This duo formed in the UK with Brit Simon Tedd and Canadian ‘Shark’. They had minor hits for MCA with Shooting From My Heart and the superbly…
Browsing: Music – 1980s
Chicago’s noise autocrats Big Black were always a contrary outfit. The three-piece of Steve Albini (guitar, vocals), Santiago Durango (guitarist) and Dave Riley (bass) split…
Scottish band Big Country – with their big guitars and heroic, anthemic rock – were the polar opposite of the predominant synthesizer groups of the…
Although technically an Australian group, Big Pig began in London around 1985. Lead singer Sherine had a dark alto that complemented the often depressing tone…
Looking back on all the pop star excess of the decade, the 80s needed Steven William Bragg more than anyone could have imagined at the…
Billy Idol was born William Michael Albert Broad on 30 November 1955 at Stanmore, Middlesex, in England but spent his early years in New York,…
William Martin Joel was born on 9 May 1949 in the Bronx, New York. Growing up in the Levittown area of Hicksville, smack in the…
The Birthday Party hailed from Melbourne, Australia. They had originally been The Boys Next Door but they switched names in 1980 and relocated to London. They…
Napalming its way onto the often violent California punk scene of the early 1980s, Damaged (1981) is one of the angriest and most confronting albums ever. Although…
By the time Cher appeared as the frontwoman in a New Wave-style band called Black Rose, many people were not taking the concept – or her – seriously.…
Joe Camilleri formed The Black Sorrows in 1983 after dissolving Aussie New Wave/R&B band, Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons. Taking a year off to clear his…
A duo consisting of singer and guitarist Neil Arthur from Lancashire and keyboard player Stephen Luscombe from Middlesex, Blancmange released a non-charting EP in 1981…
It was in 1973, at New York’s Boburn Tavern, that former Playboy bunny waitress Deborah Harry met Chris Stein. She was performing as one-third of The Stilettos, who…
Moving in to fill the vapid-soul vacancy left by Culture Club during that band’s terminal creative drought, England’s Blow Monkeys whipped up a disturbingly familiar-sounding bit of…
This unlikely answer to the Velvet Underground formed in Bristol, England, in the early 80s and endured endless line-up changes. Their original aim – a…
Paul Buchanan, Robert Bell and PJ Moore first combined at Glasgow University in the very early 80s. Paul and PJ had known each other since…
Kevin Archer, a key player in Geno-era Dexys Midnight Runners, changed his name to Al because Kevin Rowland would not countenance two Kevins in the band.…
It shows you how far and fast New Wave travelled. Five years earlier, Chris Sullivan might have been screaming lyrics in a punk band; in…
From the same new Scottish pop scene that begat Aztec Camera came The Bluebells – a bookish-looking quintet of Merseybeat revisionists. Their self-titled debut mini-album…
BoDeans frontmen Kurt Newmann (aka Beau BoDean) and Sammy Llanas met in high school in 1977 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and worked together in a number of…