The Banshees’ second album, Join Hands , was released in 1979. In Melody Maker , Jon Savage described “Poppy Day” as “a short, powerful evocation of the Great War graveyards”, and Record Mirror described the whole record as a dangerous work that “should be heard”. The Banshees embarked on a…
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Those singles and their B-sides, along with several demos from this period, would later be released as The Beginning of the Enz album in 1979.
Suburban Lawns released their debut single, “Gidget Goes to Hell”, in 1979 on their own Suburban Industrial label. The song gained the band notoriety when its Jonathan Demme -directed music video was shown on Saturday Night Live .
At the end of that year, the band signed to A&M Records in the UK and US.
The band released their fourth album, Frenzy , in 1979.
Lacking a recording deal and money, creative differences split the band in 1979, leading to the Document and Eyewitness LP (1981), a recording of a live performance that featured, almost exclusively, new material. The album was described as “disjointed”, “unrecognizable as rock music” and “almost unlistenable”. The LP came packaged…
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Using borrowed equipment, Split Enz played what proved to be a pivotal concert, stunning friends and fans alike with a legendary performance at the second Nambassa Festival in January 1979.
“PiL was the simple thing of four different people doing different drugs at different times,” Wobble observed to Select . “It was only in any way together for the first two months of its existence. We had a fuckin’ good drummer called Jim Walker, but he fucked off after a…
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According to music journalist and former punk musician John Robb : “Amidst the Sex Pistols’ inertia in the first half of 1977, the Clash found themselves as the flag-wavers of the punk rock consciousness”. Though The Clash quickly rose to number 12 in the UK, CBS refused to give it…
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In 1979, the B-52s signed contracts as they flew over to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas , to record their debut studio album , with Island Records founder Chris Blackwell producing. The band was surprised by Blackwell’s recording methods; he wanted to keep the sound as close as possible…
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