80s | Musicosity

80s

Mental as Anything

Mental As Anything is an Australian New Wave/rock music band who, since the late 70s have released numerous albums & singles and have produced many innovative music videos. Although they have worked in a much broader musical idiom, Mental As Anything are in many respects comparable to British band Madness, in that their music is typically delivered with a quirky, ironic sense of humour and a strong visual identity.

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Blondie

Blondie is perhaps the most commercially successful band to emerge from the 1970s punk scene. They formed in New York in 1974. The original lineup consisted of Clem Burke (drums / percussion), Jimmy Destri (keyboards), Debbie Harry (vocals), Chris Stein (guitar / bass guitar) and Gary Valentine (bass guitar / guitar). Blondie released their first album Blondie in 1976. The album was mildly successful and spawned the Australian hit single "In The Flesh".

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The Triffids

The band originated in Perth, Western Australia in the late 1970s. They went through various line-up changes until the early 1980s when they moved to Sydney and later Melbourne and released their first LP Treeless Plain. The band toured extensively in Europe and caught the attention of the UK music press, being featured on the cover of NME twice. Four albums followed - Born Sandy Devotional, In The Pines, Calenture and The Black Swan - before the group disbanded in 1989. David McComb and "Evil" Graham Lee joined The Blackeyed Susans while Martyn P Casey joined Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

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Don Letts

Don Letts’ came to notoriety in the late '70s DJing reggae music to punk crowds at 'The Roxy' club in London. He also started to document the punk rock movement in 'The Punk Rock Movie'. He continued to make documentaries across the spectrum of credible music including a celebrated film about Bob Marley. Musically, he was a founder member of Basement 5 and Big Audio Dynamite,the latter with The Clash's Mick Jones, managed the all woman punk group The Slits and collaborated with many post-punk outfits in the 1980s.

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Van Halen

Van Halen is an international hard rock band formed in the early-1970s, originally called Mammoth (before being called Van Halen, one of the band's ideas for a name was Rat Salade). The band's first studio album, "Van Halen", released in 1978 is widely regarded as a milestone in rock music. With this first release, the band, featuring David Lee Roth on vocals, Michael Anthony on bass, and Dutch-born Edward Van Halen on guitars (and also keyboards later) and brother Alex Van Halen on drums, established itself as a leader in the emerging and commercially successful U.

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Concrete Blonde

Concrete Blonde is an alternative rock band dating from the early 1980s to the early 1990s (and re-formed again in the 2000s). They are best known for the poignant songwriting and vocals of Johnette Napolitano. Singer / songwriter / bassist Napolitano formed the band Dream 6 with guitarist James Mankey in Los Angeles in 1982, releasing an eponymous EP in France on the Happy Hermit label in 1983. When they signed with IRS in 1986, labelmate Michael Stipe suggested the name Concrete Blonde, describing the contrast between their hard rock music and introspective lyrics.

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Steve Winwood

Stephen Lawrence ("Steve") Winwood (born May 12, 1948 in Great Barr, Birmingham, England) is a British singer, songwriter, and musician who, in addition to his solo career, was a member of the bands the The Spencer Davis Group, recording the hit "Gimme Some Lovin'", Traffic, and Blind Faith. Winwood's commercial success waned during the mid and late 70's. He had a major hit with While You See A Chance in 1980. He had a career renaissance beginning in 1986 with the hit album Back In The High Life which produced hits such as Higher Love and The Finer Things.

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The Rainmakers

The Rainmakers were a Kansas City, Missouri-based original rock band whose members included: Bob Walkenhorst,
Steve Phillips (later a member of The Elders),
Rich Ruth,
Pat Tomek,
Michael Bliss (replaced Rich Ruth in 1995). Missouri has long boasted of being the home of two of America's greatest artists, Mark Twain and Chuck Berry. However, it wasn't until The Rainmakers thundered into the national music spotlight in 1986, had anyone combined the guitar power of Berry with the social wit of Twain into a unique brand of Missouri rock n' roll.

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Gang of Four

Gang of Four are a British post-punk group from Leeds, England. Original personnel were singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bass guitarist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham. They were fully active from 1977 to 1984, and then re-emerged twice in the 1990s with King and Gill. In 2005, the original lineup reunited. The group had a single in the British Top 60 with "At Home He's A Tourist" in 1979, which was blacklisted by Top Of The Pops for its use of the relatively innocuous term "rubbers".

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Duran Duran

Duran Duran (named after a character in Roger Vadim's sci-fi classic, Barbarella) is an electronic pop-rock band that was part of the new wave music movement in the early 1980s. Created by Nick Rhodes (keyboards) and John Taylor (bass) in Birmingham, UK, 1978, with the later addition of Roger Taylor (drums), Andy Taylor (guitar), and Simon Le Bon (lead vocals), the band has sold more than 100 million records, making them one of the best-selling bands in history.

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