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!

In May 1982 they signed with I.R.S. records and got more and more popular, but it wasn’t until 1987 that the band really put their name on the map with the release of their album Document. This featured songs such as The One I Love and It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, which I have to admit I never knew were R.E.M. songs until writing this! It makes me wonder now whether I had actually heard of R.E.M. earlier than I thought I had without even knowing it!

This brings us nicely back to 1991 and the release of Out of Time. Both these albums were pivotal in garnering R.E.M. a worldwide audience, so that when album Automatic For The People came along in 1992 it became an automatic buy for many people (pardon the pun!). This album contained tracks such as The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, Everybody Hurts and Man On The Moon.

Whilst R.E.M. have continued to tour and record since then (even after the departure of Bill Berry in 1997, when the band continued as a three piece) I think this period around the late Eighties and early Nineties was definitely the high point of their careers.

I’ll leave you then with the video for Shiny Happy People, which is my personal favourite R.E.M. song for several reasons. First, it reminds me of first getting satellite TV, as it was played constantly on MTV at the time. Secondly it guest features Kate Pierson from The B-52’s, and thirdly, I love the bit where the song goes all slow at the end and it’s revealed that an old feller on a bike has been making the brightly coloured scrolling background go round.

In the UK, the song they are best known for is Love Shack, one of those tunes that gets put on for parties because it’s such a happy sounding song, yet is still quite rock ‘n’ roll in it’s way. Some may also remember that they provided a version of the theme song for the live action Flintstones movie, though technically they were called The BC-52’s for that…

Anyway, as with most in the UK it was Love Shack that was the first B-52’s song I had knowingly heard, but the band name wasn’t new to me. I had heard of them before as, being a big fan of the Commodore Amiga home computer, I had learnt that several models of this computer had the name of a B-52’s song printed on the motherboard. For example, the extremely popular Amiga 500 had Rock Lobster printed on it’s main board.

It wasn’t until I went to college (mid 1990’s) that I actually heard some more B-52’s songs. A friend had a couple of albums, so as well as finally getting to hear what Rock Lobster sounded like I also heard a number of other songs such as Planet Claire, Is That You Mo-Dean and Good Stuff.

I have to say I became a bit of a fan of their unique style, which is a kind of mix of rock ‘n’ roll, Beach Boys style surfer music with a bit of Sixties and Seventies thrown in for good measure. Their song titles tend to be a little odd it has to be said (and their lyrics even odder) but they’re generally quite light hearted and happy to listen too.

The band formed in 1976 and originally consisted of vocalist Fred Schneider (who has quite a unique sounding voice), brother and sister Ricky and Cindy Wilson (guitarist and vocalist respectively), Kate Pierson (keyboards) and drummer Keith Strickland. The name of the band came not from the famous bomber aircraft, but from a beehive type hairstyle (which did take it’s name from the aircraft).

The B-52’s are still playing today, although over the years they have taken a few breaks from their musical careers. One of the first of these came when Ricky died in 1985, which saw the surviving members take a break until 1989, when they reformed for the album Cosmic Thing.

In 1990 Cindy Wilson took time out to concentrate on raising a family, and in 1992 the remaining trio of Schneider, Pierson and Strickland released the album Good Stuff. Since then whilst the band has remained active it has taken until 2008 for them to release another album, Funplex, which has also seen them drop the apostrophe from the band name, meaning they are now actually The B-52s.

Interestingly Keren and Sara have been life long friends, and have known each other since the tender age of four. Sara met Siobhan at College, and that was how the three came together to first become friends and then become a musical group.

In 1981 they recorded their first proper demo song Aie a Mwana, which was perhaps a bit of a strange choice given that it is sung in Swahili. However, it got them noticed and they found there first chart success when they teamed up with Fun Boy Three for T’ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It). I always remember it seemed a bit odd to me that Bananarama only got the “featuring” tag for this song, since it seemed like they did most of the singing!

This song set them up on the road to success, and it led to a string of chart successes including Really Saying Something, which was the return of a favour as it featured Fun Boy Three, Robert De Niro’s Waiting and Cruel Summer, which featured as part of the soundtrack on The Karate Kid.

