Blues Traveler originated as a high school garage band in Princeton, New Jersey in the mid-1980s. Harmonicist, singer and guitarist John Popper and drummer Brendan Hill formed a group called The Establishment (later renamed Blues Band) with Hill’s brother on bass and a rotating roster of guitarists. The band produced…
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Taylor said in 1980:
In January 1980, Peter Buck met Michael Stipe in Wuxtry Records , the Athens record store where Buck worked. The pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music, particularly in punk rock and proto-punk artists like Patti Smith , Television , and the Velvet Underground . Stipe said, “It…
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The Ian Moss-penned “Never Before” was chosen as the first song to air on the ABC’s youth radio station, Triple J , when it switched to the FM band that year.
producer Phil Spector became interested in the Ramones and produced their fifth album End of the Century (1980). There is a long-disputed rumor that during the recording sessions in Los Angeles, Spector held Dee Dee at gunpoint, forcing him to repeatedly play a riff. Although it was to be the…
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They played their first show on April 5, 1980, supported by the Side Effects at O’Brien’s birthday party held in the same church, performing a mix of originals and 1960s and 1970s covers. After considering names such as “Cans of Piss”, “Negro Eyes”, and “Twisted Kites”, the band settled on…
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Despite the critical praise for Live Through This , rumors circulated insinuating that Cobain had actually written the majority of the album, though the band vehemently denies this. The band’s drummer Patty Schemel, who had been friends with Cobain since the late 1980s, said: “There’s that myth that Kurt [Cobain]…
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The letters happened to look similar to the insignia of the Nazi SS , a symbol that is outlawed in Germany by Section 86a of the German criminal code. However, Simmons and Stanley, both Jewish, have denied any intentional likeness to Nazi symbolism in the logo. Since 1980, most of…
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The band members grew up in Orange County , California. Rodney Sheppard played in several reggae bands and worked with future Good Charlotte drummer Dean Butterworth . In the late 1980s, prior to Sugar Ray, Sheppard and Stan Frazier played together in a band under the name The Tories. Later…
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Daltrey took a break in 1980 to work on the film McVicar , in which he took the lead role of bank robber John McVicar . The soundtrack album is a Daltrey solo album, though all members of the Who are included in the supporting musicians, and was his most…
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