C86 Show - Indie Pop

Matt James - Gene

Matt James in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://musicmattjames.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/geneofficialband

Matt is a musician, singer, songwriter & former drummer & co-songwriter in the UK guitar band Gene. Gene had success around the world including many UK top 40 hits & top 10 LP's. They also toured the world extensively in their active years. Matt left the music industry in 2008 but returned in 2021 as a solo artist & has recently finished recording his debut solo LP with producer Stephen Street.

Terry Newman - Marilyn Monroe Style

Terry Newman in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.accartbooks.com/uk/book/marilyn-monroe-style/

Marilyn Monroe Style celebrates Marilyn’s impact on fashion by revealing the influence of her many iconic looks. Her wardrobe encompassed sensual femininity as well as low-key minimalism. Outfits span from shimmering showpieces such as the Jean Louis gown worn to serenade JFK on his birthday, to Pucci slacks and cats-eye spectacles.

Born Norma Jeane Mortensen, whenever she ‘became’ Marilyn, she mesmerised onlookers with showstopping outfits that helped make her a legend, yet throughout her life the clothes she wore represented many ways of being a woman.

Written by Terry Newman – the bestselling author of Taylor Swift and the Clothes She Wears – this book tells the story of Marilyn’s life through clothes and is essential reading for Marilyn Monroe fans everywhere.

 

Jim Walters - Das Damen, New United Monster Show, Vacationland & Twin Engines

Jim Walters in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.facebook.com/DasDamenOfficial

The band was formed in 1984 by Jim Walters (vocals, guitar), Alex Totino (guitar, vocals), Phil Leopold von Trapp (bass, vocals), and Lyle Hysen (drums). Totino and Hysen were previously in the New York hardcore band The Misguided. Das Damen released their self-titled debut album on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace! in 1986. They subsequently signed to SST Records and released Jupiter Eye in 1987, which has been described as "quasi-hardcore that touched on MC5-like garage psychedelia". A third album, Triskaidekaphobe, followed. It featured a guest appearance by ex-MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer.

 

One Thousand Violins - Colin Gregory

Colin Gregory in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://preciousrecordingsoflondon.bandcamp.com/album/pre-028-one-thousand-violins-john-peel-session-021286

https://preciousrecordingsoflondon.bandcamp.com/album/pre-027-one-thousand-violins-john-peel-session-250985

Leah Andreone

Leah Andreone in conversation with David Eastaugh

Andreone's first album, Veiled, produced by Rick Neigher, was released by RCA in 1996. It included the hit single "It's Alright, It's OK", which charted in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. It was introspective whereas her next album, Alchemy, was more sexual and intimate. Andreone's lyrics are often treatises on psychology, reflecting her interest in the subject.

Paul Rappaport - Gliders Over Hollywood: Airships, Airplay, And The Art Of Rock Promotion

Paul Rappaport in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gliders-Over-Hollywood-Airships-Promotion/dp/191682918X

Gliders Over Hollywood tells the exhilarating true story of a blue-collar kid nicknamed ‘Rap’ who grew up in thrall to rock’n’roll, then found himself right in the middle of many of his heroes’ lives as he became the most renowned rock promotion man in the USA.

Paul Rappaport enjoyed a storied thirty-three-year career at Columbia Records, where he was instrumental in the careers of everyone from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd to The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello to Billy Joel, Judas Priest to Alice In Chains, and many, many more.

The music business from the late 60s through the 90s was an exciting time that mirrored the music and the musicians making it. It was also a time of new and creative ideas on how to market this groundbreaking cultural phenomenon. Eccentric characters were everywhere, and often the managers, promoters, disc jockeys, and record company staff were just as big a show as the performers themselves.

This dynamic, entertaining memoir captures the magic of these times and the people who made it happen, revealing the never-before-heard secrets of the promotion and marketing that turned the music industry on its head. From creating the Pink Floyd airship to sword-fighting with Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden and receiving a guitar lesson from Keith Richards, it’s a book packed full of extraordinary adventures with some of the biggest names in rock.