By 1986 Bananarama started to work with Stock, Aitken and Waterman, which yielded them further chart hits such as Venus, I Heard A Rumour and Love In The First Degree, which I’m sure are some of the first songs many people will think of straight away when asked to name a Bananarama song (in particular Venus, which sadly is now going to be linked forever to women’s razors it would seem).

In 1988 though, Siobhan Fahey left the group after becoming a bit disinterested in the way the band had changed under the guidance of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. She reappeared as Shakespears Sister (initially alongside Marcella Detroit), and whilst it wasn’t their only release, Stay will be the song most will remember from them.

Bananarama continued on without Fahey though, and brought on board new member Jacquie O’Sullivan. More hits followed including I Want You Back and Nathan Jones, and the group were also listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the female group with the most chart entries (a record which they still apparently hold today, so take that Spice Girls!).

In 1989 the girls joined with Lananeeneenoonoo, (otherwise known as Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Kathy Burke) to record a version of The Beatles song Help for Comic Relief.

Jacquie O’Sullivan left the band in 1991, but Keren and Sara still continue to perform as Bananarama, now a duo, to this day. They are still recording new songs, and also continue to play live at events such as the Rewind Festival.

Now, I’ll come clean and say that the reason I found out about them is because one of their number is actually and old school friend, but even if that weren’t the case I would still be writing this as I really enjoyed listening to Crash. It felt so retro that I almost had trouble in believing the song wasn’t actually a product of the Eighties for real.

Crash is their first track but they are busy preparing more audio delights for us, so why not pop over to their page on Reverb Nation or indeed the Low Tide Theory website (although at the time of writing this is still only in its early stages) to have a listen and find out more.

Alternatively, have a listen now with the little widget below…

Instantly recognisable from their glasses, jeans and thick Scottish accent when singing, Letter From America made them household names when it shot to number 3 in the charts. They had a unique style at the time, being both pop and almost folk music at the same time, the folk influence coming from the warbling sections of the song which is probably why the song was so popular, as everyone loved joining in with that particular bit.

They followed up with I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) which reached number 11 and has now become something of an anthem for Scottish football fans. This song also featured further strange voice work, and I can imagine that going down very well when sung by a stadium of football supporters!

Sadly these were the only two big hits the band achieved, with the rest of their eighties songs, including Sunshine on Leith and I’m On My Way both not quite making it into the UK Top 40.

The band have continued to record though, proving popular at music festivals and they also finally scored a number one with the re-recording of I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) for Comic Relief in 2001, which featured Peter Kay in his guise as wheelchair bound Brian Potter and Matt Lucas’s similarly wheelchair bound Andy Pipkin from Little Britain.

Kylie Ann Minogue (now an OBE!) was born 28th May 1968 in Melbourne, Australia. She is the oldest of three children, with her sister Dannii also being an actress and singer, whilst her brother Brendan is a news cameraman in Australia. As a child Kylie had bit parts in several Aussie soaps (including The Sullivans, which I remember was one of Mum’s favourite programmes when I was a kid), but initially Dannii was the sibling who enjoyed the greater success.

In 1985 this changed when Kylie was cast with one of the lead roles in The Henderson Kids, and then in 1986 she really made a name for herself playing tomboy Charlene Ramsey in Neighbours. Dannii was to follow in Kylie’s footsteps from them, as she then got a role in rival soap Home and Away, and then went on to launch her own singing career.

In 1987 Kylie entered the world of music with a cover of The Locomotion which topped the Australian charts. She came to England and signed up with Stock, Aitken and Waterman, releasing what most people in the UK will recognise as her first single – I Should Be So Lucky. Legend has it that Stock, Aitken and Waterman didn’t really know who Kylie was and had forgot she was coming to visit them, so ended up writing this track for her while she waited in the studio. The song was a phenomenal success, reaching number one in the UK, Australia, Germany and many other places.

For the next few years Kylie was never far from the top of the charts in both Australia and the UK, with songs such as It’s No Secret, Got To Be Certain and Turn It Into Love being extremely well received with the record buying public.

