>What I knew at that point was either what my siblings
>liked or what we could glean from Friday Night Videos.

I didn't even have the advantage of siblings.  The sum total of my music knowledge in the early '80s came from occasional viewings of MTV (though never for longer than a song or two at a time, since the cable was in the living room, and my parents wouldn't watch it for very long), "Friday Night Videos," and what I heard on top-40 radio.  I wasn't friends with anyone who was really into music, and, at the time, *I* wasn't really into music, so I just basically listened to what was handed to me.  But my wife, who lived in a small town in Iowa at the same time, was watching MTV in an obsessive-compulsive fashion and, as a result, was listening to the Cure, the Smiths, and God knows who else long before I even had the slightest idea who they were.  The first alternative music album I bought was the Alarm's "Strength," as a result of catching a live performance of theirs on MTV...which I think was '85.  But, then, I didn't buy anything even remotely experimental again until 1987, when I risked the purchase of the Cult's "Electric" because it was on sale at my local Record Bar (where, ironically, I would end up working in a mere two years).