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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:11:37 GMT -7
Heaven 17 are an English new wave and synth-pop band that formed in Sheffield in 1980. The band were a trio for most of their career, composed of Martyn Ware (keyboards) and Ian Craig Marsh (keyboards) (both previously of the Human League), and Glenn Gregory (vocals). Although most of the band's music was recorded in the 1980s, they have occasionally reformed to record and perform, playing their first ever live concerts in 1997. Marsh left the band in 2007 and Ware and Gregory continued to perform as Heaven 17.
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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:14:38 GMT -7
Thompson Twins were a British pop band that formed in April 1977. Initially a new wave group, they switched to a more mainstream pop sound and achieved considerable popularity during the mid-1980s, scoring a string of hits in the United Kingdom, the United States, and around the world. In 1993, they changed their name to Babble, to reflect their change in music from pop to dub-influenced chill-out. They continued as Babble until 1996, at which point the group permanently dissolved.
The band was named after the two bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson in Hergé's comic strip The Adventures of Tintin. At various stages they had up to seven members, but their best-known incarnation was as a trio between 1982 and 1986. The band became a prominent act in the US during the Second British Invasion, and in 1985 performed at Live Aid in Philadelphia, where they were joined onstage by Madonna.
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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:20:15 GMT -7
IcehouseIcehouse is a rock band from Sydney, Australia, formed in 1977. Initially known in Australia for their pub-rock style, the band later achieved mainstream success playing new-wave and synthpop music and attained Top 10 singles chart success locally and in both Europe and the U.S. The mainstay of both Flowers and Icehouse has been Iva Davies (singer-songwriter, record producer, guitar, bass, keyboards, oboe) supplying additional musicians as required. The name "Icehouse", adopted in 1981, comes from an old, cold flat Davies lived in and the strange building across the road populated by itinerant people.
Davies and Icehouse extended the use of synthesizers particularly the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 ("Love in Motion", 1981), Linn drum machine ("Hey Little Girl", 1982) and Fairlight CMI (Razorback trailer, 1983) in Australian popular music. Their best-known singles on the Australian charts included "Great Southern Land", "Hey Little Girl", "Crazy", "Electric Blue" and "My Obsession"; with Top Three albums being Icehouse (1980, as Flowers), Primitive Man (1982) and Man of Colours (1987).Icehouse was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame on 16 August 2006. ARIA described Icehouse as "one of the most successful Australian bands of the eighties and nineties... With an uncompromising approach to music production they created songs that ranged from pure pop escapism to edgy, lavish synthesised pieces..." Icehouse has produced eight Top Ten albums and twenty Top Forty singles in Australia, multiple top-ten hits in Europe and North America and album sales of over 28 times Platinum in Australasia alone.
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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:30:27 GMT -7
IndochineIndochine is a French pop rock and new wave band formed in Paris in 1981. They became very successful in the Francophonie, Europe and Latin America in the 1980s, with songs like "L'Aventurier" and "Canary Bay". Following the release of several critically acclaimed, but commercially unsuccessful, albums in the 1990s, the group returned to stardom with the release of Paradize in 2002. The band has sold over 13 million albums and singles, making them the best selling French band.Indochine (French for Indochina) was formed in 1981 by two Frenchmen in their early twenties, Nicola Sirkis and Dominique Nicolas, in Paris. They soon added Dimitri Bodianski, the cousin of one of Nicola's friends.
They gave their first concert at Le Rose Bonbon, a café in Paris on 29 September 1981. This brief performance on stage earned them their first contract with a record company.
They recorded their first single in November 1981. It included two songs, "Dizzidence Politik" and "Françoise", but drew more attention from critics than from the mainstream media and only reached a limited audience.
Stéphane Sirkis, Nicola's twin brother who had already performed with the band on stage, officially joined the band, and in April 1982 the group recorded their first album, L'Aventurier, which sold more than 250,000 copies. The album was well received by the press and by an emerging new wave audience.
L'aventurier is the song of the summer 1982 in France.
In 1983, Indochine released a second album entitled Le Péril Jaune ("Yellow Peril") which sold 225,000 copies. Indochine had by this stage become a major act in French music. In 1984, the band toured France. They were also successful in Scandinavia, most notably in Sweden.
By 1985, they had achieved a large following, reflected by the success of such songs as "Troisième sexe" ("third sex"), "Canary Bay", and "Trois nuits par semaine". Their third album, 3, sold 750,000 copies in Europe. Serge Gainsbourg directed the video to "Tes yeux noirs", one of the group's most successful songs.
