Irish skinheads, rude boys and punks
1980 was a the high point for the whole late 1970s revival of skinheads and there were Irish boot boys and girls around too
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Dave Wakeling of The Beat draws himself
Dave Wakeling was the front man of the British ska combo The Beat and here is a self-portrait he penned when the band was at the height of its fame
WH Smith goes ska in 1980
1979 and 1980 were the glory years of the so-called “second wave” of ska music – first wave in Jamaica twenty plus years before and now the 2Tone wave came crashing out of Coventry. The Specials seized the charts by the scruff of the neck with a string of hits. And even WH Smith felt…
Neville Staple: Original Rude Boy
Tony McMahon co-wrote Original Rude Boy – the authorised biography of Neville Staple, vocalist in the legendary group, The Specials
How to survive a nuclear war
Back in 1980, the UK government gave advice on how to survive a nuclear war that was rubbished at the time as Tony McMahon discovers
Northern Ireland in 1979
The Northern Ireland troubles reached a fever pitch in 1979 with the assassinations of Airey Neave and Lord Mountbatten
Berlin and the 1980s German pop craze
In the early 1980s – British indie kids got into German pop especially the so-called Neue Deutsche Welle as Tony McMahon recalls
Tiswas versus Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
In the late 1970s, two very different Saturday morning kids programmes squared up against each other – Tiswas and the BBC’s Swap Shop
The 1980s Mod Revival
The Mod Revival of the late 1970s to early 1980s saw an attempt to recapture the glory days of Mod in the 1960s
Yes and the Buggles in disastrous merger
In 1980 prog rock group Yes and New Wave electro band The Buggles merged in one of the oddest musical marriages of all time