 

 

Craig Wedren - Shudder to Think

Craig Wedren in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.craigwedren.com/

American singer-songwriter, musician and composer, who began his career fronting post-hardcore band Shudder to Think. Following the disbandment of Shudder to Think, Wedren pursued a career as a television and film music composer, as well as releasing solo material.

 

 

Sharon Smith - Camera Girl

Sharon Smith in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.ideanow.online/cameragirl

https://store.magalleria.co.uk/products/camera-girl-sharon-smith

 

In New York in 1979, Sharon was a 28- year-old photographer who walked into the Ritz, an East Village club that was the center of the New Wave music scene. She went on to work at the Savoy, the Red Parrot, Studio 54, Roseland Ballroom, Merlyn’s, 4D, Area, Palladium, Mars and the club called New York, New York.

The book is of course full of unseen Polaroid pictures of Madonna, Andy Warhol, Sylvester, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry and many, many club kids and disco dancers. The main text features Sharon Smith with the book's editor Bill Shapiro. The introduction is by 2024 legend Honey Dijon. It is the perfect package.

 

Jon Ronson - The Man from Delmonte & Frank Sidbottom

Jon Ronson in conversation with David Eastaugh

http://jonronson.com/

In the late 1980s, Ronson replaced Mark Radcliffe as the keyboard player for the Frank Sidebottom band for a number of performances.

Ronson was the manager of the Manchester indie band The Man from Delmonte

Justin K Broadrick - Godflesh, Jesu, Final, Napalm Death, Head of David

Justin K Broadrick in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://jesu.bandcamp.com/

https://avalancherecordings.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/officialgodflesh

Best known as the lead singer and a founding member of the band Godflesh, followed by Jesu.

He was briefly in the English grindcore band Napalm Death when he was a teenager in the mid-1980s, writing and recording guitar for their debut album, Scum. Broadrick has also maintained a parallel career as a producer, producing records and remixes. Since the 1990s he has worked with Kevin Martin as Techno Animal an electronic music project based in a fusion of industrial, dub, ambient and hip hop, which disbanded in 2001 and was reactivated in 2017 under the new name Zonal. Since 2012, he has been releasing hard techno music under the solo moniker JK Flesh. Broadrick has set up record labels such as HeadDirt, Avalanche Recordings, Post Mortem Productions (briefly renamed Uprising Productions), Lo Fibre and Heartache.

Simon Barber - The Chesterfields

Simon Barber in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://preciousrecordingsoflondon.bandcamp.com/album/pre-049-the-chesterfields-janice-long-session-060187

https://simonchesterfield.bandcamp.com/album/simon-chesterfield

PRE 049: THE CHESTERFIELDS – Janice Long session 06.01.87

Leading lights among the generation of indie pop outfits that thrived in the post-C86 environment, The Chesterfields released three singles on the Subway Organization label before reaching the dizzy heights of No.2 on the independent charts with their debut album ‘Kettle’.
Various line-ups reappeared over the years – as, indeed, did another three LPs – but this is the classic early line-up, captured in a four-song blast session for the BBC in early 1987.
As well as featuring a handful of the Somerset-based group’s best-loved songs, the session features a guest appearance from soon-to-be-legendary West Country-based PJ Harvey producer John Parish – masquerading as ‘Scott Tracey’ for a spot of percussion and backing vocals!
Songsheet: Two Girls And A Treehouse, What's Your Perversion?, Oh Mr Wilson!, Love Mountain

Amy Rigby - The Shams and Last Roundup

Amy Rigby in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.amyrigby.com/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-City-Memoir-Amy-Rigby

After playing with several New York bands she began a solo career, recording several albums which had only modest sales despite enthusiastic reviews. She settled into a career of touring while raising a daughter, then formed a duo with Wreckless Eric, whom she also married. As of November 2011 they continue to tour from a base in upstate New York. She is the author of a memoir, Girl to City.

