The trio at the heart of A-ha met in 1980 in Oslo, Norway, and decided to concentrate on producing a commercial form of music. Travelling…
Browsing: New Wave
Sheffield band ABC revolved around Martin Fry (a onetime fanzine editor of a rag called Modern Drugs) and rose from the ashes of post-punk group Vice…
Adam & The Ants started off in early 1977, one of a dozen bands trying to keep up in the wake of The Sex Pistols What…
The Aliens were one of the first Australian bands of the late 70s to adopt the New Wave “uniform” of black clothes and skinny ties. Originally…
Formed in 1979, this Glasgow band centred around 17-year-old Clare Grogan who appeared in the film Gregory’s Girl (1981) directed by Bill Forsyth. In 1980 Altered Images toured…
Amazulu had an early break in 1984 when they scored one of the musical slots on anarchic TV comedy show The Young Ones to perform their single Moonlight Romance (it’s…
Like a number of Australian musicians who got their start during the late 1970s New Wave movement, The Apartments’ Peter Milton Walsh received more acclaim in Europe…
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…
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…
This British female dance-pop vocal trio, comprising Siobhan Fahey, Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin, came on the scene just as MTV was becoming an influential…
Barney Bubbles is a cult figure among other designers but is barely known outside the field – unlike contemporaries and followers like Peter Saville, Neville…
Scottish band Big Country – with their big guitars and heroic, anthemic rock – were the polar opposite of the predominant synthesizer groups of 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,…
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…
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…
The Boomtown Rats were formed in Dun Laoghaire (near Dublin), Ireland in 1975 by former NME journalist Bob Geldof (after he was thrown out of Canada…
Bow Wow Wow was born when the remaining members of Adam and the Ants, Leigh Gorman, Dave Barbarossa and Matthew Ashman, sought the advice of Sex Pistols’…
Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Tracy Pew and Phil Calvert were attending Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne, Australia, when they formed The Boys Next Door in…
The Breakfast Club’s drummer, Stephen Bray, helped write and produce several hits for his former college friend, Madonna, including True Blue and Into the Groove. Madonna actually played drums in…
Playing electronic instruments and singing openly gay lyrics in a shrill falsetto, this London trio burst onto a complacent music scene in 1984. Scottish-born Jimmy…