The Big Society were a melodic pop-rock band from Glasgow who signed to London Records in the mid-1980s.

They toured student unions extensively as part of a heavily-subsidised package tour with Danny Wilson, Horse and River City People, sponsored by Beamish.

Their debut album Glisten (1987) was praised for "songcraft reminiscent of Steely Dan" and its "expansive Steve Lillywhite production", but lead single "The Love Of Elsa" failed to make the Top 40, despite being reissued three times.

The sole surviving Big Society television footage is from an episode of No.73 when their booker managed to crowbar them onto the bill with a threat of "If you don't take The Big Society, you can't have The Communards". Sandi Toksvig, famously, got their name wrong, calling them 'The High Society'.

By the time of their much-delayed second album in 1991, simply called The Big Society, musical fashions had moved on and the band responded by incorporating a shuffling dance beat into their chiming guitar-based sound.

They finally cracked the charts with a 'baggy' version of Wings' "Let 'Em In", with a video featuring emotional footage of reunited families at the fallen Berlin Wall, but failed to recoup any of their record company advance since all proceeds, due to a stipulation from Paul McCartney himself, went to Unicef.

The Big Society were dropped by London in 1994. Help seemed to be at hand when they were snapped up by U2's Mother label, but due to a combination of creative block and Bono's inability to devote enough time to overseeing their career, the band fizzled out and went their separate ways.

The rhythm section, comprising the Barclay brothers Colin and Brian, were much sought-after in the late 90s, but bassist Brian tragically died of a heroin overdose while on tour with Hepburn. Colin remains a successful session drummer, and is currently a member of Lily Allen's band. Guitarist Martin Hedges is still involved in the music industry as one of the organisers of the annual Teenage Cancer Trust concerts.

Lead singer Steve Silliphant continues to perform as a solo artist, to a small but devoted following, and to release albums on his own Homepride label from his base in rural Norfolk.

His annual concert at the Borderline in London, during which he plays many Big Society favourites, invariably receives a fond preview in Time Out magazine.

Haha, excellent.

The Third Way were an indie band hailing from Liverpool who formed in 1996, signing to Island in early 1997 on the strength of their Stones-influenced, John Leckie-produced debut single "Feelin' Union Jack!" which was every bit as good as its title suggests. After supporting Oasis on a couple of stadium dates that summer and achieving a Top 40 hit with the Beatles-influenced "This World" they recorded their debut album The English Job in Rockfield Studios, Wales with Noel Gallagher guesting on two tracks, providing a guitar solo on the second single taken from the album "Wild Daze". The English Job received 4 stars from Q and came 39th in their end-of-year Top 50 Albums poll.

The summit of their popularity came on the night of New Labour's election victory when the BBC chose to soundtrack footage of Tony Blair shaking hands with voters with the third single taken from the album, an uplifting, piano-driven, string-laden ballad that never made the listener want to shove their fingers into their own nostrils and attempt to scrape out their brains called "Someday".

The Third Way spent the summers of 97 and 98 propping up the bill on the second stages at the Reading & Leeds and V festivals as well as touring extensively in support of The English Job which, despite positive early sales, had dropped out of the Top 20 after three weeks.

When they re-emerged in 1999 with a more-of-the-same follow-up What A Way To Go!, their appeal had become more selective. Support slots with Cast, The Bluetones and Shed Seven did little to prop up sales of the album, the debut single of which "Rushie's 'Tache" had crawled to number 49 in the week before release. They weren't helped by the critical mauling the album received ("The Turd Way"/"Turn Away" being some of the kinder headlines accompanying the reviews) from every publication except Q (who gave it 3 stars). Their tours saw them playing to half-empty venues and their most newsworthy event that year came when guitarist Paul Merchant and vocalist Andy Stone came to blows on stage playing to an audience of 40 people in Belgium in a disagreement over which songs to cut from the set due to audience apathy (Merchant insisting that his early Floyd-influenced "Memory Layne" be played with Stone adamant that his Beatles-influenced "Way That It is" and "Love Will Out" remain in situ).