 

John McKay - Siouxsie and the Banshees

John McKay in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://thejohnmckay.bandcamp.com/album/sixes-and-sevens

McKay's influence lives on; many of the most influential guitarists of the past four decades credit him as a major influence - Geordie from Killing Joke, Jim Reid of The Jesus And Mary Chain, U2's The Edge, Thurston Moore, Johnny Marr and even the two guitarists - The Cure's Robert Smith and Magazine's John McGeoch - who followed him in The Banshees. 



McKay's burgeoning status as the anti-guitar hero was halted when he and Banshees drummer Kenny Morris - at odds with Siouxsie and bassist Steve Severin - fled the band just after the start of a tour supporting the group's second album, Join Hands. It was a weekly music paper scandal, later the subject of a BBC documentary, and Siouxsie's vitriol working its way into the lyrics of a later Banshees b-side, "Drop Dead / Celebration". Aside from a solitary single on Marc Riley's In Tape label nearly a decade later, no music was heard from McKay again.

So it comes as a major surprise to learn of a pile of excellent recordings made in the years just after he left The Banshees, unheard by all but a very few, some of which feature drummer Kenny Morris, plus Mick Allen from Rema Rema, Matthew Seligman of the Soft Boys and longer-term collaborator Graham Dowdall and John's wife Linda . . . the latter three of whom are now sadly deceased.



Sixes And Sevens is an historic lost album. Brazenly genius and bearing fair claim as the lost treasure of the post-punk era, the album collects eleven studio tracks, carefully mastered from original tapes. It's a masterpiece which best speaks for itself. 

Angela Jaeger - I Feel Famous: Punk Diaries 1977-1981

Angela Jaeger in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feel-Famous-Punk-Diaries-1977-1981/dp/1955125570

I Feel Famous: Punk Diaries 1977-1981 is a girl’s coming of age story set to the pulse of punk rock. The book tracks 17-year-old Angela Jaeger’s exciting discovery of punk music and its accompanying lifestyle in 1977.

A music enthusiast living in New York’s East Village, Angela’s story unfolds chronologically, charting her late adolescence in tandem with her transition from observer of the nascent punk scene to eager participant. Gradually becoming a nightly fixture of her neighborhood’s vibrant underground rock milieu at CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, by 1978 she had continued to fulfill her punk fantasy abroad. She followed the Clash on a tour across England, finally returning home in 1979 to start her own band. Angela encountered an impressive cast of characters on her adventures, including Lydia Lunch, Joe Strummer, Billy Idol, Klaus Nomi, and Sid Vicious.

Laced with humor and wide-eyed curiosity, Angela’s daily first-hand accounts take the reader on a personal journey not found in other punk histories. Additional commentary by the author provides context and further anecdotal material.

The text is illustrated with the visual expressions of Angela’s enthusiasm—her drawings of punk personalities and fans, previously unseen photos and ephemera culled from her personal archive—affording a unique insight into the relationship between the music, the media, and the audience.

The diaries touch on a variety of themes including identity politics, downtown NY, anglophilia, fandom, fame, and fashion. Contrasting the stark black and white of 1970s New York with the exuberant beat-up color of a decaying London and its disenchanted youth, a lost era is brought back to life through a dedicated fan’s own reportage. Creative, funny and endlessly cool, the result is an unprecedented perspective into an ever-popular moment in contemporary cultural history.

Brian Nevill - Shriekback, Pigbag, Kirsty MacColl etc

Brian Nevill in conversation with David Eastaugh

Since the 80's he has worked with many artists including Shriekback, Pigbag, Kirsty MacColl, Pete Molinari, Luc Van Acker, Virginia Astley, Big Joe Louis & His Blues Kings, Ronnie Dawson, Planet Rockers, Ray Sharpe, Eddie Angel, Neanderthals, Sonny George, Holly Golightly, Carl Sonny Leyland, Teddy Paige, Carlos & The Bandidos, Duffy Power, Jerimiah Marques. Sister Suzie. 

Sue Tilley - Leigh Bowery

Sue Tilley in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leigh-Bowery-Life-Times-Icon/dp/034069310X

Bowery's closest friend, Sue Tilley recounts the life of Leigh Bowery, the costume designer and performer who posed for the painter Lucien Freud. The biography follows Bowery's life from his arrival in London in 1981 to his death from AIDS in 1994 and was written with the co-operation of his friends and family.

