THE DEGENERATES were the youngest Houston punk band formed in late 1979 played gigs at ‘The Island’ and ‘Joe Star’s Omni’ with great bands as, Really Red, The Angelic Upstart, The Dicks, Big Boys, Chelsea, Chron Gen, Toxic Reasons, The Stains, Dirty Rotten Imbecilles and many more.
Hiawatha Bailey was the black Iggy-esque frontman (short on Iggy stage moves, but stronger than Iggy vocally) for Michigan’s Cult Heroes. Formed in ’78, the Detroit-style punk band opened for all the bigshots when they came through Ann Arbor, and lived up to their name by recording two of the better Midwest pre-hardcore punk records.
Started as a singer in a punk band in 1977, The Hot Pins, Aurelio Laloni, aka Joe D’Elirio, is a sort of small legend of italian underground music. His main musical influences ranging from Velvet Underground to Kraftwerk, from the Stooges to Giorgio Moroder.
Punk rock didn’t come to Topeka, Kansas until 1979, but when it did it hit like an atom bomb. Abuse took their cue from The Stooges and the New York Dolls and then blended that into a sound all their own.
Finally out a great co-production between your fave italian labels Rave Up and Valium/Hellnation Records! Shotgun Solution released only one amazing EP in 1983 on High Rise, the label founded by the godfather of italian rock giornalism, Federico Guglielmi.
Inspired by the British Invasion, 60’s garage bands, power pop, and their love of the New York Dolls, the Daughters formed in early 1980 on the North Shore of Boston, MA.
Gina Harlow and the Cutthroats were icons in the hey-day of Punk and New Wave, in New York City. Their shows at Max’s Kansas City, CBGB’s, Trax, Heat, Hurrah’s, and The Mudd Club were legendary.
Inspired by the ‘77 Punk pages of Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, four suburban Detroit high school journalism classmates fashioned themselves into a band.
Ground Zero was more than a band; it was a group of outcast musicians and visual artists hailing from Ohio, Maine, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and places in between.
The Streetkidz were a bunch of NYC rockers that released only one rare EP in 1981 with three tracks (Go To School / Easy Way Out / In The IRA) on their own label (CK).
Finally one of the legends of the early S.Francisco punk music are on vinyl: these amazing tracks were in fact recorded in 1980 but they never saw the light!
The Dawgs were born in Beverly, Massachusetts, (just north of Boston) in the late 1970's. Ispired by sixties garage bands and local idols Real Kids, the band recorded a killer three-song EP on Greenline Records in 1979.
Finally available the definitve anthology of Minnesota's Misanthropes! The band released four great and rare singles on the cult label Break'er Records between 1978-81.
Red Asphalt was a San Francisco musical group, which formed in 1978 and dissolved in 1982. Their first live performance took place at SF’s famous Deaf Club.
Finally on vinyl, the studio album sessions of one of the most important italian ‘cult band’ of the Eighties. The name of the band was ispired by the famous sci-fi novel of Louis Charbonneau.
Illogical Sound was born in Roma in 1981. The musicians were Luca Febbra (vocals, later in Liquid Eyes), Filippo Travaglio (guitar), Luigi Parravicini (bass, also in Liquid Eyes) and Andrea Filosa (drums).
Deca’s is a project of Federico De Caroli’s, started in the early Eighties. “Modulectron” is an anthology of unreleased material recorded between 1984-1986, a small jewel of Italian electronic music of the ‘golden age’.
System 56 was a band from Cleveland, Ohio, formed by Steve Simenic in the winter of 1981-82 through a series of Musicians Wanted ads in Cleveland’s local entertainment weekly - SCENE MAGAZINE.
Timoty Gassen formed the pioneering minimalist-electro-wave act “Jacket Weather” in 1982, mixing dual Casiotone keyboards, real bass and drums — with the desolate imagery of the Arizona desert.
Unreleased recordings by original UK punk bands are becoming increasingly hard to find, so it was with great excitement when I came across a metal tape reel with “No Way – July ‘79” scratched into it.
Charlie ‘Ungry were performing in the UK during the late 70s and early 80s. The band’s music was based around the songwriting and musical arrangements of Tony Sando and Jeff Gibbs.
In the fall of 1977 at a John Cale concert at CBGB the opening band was the Mumps. Sitting in the front row was the president of their fan club, Bill Arning; he was 16.
The band were formed around march 1982 in Stanley County Durham, England, following the meeting of Trevor Johnson and Michael Harper, with the inclusion of Neil Sharkey on drums and Andrew Bell on bass (later replaced by Bruce Robinson).
RAVE-UP BOOKS
BRAND NEW BOOKS CASTING LIGHT ON OBSCURE AND RARE MUSIC!
Per gli amanti del cinema underground italiano degli anni ‘80 / ‘90 è in uscita la prima storica antologia su DVD che raccoglie i cortometraggi più rappresentativi di quel periodo curata dal regista Paolo Fazzini.
“Noi conquisteremo la Luna” ripropone tutti gli articoli, le recensioni e le interviste sul post-punk italiano firmati da Federico Guglielmi fra il 1980 e il 1985, con solo un minimo di editing per salvaguardare lo spirito entusiastico e naif dell’epoca.
“Lo Stivale è marcio” affronta per la prima volta in modo approfondito gli eventi che vanno dal 1977 al 1980, anni di piombo, repressione e riflusso: un periodo analizzato sinora solo in brevi articoli o limitate e meno approfondite pubblicazioni.