Ugly kid joe

Released on 7 August 1995, It’s Great When You’re Straight... Yeah was, in Shaun Ryder’s words, his great “fuck you” album after the dissolution of Happy Mondays. Still battling drug problems, and wit

As fanfares go, few match the NME’s for It Bites’ Calling All The Heroes, released in the summer of 1986. “I knew it would be a hit,” Len Brown trumpeted, summarising the song’s appeal. “The perfect i

hen Soft Cell were art students at Leeds Polytechnic, Marc Almond wrote a song in the vein of Ziggy Stardust about a fictional band breaking up. Four years later, when Soft Cell had been informed by t

D uring the first half of the 80s, OMD were a regular presence in the upper reaches of the UK charts. Enola Gay, Souvenir, Joan Of Arc and Maid Of Orleans (The Waltz Joan Of Arc) made the Top 10, whil

A few years ago, Charlie Burchill and Jim Kerr were interviewed for a BBC documentary about music’s messiest break-ups. Which may seem like an odd booking, given the pair’s famously adamantine bond. B

The accessibility, affordability and portability of synthesizers in the late 70s had a profound effect on popular music, particularly in the UK, where the likes of Ultravox!, Gary Numan and OMD reshap