In their first ten years together, Canadian band April Wine went through several changes in style and personnel with Myles Goodwyn the only enduring original…
Browsing: 1980s Music
During Duran Duran’s “gap year” (1985), Arcadia was the girly yin to the macho yang of Power Station, and – surprise, surprise – thanks to hit single Election…
1960s-influenced band The Arctic Circles played the Melbourne (Australia) independent scene in the mid-1980s. The band’s sound fused garage-punk, psychedelia and tough R&B riffs. The…
Formed in 1984 by longstanding members of The Skids, Richard Jobson and Russell Webb, the group was initially completed by John McGeoch on guitar (formerly…
Before they helped Max Headroom to hit the charts (Paranoimia) or resurrected the careers of Tom Jones (Kiss) and Duane Eddy (Peter Gunn), Art Of Noise brought sampling to…
Asia began in early 1981 after the apparent ending of Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, two of the founding bands of British progressive rock.…
Billy MacKenzie (most lyrics, all vocals, eventually everything) and Alan Rankine (most music and all instruments except drums) – once attempted brilliance, but later settled…
Aswad – whose name means ‘black’ in Arabic – formed in 1975 in West London’s Ladbroke Grove and built their early reputation on four LP’s…
After graduating from the University of Kent with a degree in French, this performance poet (born John Baine on 21 October 1957) really was a…
Formed in Birmingham (England) in 1979, The Au Pairs matched driving, guitar-led rock to lyrics (mostly by Woods) that dissected the politics of sexual relationships.…
The members of Australian Crawl all hailed from the Mount Eliza area on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. The band came together in 1978…
Outside a strong cult following, Sydney band Avion’s brand of melodic, American-influenced AOR met with virtual indifference at home. RCA even issued the band’s eponymous…
Formed by 15-year-old Roddy Frame in East Kilbride in Scotland in 1980, Aztec Camera hit the top of the Independent Charts in the UK in…
The B-52’s formed in 1977 in Athens, Georgia. Kate Pierson had been playing in a folk protest band called The Sun Donuts while raising goats…
Melbourne-based Bachelors From Prague formed in 1985 and played an infectious blend of 1940s jazz, 1950s R&B, 1970s funk and salsa. The group became the…
Young mod revival group Back To Zero formed in early 1979 in North London where bespectacled guitarist Sam Burnett (17), drummer Andy Moore (16) and…
Widely regarded as pioneers of the whole US hardcore movement, the four Rastafarians from Washington DC known as Bad Brains, may well have been the…
Formed in 1979, Bad Manners – a nine-piece ska band from north London – were one of the many bands to take their inspiration from The…
Blending old-school power chords with hardcore thrash, Bad Religion formed in Woodland Hills, California, in 1980. The debut album from these SoCal brats scarcely resembled…
Originally made up of the three Morris brothers – Jim (guitar, keyboards, recorder), Mark (vocals, bass) and Des (drums) – Balaam and The Angel began…