Not only have I never heard of Pure Hell before, but I never knew there was a punk group made up of four black guys til now.

(more…)

Another of the first wave of Manchester punk bands to evolve from the early days of The Electric Circus, V2 showed their roots by blending punk with a hefty dose of Glam… hardly surprising since most of us who jumped aboard the punk bandwagon had grown up on Slade, Sweet, T.Rex and Bowie.

(more…)

The Panik were one of the first punk bands to form in Manchester, alongside a handful of fellow travellers – Buzzcocks, The Drones, V2, Slaughter & The Dogs and The Fall.

(more…)

If you were a black kid growing up in postwar Detroit, there’s a good chance you would sing in the school choir and the church, and end up in a doo wop group before graduating to RnB and soul.

(more…)

Fusing punk, funk and elements of avant-garde jazz, Ludus were one of the first, and most distinctive, postpunk artists.

(more…)

La Luz sound as if they should come from somewhere by the sea in sunny SoCal but actually come from rainy Seattle… though they did once record an album in a California surfboard shop, and now live there.

(more…)

Bow Wow Wow were formed by Malcolm McLaren from the ashes of Adam & the Ants, with 13-year-old singer Arabella Lu-Win.

(more…)

Around the turn of the century I made a musical pilgrimage to the tiny Texas town of Luckenbach, once immortalised in song by Waylon Jennings.

(more…)

She might not be a household name but Jean Shepard was a pioneer for women in country music, with a staggering 73 singles in the country chart between 1953 and 1981.

(more…)

For some musicians, a tragic death elevates a mediocre career to legendary status. But it didn’t work out that way for Cowboy Copas.

(more…)