Thomas Walsh - Pugwash & The Duckworth Lewis Method

Thomas Walsh in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://pugwashtheband.bandcamp.com/

https://westhampsteadarts.com/events/

Pugwash are an Irish pop band fronted by Drimnagh-born musician Thomas Walsh. Pugwash has released six albums since its debut LP Almond Tea in 1999. Influences on the band's sound are regularly cited as including XTC, Electric Light Orchestra and Jeff Lynne, the Beach Boys, the Kinks, Honeybus and the Beatles, though Walsh dismisses the Beatles comparisons as "lazy"

 

 

John Aizlewood -Joy Division + New Order: Decades

John Aizlewood in conversation with David Eastaugh

http://www.johnaizlewood.com/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Joy-Division-New-Order-Decades

The definitive illustrated story of Joy Division + New Order.

There’s no template for making it as a globally successful pop group. Some of the ingredients remain constant and beyond the music, there’s a mix’n’match selection of premature death, drugs, drink, destroyed friendships, lukewarm solo projects and bungled finances. The saga of Joy Division and New Order has all those clichés, yet both groups defined their times and overturned their musical landscape.

First, there was Joy Division. Their music reflected both the barren urban landscape of their native Manchester in the late 1970s and singer Ian Curtis’s heart of darkness. They remain forever set in aspic, not merely – if “merely” is the right word – by the suicide of their extraordinary and extraordinarily volatile singer, but by two albums as close to perfection as music can come.

From the ashes of Joy Division rose New Order, who recruited a keyboardist because of – rather than in spite of – the fact she couldn’t play. On the cusp of the British dance music boom, with what seemed like remarkable prescience, they invested in The Haçienda, a club in their native Manchester. In its pomp, the queues were around the block, but its debts would sink their heroically hopeless record label, Factory.

If Joy Division were sublime musical darkness, New Order were bathed in sunlight and their globally popular music bridged the chasm between indie and dance and inspired a generation. Having conquered the world while maintaining their credibility, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and imploded in a tsunami of recrimination, while still making fabulous music to this day. You couldn’t make it up: there’s no need to.

Boris Williams - The Cure & Vamberator

Boris Williams in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://vamberator.bandcamp.com/

Boris Williams was present during the Cure's most successful period and is often cited by fans as the best drummer in the band's history.

Vamberator - From the dying embers of Shelleyan orphan (with the late Caroline Crawley), jem Tayle plucks out its heart, and along with Boris Williams of the Cure, they forge the beast that is Vamborator: a magical funky hybrid; a frisky colt on a journey to find a meaning in this age of loneliness.
This is Vamberator growing in the shade where the most interesting plants grow: a rebellious beast!

Richard Dudanski - The 101ers, The Raincoats, Public Image Ltd., Tymon Dogg & Basement 5

Richard Dudanski in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Squat-City-Rocks-protopunk-beyond

This musical memoir traces the author’s life in the corrugated-iron clad ruins of West London’s Squat Land during the two years immediately prior to the Punk Explosion of ’76, playing with Strummer’s seminal garage band “The 101’ers” in the spit-and-sawdust music bars of the capital. The thrills and spills of a crazy, quirky, hand-to-mouth existence gives way to relative disenchantment with the oncoming of the Punk Uprising, which for the author represents, at least partly, a sell-out to the Machiavellian Managers, as much as the vaunted revolution in British popular culture. After an aborted venture with the iconoclastic “Tymon Dogg and the Fools”, a stint with Lydon’s metal box period “Public Image Limited”, a term with the Dantesque-dub of “Basement Five”, Dudanski’s tale relates the ups and downs of his involvement in a myriad of bands forming part of a fringe underground London scene through the late 70's and 80’s - “Bank of Dresden”, “The Raincoats”, “The Tesco Bombers”, "Vincent Units", “The Decomposers”, and his eventual move from London to Granada...Forming an integral part of the book are the illustrations by Esperanza Romero (Richard's partner) many of which were drawn "in situ" back in time...