Despite this though, Kylie was always seeming to be put down by the media, possibly because her departure from Aussie soaps to the music world then started a rush of similar attempts by other Aussie actors. Most notable among these is probably Jason Donovan, who played her boyfriend and then husband Scott Robinson in Neighbours. Indeed, Kylie and Jason were often rumoured to be linked romantically in real life, a state of affairs that was not helped when the pair released the duet single Especially For You.

In 1989 Kylie went back to acting with a role in The Delinquents, but the movie failed to do well, so she refocussed on her music career, leaving Stock, Aitken and Waterman behind and signing with Deconstruction Records. This move heralded a new found respect for Kylie in the media, although she didn’t really set the charts alight again until the revealing costumes and gold hot pants of the late nineties and early noughties.

Kylie is still going strong today, and is now also a role model for young women in another sense, after the strong stand she took during her battle with breast cancer, which doctors have said has had a positive effect on making women aware of the dangers of cancer.

Erasure were a double act comprised of Vince Clarke and Andy Bell. Whilst Bell was the exuberant front man it was actually Clarke who was the initial driving force behind the group. Prior to starting Erasure Clarke had been a member of several early eighties bands including Depeche Mode, Yazoo and The Assembly, but in 1985 he placed an advert in Melody Maker magazine and chose Andy Bell from the many applicants to fill the position of vocalist.

The group’s first releases failed to set the UK charts alight however, although they had some success with Oh L’amour, their third single, in Australia and France. Their next song changed all that though. Sometimes made its way to number two in the charts and this helped propel their first album, The Circus, to number six in the album charts, which eventually went platinum.

The band went on to produce some very memorable tunes, including Chains of Love, A Little Respect and Stop! but ironically despite doing well in the charts they had to wait until the early nineties before they finally got a number one spot, and that was with a mix of Abba covers!

One interesting little nugget regarding the creation of the music tracks for Erasure’s songs is how they were sequenced, which is the way in which several synthesisers can be controlled at once to play the different tracks. Vince Clarke surprisingly used a BBC Micro to do this job, even many years after that particular computer had ceased production!

The duo of Clarke and Bell are still together today, and have released remixes of some of their hits during 2009, leading to a remastered re-released of their album, The Innocents, which is due out on October 26th 2009. They are also currently working on an album of new material.

Bros formed in the late 1980’s, their first song being I Owe You Nothing in 1987, which only managed to chart at a measley position 80 in the UK charts. Their next release was When Will I Be Famous? the following year, which reached number two and started Bros mania among the teenage females of the country. Strangely enough, time has not treated this phenomenon well, as question a woman who was a Brosette in her youth today and she’ll probably look a little sheepish and try and skirt around the issue.

A re-release of I Owe You Nothing followed, which topped the charts this time, and they also enjoyed top 5 success with Drop the Boy, I Quit and Cat Among the Pigeons, the latter of which was a bit slower in tempo to their other hits which were a bit more pop/rock in nature. It’s fair to say that most of their well known songs had a bit of an angry sounding edge to them, like they were annoyed that everyone was poking fun at them, which of course the male teenage population were.

Bros also made an impact on the fashion world, with the somewhat strange concept of wearing the complicated looking lids from bottles of Grolsch lager on their shoes. One assumes they invented this, and they make a point of showing it off in the video for When Will I Be Famous?, which you can view at the end of this post. This became quite a craze for some reason (so I guess some blokes out there must have liked Bros then, since this was more a male fashion than a female one).

Craig Logan left the band in 1989, and sued the Goss twins for lost royalties to the tune of a million quid! He went on to become a producer for Kim Appleby (half of Mel and Kim – the girl group, not Mel Smith and Kim Wilde’s Comic Relief record), who he was dating at the time, and is now involved in music management.

Logan’s court case left the Goss twins in a sticky mess financially, and Bros started their descent from popularity not long after and the band finally ceased to be in 1992. Both Matt and Luke went on to have solo singing careers, although neither attained the heights they had achieved with Bros. Luke also started treading the boards in some West End musicals and now has a fairly successful acting career. Who would have thought that the slightly effeminate looking lad from Bros could become convincing villains in movies such as Blade 2 and Hellboy 2!