When MTV first launched, there simply weren’t enough music videos to fill their 24 hour format. This forced the young channel to take a chance on previously-unknown-in-the-US artists to fill time, including A Flock of Seagulls, Adam and the Ants, The Buggles, U2, Spandau Ballet & Visage. It paid off: […]
If you’ve heard of the KLF, you probably know them as a band that burnt a million pounds. But that is only the conclusion to their story. The journey that led them to the Isle of Jura on that fateful August morning in 1994 is even more fascinating. A journey […]
What is Industrial? In its original form it was an aggressively mechanistic and uncompromising sound formed of tape-loops, samples, often self-made synths and electronics. Bands like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Nurse With Wound and Einstürzende Neubauten produced avant garde noise that thumbed its nose at pop music as a production […]
As a sub-genre, girl groups have gifted us with so many moments of pop perfection. For the most part these were groups assembled by a producer for the purpose of creating chart hits with little musical input from the performers. But formed in 1981, Bananarama were different. Spurred on by […]
Peter Gabriel has inhabited many roles. From a costumed prog poet in Genesis to a conservationist balladeer on the Wall-E soundtrack. However his run of self-titled albums are where he found himself as a musician. On his third album in 1980, he took all the post punk, synth pop and […]
In 1995, rock radio needed a change after four years of Grunge. And that change came in the form of Ska. Invented in Kingston, Jamaica in the late 1950s, before being repackaged with punk and soul elements as Two Tone in the UK in the late 70s, it was an […]
1993 was quite the year for Alternative Rock. Still in the afterglow of Nevermind changing everything, weird and wonderful music that only a couple of years prior would’ve gone unheard, then a product of the underground, now controlling the airwaves and taking over MTV. [“Start Choppin’,” “Today,” “Creep,” “No Rain,” […]
The early 90s was a boom time for getting rich off Alternative Rock. Due to the breakout commercial success of REM, Nirvana and Green Day, major labels grabbed any band that could approximate their sounds in the hopes of them becoming the next big thing. If there was one band […]
You know the story. Nirvana released “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in late 1991, and alternative rock broke into the mainstream. But how alternative can a band be and still succeed, however briefly, in the pop charts. Enter Therapy? Ripping their way out of Northern Ireland in 1989, they absorbed metal, […]
In January 1964, the BBC saw that for the first time ever the national singles chart was overflowing with British acts. Due to this, they created a weekly music chart rundown programme called Top Of The Pops. From then on, every Thursday evening Britain’s youth would be delighted by the […]