Struggling on through 2000, they regrouped in early 2001 stating that their third album would mark a sea change in their sound and that they'd been listening to loads of Public Enemy, The Chemical Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Bjork, Sun Ra, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Bob Marley, Pavement, Led Zeppelin and eastern music, la. The self-titled effort was initially slated to be released in September 2001 but was pulled in the wake of the terror attacks due to the tremendously unfortunate cover which featured a photograph of the New York skyline with smouldering cigarettes in place of the Twin Towers. Pushed back to February 2002, the album was preceeded by a single, "Still Kickin'" (a re-recorded version of a b-side on the "This World" CD) that failed to crack the Top 75. The much-vaunted new sound and experimentalism which the band had proclaimed would be the hallmark of the album resulted in one song built on a drum loop, another song featuring a sitar and an all-acoustic number. The rest of the album sounded exactly like their previous efforts - a repugnant mix of The Beatles, The Stones, The Who and The Faces. A desperate final stab at maintream success - an electroclash cover of Ocean Colour Scene's "The Circle" which was released as a single and appended to later pressings of the album - had the impact of a flea suffering an epileptic seizure on a dog's back during an eqarthquake.

The band split acrimoniously in the summer of that year.

Lead singer Andy Stone, now insisting that everyone address him as Andrew, suffered a breakdown after his solo album (a concept record inspired by Marvel's The Punisher) flopped. He released an internet video stating that the failure of his career so far was evidence of a global conspiracy to subdue dissent ahead of the imminent rise of a one-world government which would gain power through immigrants, beggars and criminals siezing control of society, concluding that "the guilty must be punished". Daubing a white skull on some kevlar he bought off eBay and brandishing two revolvers, he stepped out onto a crowded London street and opened fire on the first "criminals" he saw, missing them by some distance due to his inexperience with firearms. He was quickly incarerated and was given a short sentence due to his obviously precarious mental state. Since his release, he has run a website warning against the dangers of a global conspiracy and one-world government where he also hosts discussions on September 11 and Moon Landing conspiracy theories.

Guitarist Paul Merchant can be found occasionally busking in Liverpool city centre. His song commemorating Liverpool's 2005 European Cup triumph "Back From The Dead" was a brief YouTube hit. The follow-up, "Didi's Dinner", alas, was not.

Bassist Graeme McIntyre became a primary school teacher and still dabbles in music, playing in his cousins' cover band.

Drummer Alan Penrice exploited his latent animation skills to become a digital animator at Pixar. Mention of his previous incarnation as the drummer in a British rock band causes this normally talkative individual to clam up and leave without paying the bill.

Short, Sharp Shock were founded in 1977, in London, by bassist Nick Leeds and guitarist Nathaniel "Jake" Manners, who had previously found modest success with the single "Down In The Boiler Room", recorded with the Kilburn-based pub rock group The Plumber's Mates, released on Chiswick in 1976.

Between 1977 and 1979 they gigged solidly at venues such as the Hope & Anchor and released three singles, the latter, "I Think I'm Turning Yellow" being released on yellow vinyl and reaching number 18. By 1980, they had decided to change their name to The Shorties and as such toured Europe, supported by Kissing The Pink.

In 1983, The Shorties broke America's Billboard Hot 100 with their biggest hit to date "My Head Is A Rubrix Cube". Thereafter, however, their success began to decline, only for the group to enjoy a brief revival in the early 90s when J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr declared The Shorties "the greatest group, like, of all time, a total inspiration" and covered their 1981 hit "Doing The Micro-Wave" as a b-side.

Despite a short lived revival, Jake and Nick fell out and today, there are two versions of The Shorties currently on the gigging circuit - The Shorties and The Shorties UK. In 1996, the Virgin Rock Yearbook wrote of the band that, despite much initial promise, they "never really achieved the success they didn't deserve."

wingco wrote:


Oh, I think I'll be re-using that.

These are really excellent. I reckon if you created Wikipedia articles for them all they'd last months, possibly forever.

Building Schools for the Future formed shortly after Lawrence McKay and Jeb Pipitone met on the Art & Design HND course at North Glasgow College in 2002. Legend has it that they drew their distinctive logo – the 'B' and 'S' each represented by pairs of red and yellow triangles – in class, before they’d even learned to play any instruments.