Indochine becomes the largest "new wave" band in France. The single "L'Aventurier" won the French awards "bus d'acier 1983".
In 1986, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the band, Indochine decided to release the recording of the concert given at the Zénith in Paris.
Their fourth album, 7000 Danses, produced by Joe Glasman, was released in 1987. It sold about 320,000 copies making it a successful album though far less so than its predecessor, 3. This is partly due to the band's efforts to produce a less mainstream, commercial album. 7000 Danses was also released amidst a controversy stemming from rock critics claiming that Indochine were a mere copy of British band The Cure. In spite of the controversy fans continued to support the group.Starting in 1986 the band gained a following in Lima, Peru as a result of the radio broadcast of their ‘L'Aventurier’ single. Then, in early 1987, the small record label, El Virrey, negotiated the rights to the ‘Au Zénith’ album, which it released as 33 rpm LP and on cassette tape.
Surprised by this development, Indochine decided to add a stop in Lima after their transatlantic debut in Montreal. Following their appearance in Montreal on April 6, 1988, the band traveled to Peru. There, they performed before their Lima fans in four shows, on April 29 and 30, and on May 6 and 7, 1988, at the Coliseo Amauta, reaching a total audience of over 40,000 people. In that period the band sold some 400,000 recordings in Peru.
That was the only Indochine tour in the late 1980s. For this tour the quartet had the participation of guest musicians such as Diego Burgard (Bass) and Jean-My Truong (Drums), a documentary about the tour was filmed in different cities in Europe, Canada and Peru and it was released for sale on VHS tape in 1989.
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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:36:00 GMT -7
Grace Beverly Jones OJ (born 19 May 1948) is a Jamaican-American model, singer, songwriter, record producer and actress. In 1999, Jones ranked 82nd on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll, and in 2008, she was honored with a Q Idol Award. Jones influenced the cross-dressing movement of the 1980s and has been an inspiration for artists including Annie Lennox, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Solange, Lorde, Róisín Murphy, Brazilian Girls, Nile Rodgers, Santigold, and Basement Jaxx. In 2016, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 40th greatest dance club artist of all time.
Born in British Jamaica, she and her family moved to Syracuse, New York, when she was 13. Jones began her modelling career in New York state, then in Paris, working for fashion houses such as Yves St. Laurent and Kenzo, and appearing on the covers of Elle and Vogue. She worked with photographers such as Jean-Paul Goude, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, and Hans Feurer, and became known for her distinctive androgynous appearance and bold features.
Beginning in 1977, Jones embarked on a music career, securing a record deal with Island Records and initially becoming a star of New York City's Studio 54-centered disco scene. In the early 1980s, she moved toward a new wave style that drew on reggae, funk, post-punk and pop music, frequently collaborating with both the graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude and the musical duo Sly & Robbie. Her most popular albums include Warm Leatherette (1980), Nightclubbing (1981), and Slave to the Rhythm (1985). She scored Top 40 entries on the UK Singles Chart with "Pull Up to the Bumper", "I've Seen That Face Before", "Private Life", and "Slave to the Rhythm". In 1982, she released the music video collection A One Man Show, directed by Goude.
Jones appeared in some low-budget films in the US during the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1984, she made her first mainstream appearance as Zula in the fantasy-action film Conan the Destroyer alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sarah Douglas, and subsequently appeared in the 1985 James Bond movie A View to a Kill as May Day. In 1986, she played a vampire in Vamp, and acted in and contributed a song to the 1992 Eddie Murphy film Boomerang. She appeared alongside Tim Curry in the 2001 film Wolf Girl. For her work in Conan the Destroyer, A View to a Kill, and Vamp, she was nominated for Saturn Awards for Best Supporting Actress.
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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:44:35 GMT -7
Yazoo (known as Yaz in North America) were an English synth-pop duo from Basildon, Essex, consisting of former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke (keyboards) and Alison Moyet (vocals). The duo formed in late 1981 after Clarke responded to an advertisement Moyet placed in a British music magazine, although the pair had known each other since their schooldays.
Over the next 18 months the duo released two albums, Upstairs at Eric's and You and Me Both, which received critical acclaim for their production, particularly the blending of Clarke's synthesizer melodies with Moyet's blues- and soul-influenced vocals.
