Madness are an English ska and pop band from Camden Town, north west London, who formed in 1976. One of the most prominent bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s two-tone ska revival, they continue to perform with six of the seven members of their original line-up. Madness's most successful period was from 1980 to 1986, when the band's songs spent a total of 214 weeks on the UK Singles Chart.
Front 242 is a Belgian electronic music group that came into prominence during the 1980s. Pioneering the style they called electronic body music, they are a profound influence on the electronic and industrial music genres.
Catherine Wheel were an English alternative rock band from Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The band was active from 1990 to 2000, releasing five full-length albums in their career, embarking on many lengthy tours and experiencing fluctuating levels of commercial success. Their early music was associated with the shoegazing scene, but gradually evolved to a more aggressive style influenced by hard rock and metal. Initially receiving attention and success after releasing their debut album Ferment in 1992, the band achieved peak success with the release of "Crank" and their album Chrome in 1993. The band also achieved minor success with other albums, including Happy Days, which featured a popular song "Judy Staring at the Sun" as a collaboration with Tanya Donelly. Catherine Wheel also scored heavy rotation on MTV and performed there several times. Despite never having any albums or songs that achieved major success in their homeland, Catherine Wheel continue to be popular among alternative rock and shoegaze fans and critics.
Michael Whitaker Smith is an American musician who has charted in both contemporary Christian and mainstream charts. His biggest success in mainstream music was in 1991 when "Place in This World" hit No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Over the course of his career, he has sold more than 18 million albums.
The The are an English post-punk band. They have been active in various forms since 1979, with the singer-songwriter Matt Johnson as the only constant band member. The The achieved critical acclaim and commercial success in the UK, with 15 chart singles, and their most successful studio album, Infected (1986), spent 30 weeks on the chart. They followed this with the top-ten studio albums Mind Bomb (1989) and Dusk (1993).
Trevor Charles Horn is an English record producer and musician. His influence on pop and electronic music in the 1980s was such that he has been called "the man who invented the eighties".
Travis are a Scottish rock band formed in Glasgow in 1990, composed of Fran Healy, Dougie Payne, Andy Dunlop and Neil Primrose. The band's name comes from the character Travis Henderson from the film Paris, Texas (1984). The band released their debut album, Good Feeling (1997), to moderate success where it debuted at number nine on the UK Albums Chart and was later awarded a silver certification from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in January 2000.
Dead or Alive were an English pop band who released seven studio albums from 1984 to 2000. The band formed in 1980 in Liverpool and found success in the mid-1980s, releasing seven singles that made the UK Top 40 and three albums in the UK Top 30. At the peak of their success, the line-up consisted of Pete Burns (vocals), Steve Coy (drums), Mike Percy (bass), and Tim Lever (keyboards), with the core pair of Burns and Coy writing and producing for the remainder of the band's career due to Percy and Lever exiting the group in 1989. Burns died in 2016; with the death of Coy in 2018, the band ended.
Raymond Watts is an English musician, the founding and sole member of the industrial music project PIG, sometimes written as <PIG>.
James are an English rock band from Manchester, formed in 1982. They achieved popularity during the 1990s, with four top-10 hits on the UK Singles Chart and nine top-10 placings on the UK Albums Chart. The band's best-known singles include "Come Home", "Sit Down", "She's a Star" and "Laid". "Laid" also became a hit on American college radio. Following the departure of lead singer Tim Booth in 2001, the band became inactive, but members reunited in January 2007 and have since released a further seven albums. Live performance has continually remained a central part of the band's output. As of 2010, the band had sold more than 25 million albums worldwide.
Levellers are an English folk rock and anarcho-punk band formed in Brighton, England, in 1988, consisting of Mark Chadwick, Jeremy Cunningham, Charlie Heather (drums), Jon Sevink (violin), Simon Friend, Matt Savage (keyboards) and Dan Donnelly. Taking their name from the Levellers political movement, the band released their first EP in 1989 and LP in 1990, with international success following upon signing to China Records and the release of their second album Levelling the Land. The band were among the most popular indie bands in Britain in the early 1990s, and performed at the Glastonbury Festival, first in 1992, then in 1994, where they performed as the headline act on The Pyramid Stage to a record crowd of 300,000 people. They continue to record and tour.
Inspiral Carpets are an English rock band, part of the late-1980s/early-1990s Madchester movement. Formed in Oldham in 1983, the band's most successful lineup featured frontman Tom Hingley, drummer Craig Gill, guitarist Graham Lambert, bassist Martyn Walsh and keyboardist Clint Boon.
Cubanate are an English industrial band from London, England, founded in 1992 by Marc Heal and Graham Rayner with Phil Barry and Steve Etheridge. The group became well known for their combination of electro-industrial with distorted heavy metal guitars and techno percussion.
The Shamen were a Scottish psychedelic band, formed in 1985 in Aberdeen, who became a chart-topping British electronic dance music act by the early 1990s. The founding members were Colin Angus, Derek McKenzie and Keith McKenzie. Peter Stephenson joined shortly after to take over on keyboards from Angus. Several other people were later in the band. Angus then teamed up with Will Sinnott, and together they found credibility as pioneers of rock/dance crossover. When rapper Mr. C joined, the band moved on to international commercial success with "Ebeneezer Goode" and their 1992 Boss Drum album.
Marc Heal is an English musician, television producer and writer. He is best known as an industrial music artist of the 1990s, noted for mixing metal and techno with more traditional industrial sounds. His extroverted onstage behaviour was unusual in the generally downbeat industrial genre.
Trixter is an American glam metal band formed in 1983 in Paramus, New Jersey. The band gained popularity in the early 1990s with hits like "Give It To Me Good" that peaked at sixty-five on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1990 and "One In A Million". Despite lineup changes and a hiatus in the late '90s, Trixter has maintained a presence in the rock scene through tours and occasional album releases.
"Sixteen Tons" is a song written by Merle Travis about a coal miner, based on life in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Travis first recorded the song at the Radio Recorders Studio B in Hollywood, California, on August 8, 1946. Cliffie Stone played bass on the recording. It was first released in July 1947 by Capitol on Travis's album Folk Songs of the Hills. The song became a gold record.
Natural was an American boy band that formed in 1999 and broke up in 2004 consisting of Ben Bledsoe, Marc Terenzi, Michael 'J' Horn, Michael Johnson, and Patrick King.
Luv' were a Dutch girl group that scored a string of hit records in Continental Europe as well as Israel, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Argentina and Mexico in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The original members were Patty Brard, José Hoebee and Marga Scheide. In 1979, Luv' was 'Holland's best export act' and thus received the Conamus Export Prize.
C-Tec was an EBM band originally formed as a side project in 1995 by Jean-Luc De Meyer, Jonathan Sharp, and Ged Denton. The name was taken from Cyber-Tec Records, who released the band's debut EP. Afterward, Jonathan Sharp left the band, and Marc Heal joined as a full-time member.