Adopting the stage names Del Lissitzky and Han Tschichold, BSF set out "to make girls dance forward". They rounded out their number with a drum machine – 'Hans' – whose infamous remarks about Bis during an interview with Careless Talk Costs Lives magazine earned their own 500+-post thread on the I Love Music forum.

A stint supporting The Long Blondes and inclusion in Clash magazine’s 'Dance, punk!' special earned the band a fanbase modest in number and physique. But despite their inclusion on Optimo's Radio 1 Essential Mix (the DJ duo mashed up the rhythm track of 'Wolkenbügel Choogle' with a bootleg of Brian Wilson gargling 'Little Deuce Coupe'), BSF were never to enjoy the levels of success attained by stateside peers such as Numbers and Out Hud.

Building Schools for the Future recorded their debut album, Future BS, under the guidance of Arthur Baker. However, it was never to see the light of day: an EMI reshuffle left offshoot label 8-9-10 bankrupt and the music in the vault. Rumours persist that a second album, Di Kunstismen, is also in the can.

Relations between band members grew increasingly strained after their sophomore release, the Collapsing New Schools E.P., met with disastrous reviews and widespread online mockery. The band's final performance together, at London's Horse Hospital gallery, descended into a meat fight that left Han Tschichold deaf in one ear.

Del Lissitzky currently works as a driving instructor, but continues to explore the field of linear noise. His first E.P., The Worm that Sterned, has been cited as a formative influence by Antipodean hopefuls, My Disco. Han Tschichold is still writing his PhD thesis on Soviet sweet wrappers.

Lucia Lanigan wrote:


Yeah, I'm filing that one away as well.

I was just going to suggest New Model Army, but then I see that I didn't get the gist of this excellent thread.

Of all the novelty rave artists of the early 1990's, it was perhaps Cones Hotline who came closest to capturing the era's spirit of playful irritation combined with a genuine sense of impending nihilism. His prodigious talent first came to light on a succession of seminal breakbeat tracks such as Highway Urgency, Shard Holder and Kuntraflow, all released on his self-financed Political Diversion label. He is undoubtedly best known for his controversial top three single Trafficstopper, with its notorious sampled chorus "This is a fucking holdup!". A massive hit across Europe, he has nevertheless since disowned the track and once launched a violent attack on a woman when he heard it playing as her ringtone ^{citation needed}. By the time his underwhelming major-label debut album Driving Us To Destruction was finally released, however, the craze for such vapid, chart-polluting inanity had passed; and despite the long player shifting 20,000 copies, in 1995 he was quietly dropped. These days it's life in the slow lane for Cones Hotline, who composes incidental music for ostensibly educational childrens' cartoons.

Formed in 1986, Community Service were an important part of the early British rap scene. Dextrous wordsmith MC Guacamole (real name Kevin Gatwick) and taciturn turntablist DJ Enchilada (Brian Borrowash) first met at Dudley Community College and, like so many of their peers, started out by entertaining classmates at informal 'garden shakedowns'. The duo quickly garnered a local following with their hard-hitting tales of urban life, and released their first single at the start of 1987 on the fledgling Cross Blak Records. It failed to trouble the UK independent charts, but lead track 'Some Git Stole Moi Cap' received airplay on John Peel's Radio 1 programme, leading to an invitation to record a session for the show. Broadcast in May 1987, this marked the recruitment of a second MC, Ol' Meanie (Charles Akingbade), and was followed by a series of UK gigs supporting Derek B, their first outside the Birmingham area.

Frustratingly, Community Service could not immediately capitalise on this exposure as Cross Blak had run into cashflow problems and were unable to finance another release. Their relationship with the label was irretrievably damaged when they started selling cassettes including the track 'Cheapskate Teacher', a dig at Cross Blak supremo Lucius Wentworth, who had previously taught Communications & Media at Dudley. Murdertone Records stepped into the breach, and released the first Community Service 12" in November 1987. Featuring three tracks - 'My Name Is Trouble', 'Bloody Old Bill' and 'Grange Hill With Knives' - the record was favourably reviewed by NME and reached number 12 in the independent charts.

