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It came to my attention the other day that pop group R.E.M. have decided to call it a day and will be disbanding after their next album which is due imminently. This surprised me on two counts, firstly I didn’t really realise they were still going, and secondly, I didn’t realise they were actually a band from the Eighties!
Here in the UK I don’t think R.E.M. really made a big splash until the early Nineties, with the release of their album Out Of Time, which contained songs such as Shiny Happy People and Losing My Religion, and indeed I always thought that they were a new band at the time. How wrong I was though, as they actually formed right back in 1980!
In January 1980 lead singer Michael Stipe met guitarist Peter Buck in a record shop where Buck worked. They got chatting and discovered they shared similar tastes in music and became friends. Later they met up with bass guitarist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, fellow students from the University of Georgia, who had been playing music together for a while, and they decided to have a go at forming their own group.
Before long the band felt they had something good going and dropped out of school to go touring around the southern US. They became a bit of a local phenomenon but it wasn’t until the summer of 1981 that they finally recorded their first single, Radio Free Europe. Despite only limited distribution, this song went on to become one of the New York Times best 10 singles of the year!
I’ve covered bands before which have been popular in the UK but are considered one hit wonders in other parts of the world (e.g. 
Bananarama were one of the biggest girl bands of the Eighties, and it may surprise you to know that they are still performing today, albeit with only two of the original three members. Formed in 1979 and consisting of Keren Woodward, Sara Dallin and Siobhan Fahey, Bananarama started off performing short sets or providing backing vocals at other bands gigs.
If you are a fan of Eighties music then I have a great new band that you are bound to enjoy, particularly if you were into the synth pop stylings of bands like Depeche Mode or The Human League. They’re called Low Tide Theory, and their first track is called Crash.
Scottish identical twins Charlie and Craig Reid formed their two man band, The Proclaimers, in 1983, but it wasn’t until 1986 that they would hit the big time. A fan sent a demo tape of theirs to English band The Housemartins, who were so impressed they invited them to tour with them. This led to an appearance on Channel 4 music show The Tube, which gave them their first UK hit single, Letter From America.
Today, Kylie Minogue is looked up to as a very popular singer and an inspiration after her battle with cancer, but back in the eighties, she perhaps wasn’t taken quite so seriously.
The Eighties saw more than its fair share of musical styles, what with New Romantics, House, Sound Sample Mixing and several others. Much of the reason for this was the advances in music technology which brought us the synthesiser keyboard, and so was born Synthpop, and one of the biggest proponents of that particular style were Erasure.
Think back about the band Bros. If you remember them then I bet you immediately think of Matt and Luke Goss, the blonde twins in ripped jeans and leather jackets. If you weren’t a fan then you may have forgotten that Bros actually consisted of a third member, that being Craig Logan. Well, I’d forgotten about him, anyway.