Yazoo enjoyed worldwide success, particularly in their home country, where three of their four singles reached the top three of the UK Singles Chart and both their albums made the top two of the UK Albums Chart.[5] In North America, they are known for the song "Situation", which, though originally only a B-side in the United Kingdom, was a club and airplay success in the United States and Canada before being released as the band's debut single in North America.
Despite their success, the duo split acrimoniously in May 1983 as a result of a combination of Clarke's reluctance to make more records under the Yazoo name, a clash of personalities, and a lack of communication between the pair.
Clarke went on to form Erasure, another successful and longer-lasting synth-pop duo, while Moyet embarked on a highly successful solo career. Although their musical career was short, Yazoo's combination of electronic instrumentation and soulful female vocals has been cited as an influence on the house music scene that emerged in the mid-1980s, as well as on bands such as LCD Soundsystem (who name-checked the duo on their debut single "Losing My Edge"), Hercules and Love Affair (whose leader Andy Butler has said that "Situation" was his biggest musical inspiration as a child), La Roux, Shiny Toy Guns and Blaqk Audio.
In 2008, 25 years after splitting, Clarke and Moyet reconciled and reformed Yazoo to play a successful tour of the UK, Europe and North America in support of the reissue of Yazoo's two studio albums and a box set, In Your Room of their material. The pair briefly reunited in May 2011 to play three Yazoo songs at a music festival organised by their record label.
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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:48:08 GMT -7
The Units were an American synthpunk band, founded in San Francisco in 1978 and active until 1984. They were one of America's earliest electronic new wave bands, and have been cited (along with The Screamers and Suicide) as pioneers of synthpunk, also retrospectively known as "electropunk". The Units were notable for their use of synthesizers in place of guitars, and multimedia performances featuring multiple projections of satirical, instructional films critical of conformity and consumerism.
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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:51:45 GMT -7
Kim Wilde (born Kim Smith, 18 November 1960) is an English pop singer, DJ and television presenter. She first saw success in 1981 with her debut single "Kids in America", which reached number two in the UK. In 1983, she received the Brit Award for Best British Female solo artist. In 1986, she had a UK number two hit with a reworked version of the Supremes' song "You Keep Me Hangin' On", which also topped the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1987. Between 1981 and 1996, she had 25 singles reach the Top 50 of the UK singles chart. Her other hits include "Chequered Love" (1981), "You Came" (1988) and "Never Trust a Stranger" (1988). In 2003, she collaborated with Nena on the song "Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime", which topped the Dutch charts.
Worldwide, Wilde has sold over 10 million albums and 20 million singles. She holds the record for being the most-charted British female solo act of the 1980s, with seventeen UK Top 40 hit singles. Starting in 1998, while still active in music, she has branched into an alternative career as a landscape gardener, which has included presenting gardening shows on the BBC and Channel 4. In 2005, she won a Gold award for her courtyard garden at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show.
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Post by pieter on May 2, 2021 13:57:35 GMT -7
Neneh CherryNeneh Mariann Karlsson (born 10 March 1964), better known as Neneh Cherry, is a Swedish singer-songwriter, rapper, occasional DJ and broadcaster. Her musical career started in London in the early 1980s, where she performed in a number of punk and post-punk bands in her youth, including The Slits and Rip Rig + Panic.
Cherry has released five studio albums under her own name. Her first, Raw Like Sushi, was released in 1989 and peaked at number three on the UK Album Chart, thanks in large part to the worldwide hit single "Buffalo Stance". Her second studio album was 1992's Homebrew. Four years later she released Man, with her next studio album, Blank Project, coming in 2014. Her most recent album, Broken Politics, was released in 2018.
In addition to releasing these studio albums, she formed the band cirKus in 2006 and has collaborated with The Thing, releasing an album entitled The Cherry Thing in 2012.
Cherry has won two Brit Awards and an MTV Europe Music Award (with Youssou N'Dour). She has also been nominated for a Grammy Award.Early life and familyCherry was born as Neneh Mariann Karlsson in Stockholm, Sweden, the daughter of Monika "Moki" Karlsson (1943–2009), a Swedish painter and textile artist, and the musician Ahmadu Jah (1936–2018). Jah was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, the son of a tribal chief, and went to Stockholm to study engineering at university.
Cherry's parents separated early and her mother married the influential American jazz musician Don Cherry, who helped raise Cherry since birth. Cherry took her stepfather's surname.
From her mother's side, Cherry also has a half-brother, musician Eagle-Eye Cherry. From stepfather Don Cherry's side, she has a stepsister, violinist Jan Cherry, and a stepbrother, jazz musician David Ornette Cherry. Through her father Ahmadu Jah's marriage to Maylen Jah (née Bergström), Cherry is the half-sister of singer Titiyo and record producer Cherno Jah.
