80s
Big Country and the guitar bagpipe sound
This was Big Country performing on Channel Four’s Tube programme. Every week, Paula Yates and Jools Holland would ramble pretentiously or incoherently with cues between presenters either deliberately fumbled or they were creating an edgy feel, who knows? Paula Yates no longer with us of course and neither is the front man of the band,…
July 1981: when Britain went a bit mad
July 1981 was a month of riots in Britain but it was also a time when the country seemed to go a little mad with some very unusual incidents
Jangles – ITV drama in a rock club
Jangles was an HTV drama series made in 1982 and set in a rock club starring Hazel O’Connor and only lasted seven episodes
1980s Rockabilly and the Teddy Boy revival
1980s Rockabilly fused rock’n’roll and punk but traditional British Teddy Boys were not amused as Tony McMahon discovers
Birmingham – punk breaks the heavy metal stranglehold
Heavy Metal reigned supreme in the English city of Birmingham in the 1970s until Punk came along as Tony McMahon discovers
The Special Patrol Group and the 80s riots
The Special Patrol Group was a Metropolitan unit that became very unpopular in the 1970s and was blamed for the 1981 riots in Brixton
Neville Staple – the Original Rude Boy
The biography of Neville Staple – Original Rude Boy – was co-written with Tony McMahon and published by Aurum Press