhere is here. Welcome to the bubble.

The 80s Bubble is where the decade's music lives like it never left: the stories behind the songs you know every word of, how radio actually decided what you heard, what the charts were really measuring, and the one-hit wonders that were never really one-hit anything. Float around. Nothing in here has aged a day.

Who's inside

Bobby Catalano and Jason Pascoe. Two friends who didn't just grow up inside this music, they were on the dance floor it was made for: both were on Dance Party USA, the USA Network's teen dance show out of Philadelphia, Bobby from 1985 and behind the host mic from '89 to '91, Jason a regular from '86 to '88. When a record broke, they felt the room change. That's the vantage this whole site is written from, and it's also why the feel here is memory while the facts are research: every story gets checked against the record before it goes in the bubble, because the decade deserves better than fuzzy retellings.

They've been keeping the party going ever since at bobbyandjason.com, home of Bobby and Jason's Awesome 80s Podcast.

The radio is on

One more thing, and it might be the best thing: the bubble has its own station. The 80s Bubble Radio plays the decade all day, every day. Put it on and leave it on. That's what it's for.