Kyle, thanks, that's very helpful. The tutorial was a little goofy, but the verbiage attached to the site should get me started.

I've been prevaricating on the 80's list, but have finally come up with a top 11. I based it on what I honestly listened to and loved at the time, not so much what now seems cool. No doubt missed some obvious ones.

I liked your list a lot, mostly because it's music I don't know intimately in some cases. You were, I guess, 9 - 18 years old in the eighties, so a very different thing from 16 - 25, plus you just have different musical tastes, and of course you grew up in Scarborough I think? (versus Kanata). All in all a good list to navigate through for me.

REM - Murmur / Reckoning (I'm cheating already)
Clash - London Calling (Dec 79 - more cheating, but this was really the first record of the 80's)
The Pretenders - Learning to Crawl
Tom Petty - Damn the Torpedoes (Nov 79)
Springsteen - Born in the USA (yes it's true)
Big Dipper - Heavens
That Petrol Emotion - Babble
Jazz Butcher - Fishcoteque
Midnight Oil - Diesel and Dust
The Church - Starfish
Paul Kelly - Gossip

New York in retrospect was mostly a 90's record for me