The 1980s

Although it seemed like a mere document of the indie movement when it appeared in 1986, it’s really only in retrospect that the importance of C86 has...

The concept of the charity record wasn’t exactly new in the 1980s. Before that former Beatle George Harrison had released The Concert for Bangladesh...

With the rise of rave culture, dance music emerged from the underground. Since then it’s become one of the most important forces in music, not only...

In the 1980s the label “indie” came to represent two things. It began as a way of describing artists who released records on the small, independent...

As if in response to the austerity both in the clothing and music of the punks and post punks, the New Romantics burst floridly onto the scene at the...

Just as punk reacted against the dinosaur of rock sparking post-punk, the New Romantics and Goth, so heavy metal experienced its own musical...

The rave scene grew out of the warehouse parties as they exploded into popularity. Where the parties had been relatively contained, the rave scene,...

MTV changed everything. It arrived in America in 1981 airing music videos 24 hours a day seven days a week (it kicked off, aptly with Buggles’ hit...

The Cure might well be the most influential cult band in the history of rock. Although many see them as a Goth group (in large part because of a dour...

Goth stands apart from most movements being one that’s not only lasted for more than two decades, but continually grown during that time (punk...

Electro is a term that falls in and out of fashion. In the mid Noughties it’s a kind of dance music. But in the early 1980s – in Britain at least –...

It was a magic time the period of 1988 and 1989, when the underground dance party scene, fuelled by the drug Ecstasy, began to come together. The...

If the Cure became the perennial high priests of Goth then the Smiths were the idols of indie. Singer Morrissey who openly talked of being celibate...

The story of Rough Trade is one that illustrates how a small independent label can become an influential force in music. What brought it to that...

Each decade of British rock has enjoyed its defining music television programmes. In the 1950s it was 6.5 Special, the ‘60s had Ready Steady Go and...

The first question of course is what exactly is ambient music? Although to some, like musical explorer Brian Eno (who’s released a number of ambient...