C86 Show - Indie Pop

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!

John Mendelssohn

John Mendelssohn in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.nortonrecords.com/a4-peculiar-to-mr-bowie-by-john-mendelssohn/

https://johnmendelssohn.wixsite.com/jnm-creative

PECULIAR TO MR BOWIE : A Day With David Bowie. 1971 by John Mendelssohn  New photobook! Limited 48 page souvenir photobook by rock n' rollin' author/artist/photographer/journalist/bon vivant John Mendelssohn,  who  was tapped to meet up with an unknown longhair from London named David Bowie on his first trip to the US on a press junket for the  just-released Mercury album  The Man Who Sold The World.

John met up with DB in San Franscisco with his camera in tow, and started  snappin and yappin. This book includes John's original story from Rolling Stone,  his revelations and jubilations on (and of) the topic of DB, plus we have Paul Gorman writing brilliantly about the origin and influence of the man-dress, as created by bespoke tailor Mr. Fish of London... and we have the photos, one roll of film that captured  both Mr Fish man-dresses-- the luxe, flowing, floral that appeared on the UK cover of The Man Who Sold The World and the sublime blue-gray raw silk number that graced a special edition collection, presented in a newspaperly dot screen reminiscent of the Rolling Stone print methods of the day.

Sheila Seal - The Man from Delmonte

Sheila Seal in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.facebook.com/groups/44800212324

https://www.truckstophoneymoon.com/

Band members included Mike West, Sheila Seal (bass), Martin Vincent (guitar and harmonica), and Howard Goody (drums).

The band played many gigs at the Boardwalk club, in Manchester, where they recorded their Big Noise live album in 1989.

They took their name from a series of 1980s television advertisements for Del Monte fruit juices, featuring the "man from Del Monte". In these, the man would visit villages to sample their fruit juices, to see if they were good enough to be included in his company's drinks. The tagline, shouted jubilantly by a villager on approval was, "The man from Del Monte, he say 'Yes!'".

At one point they were managed by journalist Jon Ronson.

After they split up in 1990, some members continued as Surfurbia. West moved to New Orleans to pursue a solo career in the early 1990s.

The band are reforming to play gigs in the UK in February and April 2025.

Anja Huwe - Xmal Deutschland

Anja Huwe in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://anjahuwe.com/

Musician, artist and former television editor and producer born in Hamburg, Germany, She was the singer and only stable member in the various incarnations of German Post-Punk band X Mal Deutschland. After the band finally split up in 1990, she worked as producer and editor for German "VIVA TV". More recently she has taken up visual arts and exhibits in New York and London.

After Xmal Deutschland’s success with four albums on cult labels such as 4AD, Huwe abandoned music to pursue her visual art career. But leaving her legacy in the past was not so easy.

Invited by her long-time friend Mona Mur, Huwe reconsidered her decades-long hiatus from music and decided to join Mur in her studio in Berlin. Together, they worked for a year and a half, composing, performing and producing the tracks from scratch, which would eventually become the album ‘Codes’. Integral to the overall sound experience was the input of Manuela Rickers who added her famed signature guitar style.

Initially inspired by the diary entries of Moshe Shnitzki, who, at the age of 17, left his home in 1942 to live in the cavernous White Russian forests as a partisan, Codes is about the human experience and what extremes can do to an individual. "The result is a poetic, musical cosmos that encompasses the following themes: forest, fear, pain, loss, violence, and loneliness but also beauty, longing, hope and the will to survive,” Huwe explains. These thematic extremities cause an erraticism to Codes- a passing thunderstorm, a cyclonic burst of nature’s force - but one that exudes anticipation amidst the chill. 

William D. Drake - Cardiacs, The Sea Nymphs, Lake of Puppies, North Sea Radio Orchestra

William D Drake in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://williamddrake.wordpress.com/

https://williamddrake.bandcamp.com/

https://lakeofpuppies.bandcamp.com/album/lake-of-puppies

Musician, keyboardist, pianist, composer and singer-songwriter. He is best known as a former member of the cult English rock band Cardiacs, whom he played with for nine years between 1983 and 1992.

He has also been a member of the Sea Nymphs, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Nervous, Wood, Lake of Puppies and The Grown-Ups, as well as pursuing a career as a solo artist.