Cherry's parents, Moki and Don Cherry, bought and converted an old schoolhouse in the countryside outside the small town of Hässleholm in Sweden in 1970. In the early 1970s, the family moved to the United States, when Don Cherry taught at Dartmouth College. Cherry dropped out of school at 14 and moved to London.
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Post by Jaga on May 2, 2021 21:39:09 GMT -7
Hello Pieter,
thanks for reminding Kim Wilde. I still remember 80s the best! Indochina album is also very interesting. I was not aware of some of it.
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Post by pieter on May 3, 2021 7:14:38 GMT -7
Jaga,
Kim Wilde was a sensation in 1981 with her wild blond hair and sensual voice together with the typical synthesizer music that backs her voice. It was a typical sound in the early eighties. A time in which Poland was still firm Communist. A year when on 13 december 1981 the authoritarian communist government of the Polish People's Republic drastically restricted everyday life by introducing martial law and a military junta in an attempt to throttle political opposition, in particular the Solidarity Movement (Solidarność). In the same year Kim Wilde, the eponymous debut studio album by English singer Kim Wilde, was released on 29 June 1981 by Rak Records. Select was the second studio album by Kim Wilde, released on 10 May 1982 via RAK label. The song 'Cambodia' on side 2 of the album.
"Cambodia" is the fourth single by Kim Wilde. It was released at the end of 1981; a year in which Wilde had already scored three highly successful hit singles and a best-selling debut album.
The single was another international success, topping the charts in France, Sweden and Switzerland and hitting the top ten in several other nations. It was released on the 7" format but also as a 12" single in Germany, although not in a remixed or extended version. The B-side of both releases was an exclusive non-album track called "Watching for Shapes".
Kim Wilde's second album didn't score any hits on the level of the debut's 'Kids in America,' although the dramatic 'Cambodia' was a sort of cult favorite in some circles. Kim Wilde was highly popular in the Netherlands and Belgium also.
Indochina is a typical French New Wave band, which copied the style of the British New Wave bands and integrated strong French influences, atmosphere and lyrics too it. It was called the French Cure, the after the British New Wave band of singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer Robert Smith, bassist Simon Gallup, the keyboardist Roger O'Donnell and the drummer Jason Cooper.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pieter on May 3, 2021 7:41:04 GMT -7
The seventies and eighties for me as a child was the time of youth subcultures and subgroups. The following images show the various examples of groups, subcultures and life styles.A Female Punk rockerMale Punk rockersA typical eighties New Wave girl with a Punk or Post-Punk lookNew Wave girl with a New Wave haircutSusan Janet Ballion, known professionally as Siouxsie Sioux (/ˈsuːzi ˈsuː/; born 27 May 1957), is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She is best known as the lead singer of the rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees (1976–1996). They released 11 studio albums and had several UK Top 20 singles including "Hong Kong Garden", "Happy House", "Peek-a-Boo", plus a US Billboard Top 25 hit "Kiss Them for Me".
Siouxsie also formed a second group the Creatures (1981–2005). With the Creatures, she recorded four studio albums and the hit single "Right Now". After disbanding the Creatures in the mid-2000s, she has continued as a solo artist, using the name Siouxsie, and released the album Mantaray to critical acclaim in 2007.
AllMusic named Siouxsie as "one of the most influential British singers of the rock era".[1] Her songs have been covered by Jeff Buckley,[2] Tricky[3] and LCD Soundsystem.[4] Her records have also been praised by artists such as PJ Harvey[5] and TV on the Radio.[6] In 2011, she was awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Q Awards[7] and in 2012, at the Ivor Novello Awards, she received the Inspiration Award.Typical eighties fashionThe members of the CureBritish Skinsheads. A typical working class youth subculture from the UK. Punk rock was also a working class subculture, but Punks and Skinheads often clashed and sometimes united themselves in clashes with their common enemy, the British Police.Disco look seventiesEighties Reggea from Jamaica. Black Uhuru is a Jamaican reggae group formed in 1972, initially as Uhuru (Swahili for 'freedom'). The group has undergone several line-up changes over the years, with Derrick "Duckie" Simpson as the mainstay. They had their most successful period in the 1980s, with their album Anthem winning the first ever Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 1985.
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Post by pieter on May 3, 2021 7:49:59 GMT -7
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