C86 Show - Indie Pop

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...

Andy Saunders - Velocity PR & Creation Records

Andy Saunders in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.velocitypr.co.uk/

Andy Saunders joined Creation in 1992 as a press officer and remained with the label until the end. He now runs a company called Velocity PR.

Velocity Communications has been the leading provider of corporate communications to the music industry for over 20 years. 

 

Alan Childs - John Waite, David Bowie, Julian Lennon, Nona Hendryx, Pete Townshend

Alan Childs in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://soundcloud.com/alan-childs-4

Originally from New York City, now lives in Las Vegas - worked with Julian Lennon, toured with David Bowie on the Glass Spider Tour and is currently on tour with John Waite 

John Etheridge - Soft Machine ,

John Etheridge in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.john-etheridge.com/

https://softmachine.org/

John Etheridge is an English jazz fusion guitarist, composer, bandleader and educator known for his eclecticism and broad range of associations in jazz, classical, and contemporary music. He is best known for his work with Soft Machine from 1975 to 1978, 1984 and 2004 to present.

In late 1972, Etheridge joined Curved Air violinist Darryl Way's band Wolf, which went on to record three albums in the progressive rock canon for the Deram label: Canis Lupus (1973), Saturation Point (1973), and Night Music (1974). It also provided an outlet for his first compositions, at a rate of one or two tracks per album.

Following Wolf's break-up, Etheridge briefly played in the Global Village Trucking Company for a UK tour supporting Gong in early 1975, before a recommendation from fellow guitarist Allan Holdsworth led to him joining Soft Machine, now in full fusion mode having just released Bundles. Etheridge went on to record two albums with the band, Softs (1976) and Alive & Well: Recorded in Paris (1978). He also played on the more recent release, British Tour '75 (2005).

With Soft Machine's activities slowing down in the late 1970s, Etheridge began to develop parallel ventures. It was at this time that he began what would become a long-term collaboration with French violinist Stéphane Grappelli, with whom he performed on numerous world tours between 1976 and 1981. The late 1970s also saw Etheridge form the band 2nd Vision,^[1] with fellow Soft Machine member, violinist Ric Sanders. Though the band released an album in 1980, they struggled to achieve broader recognition in the hostile post-punk environment and broke up in 1981.

Alan Tyler - The Rockingbirds

Alan Tyler in conversation with David Eastaugh

http://www.alantyler.com/

https://alantyler.bandcamp.com/merch/how-to-never-have-a-hit-the-confessions-of-an-unsuccessful-singer-songwriter

Alan Tyler is the singer of The Rockingbirds, the chaotic, swashbuckling country-rockers who galloped haphazardly into the 90s Camden indie scene, got signed, appeared on Top Of The Pops, went head to head with Nirvana at Reading ‘92, and produced, eventually, four albums of unsurpassed Americana.

From DIY/punk beginnings, in 1980 Tyler arrived at the experimentalists’ haven of the London Musicians Collective and was soon playing swingy pop at Bernie Rhodes' Club Left, sharing the agitpop aspirations of Scritti Politti and other Rough Trade acts before being there at the dawn of Creation Records. At various times he’s been a choirboy, a fanzine writer, a Young Socialist, a tap dancer, a polytechnic philosopher, a cycle dispatch rider, a news-monitoring video pirate, an ill-suited civil servant, and a Deptford Creek dwelling river poet. Long after his Heavenly Recordings heyday, Tyler remains a stalwart of London’s roots music scene: a critically recognised singer-songwriter who has never had a single hit.

Cloudberry Records & Blog - Roque Ruiz

Roque Ruiz  in conversation with David Eastaugh

http://www.cloudberryrecords.com/blog/

http://www.cloudberryrecords.com/

"Indiepop label purveying the sound of jangly guitars based in Astoria, NY. Far away from the hipsters."

