Through e-mail my brothers and a couple of friends did a couple battle of the bands competitions. A fun way to do it was to coach a year, choose a top 100 songs list and pit your year's songs against another guy's year and vote on them.

In any case, Frankie says Relax

Along the theme of these post, I routinely listen to "the spectrum" on xmsirius and they like to play some familiar 80's bands. While U2 isn't unknown or really not even my favorite band, "Red Hill Mining town" Red Hill Mining Town - YouTube
Gets played a lot and every time I hear it, I realize what a great song it is. The video is full of 80's cheesy production, but the music still sounds great. "The Josha Tree" had a number of them.

Motley Crue
GoGos (originated in the late 70's)
The Feelies
Def Leppard (originated in 77)

Was going to say Brian Eno but Wikied him and he has been around way before the 80's with Roxy Music.

Killing Joke
Zigue Zigue Sputnik
Black