Despite roots dating back as far as 1978, Crime & the City Solution did not truly emerge until 1984, coming to life in the wake of the dissolution of the seminal Birthday Party. The group was led by the evocative singer/songwriter Simon Bonney, a Melbourne, Australia native who led a series of bands under the verbose Crime name throughout the... [+] Read More

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With his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk and Bakersfield country, Dwight Yoakam helped return country music to its roots in the late '80s. Like his idols Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams, Yoakam never played by Nashville's rules; consequently, he never dominated the charts like his contemporary Randy Travis. Then... [+] Read More

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After goth pioneers the Birthday Party called it quits in 1983, singer/songwriter Nick Cave assembled the Bad Seeds, a post-punk supergroup featuring former Birthday Party guitarist Mick Harvey on drums, ex-Magazine bassist Barry Adamson, and Einstürzende Neubauten guitarist Blixa Bargeld. With the Bad Seeds, Cave continued to explore his... [+] Read More

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The Birthday Party were one of the darkest and most challenging post-punk groups to emerge in the early '80s, creating bleak and noisy soundscapes that provided the perfect setting for vocalist Nick Cave's difficult, disturbing stories of religion, violence, and perversity. Under the direction of Cave and guitarist Rowland S. Howard, the band... [+] Read More

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If enthusiastic press and the praise of your fellow musicians were all it took to become a rock star, the True Believers would have been one of the biggest American bands of the 1980s. Blending a tightly woven three-guitar attack and passionate songwriting with a punk rocker's love of pure energy and the sonic firepower of a hard rocker, the... [+] Read More

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