Aaron Tanner - Cardiacs

Aaron Tanner in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://officialmerchandise.store/collections/melodic-virtue

https://www.melodicvirtue.com/collections/books/products/cardiacs

Compiled and designed by Aaron Tanner, Cardiacs: A Big Book and a Band and Whole World Window spans the group’s formative years as Cardiac Arrest to their last single, Ditzy Scene (2007). This new release features rare and unseen photos, artwork, and other ephemera that will captivate long-time fans and newcomers alike. With an introduction by Shane Embury of Napalm Death, this book is both a tribute and a comprehensive chronicle of the band’s artistry as a whole, providing a wealth of behind-the-scenes looks from the perspectives of band members past and present, alongside fans and contemporaries such as: Mike Patton (Mr. Bungle, Faith No More), Billy Gould (Faith No More), Todd Sucherman (Styx), Boff Whalley and Dunstan Bruce (Chumbawamba), Mike Keneally (The Zappa Band), Joanna Wang, Martin Atkins (Public Image Ltd), Rob Crow (Pinback), Amon Tobin, Rhodri Marsden (Scritti Politti), Charlie Harper (U.K. Subs), Ego Plum, Pitchshifter, Dan Mongrain (Voivod), Paul Masvidal (Cynic), J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus) and many more!

The book also contains a black vinyl 7" record of the previously unreleased track, "Aukamakic/Dead Mouse,” from the sessions of their 1979 debut, Cardiac Arrest E.P., as well as the track previously unreleased on vinyl, "Faster Than Snakes with a Ball and a Chain.” This song was originally intended for their 1999 full-length, Guns.

Clive Langer - The Clang Group, Deaf School

Clive Langer in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://newclang.bandcamp.com/album/new-clang

Best known as one of the UK’s most successful record producers with a string of high-profile credits in his portfolio, CLIVE LANGER returns in the new year with a second album from his band project, THE CLANG GROUP.A belated follow-up to 2016’s Practice, the Group’s maiden outing for Domino Records, New Clang was recorded with Deaf School co-conspirators John Wood (aka Max Ripple) and Gregg Braden, along with former Klaxons bassist Jamie Reynolds. Written and recorded in the aftermath of Clive’s 70th birthday, New Clang is adeeply personal but incredibly vibrant album; catching Clive in reflective mode, the songs address the process of ageing and the state of the world,as well as confronting his own addiction to alcohol.“

After the pandemic, the dust settled, it felt like it was time, a new time, to play again,” he explains. “Not to revisit but to write and rehearse with my Clang Group mates. We were missing a bass player and fortuitously I met Jamie Reynolds and he filled the vacancy. The songs started to flow, we were back in the groove!”“The new album is the first sober songwriting I think I’ve done in almost 50 years,” he adds. “I’ve known and accepted that I was an addict for decades... I just didn’t do anything about it. I thought I could live with it, I still enjoyed it. Someone once asked me ‘What do you do?’ I replied ‘I drink’. Anyway, making an album sober was like making an album drunk except I wassober!!”

Packaged in spare black-on-white, suggesting a tabula rasaof sorts, New Clang’s distinctive sleeve artis the work of British artist Edwin Burdis, whom Clive met during his time with Domino Records. “Clive asked me to a studio in London to listen to his new album, still a work in progress,” recalls Edwin. “I was struck by the contrast between the upbeat music and its underlying melancholy, evoking clowns and cartoon characters and a nostalgia for London’s recent past. At the time, I had been drawing simple cartoon motifs that aligned perfectly with Clive's songs. I wanted the campaign to be cohesive—black-and-white graphics that blend humour with a sense of tragedy and sadness.”

A founder member of pioneering Liverpool art-rockers Deaf School, Langer is noted for a string of production credits (usually in collaboration with Alan Winstanley) on hits forthe likes of Dexys Midnight Runners (the no.1 single and album ‘Come On Eileen’ and Too-Rye-Ay)andDavid Bowie(‘Absolute Beginners’) plus numerous landmark releasesfor Elvis Costello, Madness, Morrissey, The Teardrop Explodes, China Crisis, Bush, They Might Be Giants, The Rockingbirds and, more recently, Fat White Family.

 

Phil Eaglesham - Stretchheads, Desalvo, Donkey, PH Family, Sarandon, Security etc

Phil Eaglesham in conversation with David Eastaugh

The band was formed in 1987 by Richie Dempsey, Phil Eaglesham, Mofungo Diggs, Steven MacDougall, and Andy MacDonald (aka "Dr. Technology".

The band wore asbestos firewear, gas masks, dubious ethnic shirts and balaclavas on stage, and blossomed despite depressing support slots with indie establishment acts such as Happy Mondays, The Wonderstuff and The Shamen. Their debut album, Five Fingers, Four Thingers, a Thumb, a Facelift and a New Identity followed in 1989.

Jem Tayle - Shelleyan Orphan & Vamberator

Jem Tayle in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://vamberator.bandcamp.com/album/age-of-loneliness

https://www.facebook.com/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!