Period in which Reagan was president, big hair and no brains were the staple of Top-40 music, and alternative music was actually something alternative, instead of overmarketed mall-ternative garbage.
Contrast with The Nineties, where an endless succession of retro movements provides ample testimony to the lack of creativity of the average Gen-Y-er. A decade before AOL, when The Internet was light on cluelessness, and it was possible to read Usenet in a day.