Community Service ended 1987 on a high, fourth on the bill at the legendary Christmas Rapping extravaganza at the Hammersmith Palais. The new year saw them back in the studio to record tracks for another 12" and subsequent album release. 'Music Like Food' maintained momentum, peaking at number 5 in the independent singles chart, but the debut long-player, UK Public Enemy, was dogged by controversy. Reviews were lukewarm (Sounds' Bertha Bassett writing "A poorly produced sludge of clanks and whistles") and worse was to follow when Murdertone were forced to recall the record less than a month after release. This was due to huge complaints about the track 'Thatcher's Arse', both due to the lyrics ("Gonna spank Thatcher's arse till the cheeks fall off/Gonna barbecue the bitch till the grill white hot") and the extensive sampling from a Hall & Oates album track ('At The Meter'), which led to threats of legal action. Murdertone re-released the album sans 'Thatcher's Arse', but sales were nowhere near high enough to recoup the extra costs incurred, and the label chose not to renew Community Service's contract.

By now, Ol' Meanie was getting frustrated by the group's refusal to countenance bringing in African musicians and left to form Ologbo Jona Lowo under his real name. Disillusioned by his experiences with the music business, DJ Enchilada decided to resume his film studies, later founding the successful media production company Brian Says. For a while MC Guacamole became a performance poet (Kevocado), but now works at Brian Says.

In 2009 Community Service underwent a reappraisal when they were recognised as the first major UK act to rap in English accents, and their Murdertone releases, along with the John Peel session, were repackaged and reissued as the compilation Serving Your Community on Streetsounds. Bitter to the end, Lucius Wentworth refused to allow the inclusion of 'Some Git Stole Moi Cap' or its B-side 'Ragamuffins On Lager'.

The Way Forward were formed in Dublin during the late summer of 1984 when a Aoenghais ó Riordáin and Sean O'Shaughnessy kept bumping into one another while busking on Dublin's Grafton Street. Bonding over a shared love of Van Morrison, The Pogues, Christy Moore, The Clash, The Dubliners and traditional Irish music, they quickly recruited other musicians and friends from the local scene and began gigging heavily, ó Riordáin's "gift o' the gab" and propensity for bullshit blagging them performances in pretty much any venue or public space that could accommodate 14 musicians at a time (including two drummers, two bodhrán players, a flutist, three violinists and an uileann piper). After annoying the bollocks off Dublin's pedestrians and gig-goers for what seemed like eternity, they were snapped up by Sony, eager to cash-in on the post-The Unforgettable Fire craze for anything remotely rocking and celtic.

Debut single "Molly Malone's Lips" was a hit in Ireland in early 1985 and made a small but noticeable impact on the UK charts. By now, the bands publicity was on the rise thanks to the visually distinctive ó Riordáin's way with a quote and the media's obsequious perception of him as a bit of a "character", his perennial brown poncho jacket, long, black ponytail and black trilby becoming an infuriatingly common sight on Irish TV, in Hot Press, in newpapers and student union bars during the course of the year. The band's public profile peaked with their appearance on The Late Late Show where, in an interview after their performance, ó Riordáin weighed in on several political hot topics of the day, landing himself in hot water by stating his opinion that AIDS should be "banned" and that he "hadn't much time for HIV either, to be honest with you."

Tours with The Waterboys and Cactus World News preceeded the release of their debut album Arthur's Pioneers which went Top 5 in Ireland and Top 50 in the UK. A charity single recorded in collaboration with Low Motion and a reformed Bagatelle to benefit Trócaire followed swiftly. In that same year, ó Riordáin appeared on stage in Belfast with The Outcasts at a charity gig for victims of sectarian abuse where he called on all of Ulster to "stop this senseless violence!"

