I thought there was a pretty good investigation into the advent of '80's crappiness in Shakey. I think part of it was new recording technologies, pressure from the industry to change and adapt and buy into the "future" of music (probably because keyboards are cheaper than orchestras) and a wholesale throwing out of a lot of methodologies that were working just fine up to that point (kinda like libraries throwing out card catalogues in the nineties and then wanting to self-immolate when their computers crashed for the first time.) Also, I feel like boomer bands, like boomers in general, got swept up in the $$ and the conservativism of the era. Then AIDS made everything weird. I seriously blame crappy early digital stuff for a lot of it, though. And I feel like punk/new wave was so dismissive and destructive for older bands. People like Jimmy Page were just getting zonked on heroine and trying to imitate punkers who hated him, while still maintaining the bloated superstardom of Led Zep. People trying to be too many things to too many people, "Not getting it" anymore, making too much money for their own good, etc. A lot of good bands STARTED in the eighties, though.