1986 saw the band appear on another charity single with Midge Ure, The Pogues and The Virgin Prunes for the benefit of Dubliners whose conservatories had been destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricaine Charlie, which had struck Ireland that year. They then appeared on the bill at Self-Aid where they performed two songs, one a duet with Paul Brady, before joining in for the gig's finale - a performance of the Self-Aid single "Make It Work" featuring U2, Clannad, Bob Geldof and Chris De Burgh (Sadly, I am not making this part up).

The Way Forward released their sophomore effort Whoever Pays The Piper... in 1987 and the record went Top 10 in Ireland. Success across the Irish Sea was becoming a difficult quarry for the band to capture however as UK audiences, blighted as they were with rubbish like The Mary Chain, The Smiths, New Order and the like, found it inexplicably difficult to latch onto The Way Forward's coruscatingly original mix of po-faced rock and all-thumbs trad topped off with a tosser of a frontman. Seams in the band were beginning to show at this point with O'Shaughnessy (whom it transpired was some five years younger than ó Riordáin) cutting an increasingly isolated figure in interviews and quitely mentioning to close friends that he was becoming embarassed with the bands sound and was finding ó Riordáin's personality increasingly difficult to bear.

A charity single with Sinéad O'Connor released to raise funds for striking piano tuners was the band's only activity in 1988.

In 1989, O'Shaughnessy announced that he was leaving the band to commit to "other projects". This was to mark the beginning of the band's downfall as it soon became glaringly apparent that O'Shaughnessy was responsible for all of the bands music and while his contributions never rose above insipid, at times irritating, bland rock it was nevertheless preferable to ó Riordáin taking up the slack. With the songs now reduced to a genuinely tuneless whacking of an acoustic guitar with the occasional, cacophanous celtic instrumental accompaniment, there was nowhere to hide from ó Riordáin's agonising lyrics ("Are the children of Kenya crying tonight?/Are the children of Ethiopia dying tonight?") and increasingly husky voice.

The band struggled on appearing at the Féile and Fleadh festivals in the early 90's but it was apparent to all that this was a dead horse. They silently split in 1995 after a dual tour with The Hothouse Flowers went nowhere.

ó Riordáin popped up from time to time in the Irish media and on stage with artists such as The Frames. In 1998 he was embarassingly ridiculed after he was persuaded by an Irish radio station to record a charity single to benefit children orphaned in the Murgykhystan-Val Verde war only to be informed later that neither country in fact existed. In 2003, it emerged that ó Riordáin was not in fact his real name and that he was the son of a long-standing Fianna Fáil TD. He still busks on Grafton Street and performs on singer-songwriter night at the Ha'Penny Bridge Inn whenever the staff want to close early.

O'Shaughnessy resurfaced in 1992 as part of a synth duo named Third Law, clad entirely in black and sporting eyeliner, claiming to have been a longstanding afficionado of Kraftwerk. The band released one album, Sciences, that failed to chart.

This is just stunning. The whole thread.

What would a band called Back to Basics have sounded like?

Back to Basics = dire heavy metal, surely?

Actually, no scrub that. The band's name is Black Wednesday. Back to Basics was their first LP.

And I'm irritated with mumpo for claiming the cones hotline. I was vaguely pulling something together on them as an all-girl Stock/Aitken/Waterman number.

This is amazing. This thread is just bursting with talenty pus.

The message of punk was that anyone can form a band. No-one believed this more fervently than Coulsdon's A Land Fit For Heroes, and never was the claim more sternly tested.

The band formed in the spring of 1979, catching the tide of punk at its ebb. Frontman/rhythm guitarist Tony "Coles" Coleman and lead guitarist Barry "Hoyty" Hoyte had been classmates at Purley High School, where both had often fallen foul of the school's tough disciplinary regime. Despite that, Coles had entered the Sixth Form in September 1977 at age 16, though Hoyty had left school, and was drifting in and out of dead end jobs in the Croydon area. Inspired by Surrey stars The Jam, Coles and Hoyty decided in early 1978 to start a band, and placed the first in a series of ads in the Croydon Guardian for a rhythm section.

Early auditions did not go well, and it was not until April 1979 that Coles and Hoyty were joined by bassist Paul Brough and drummer Paul Cioci (known respectively as "Pauls" and "Paulo"). Keyboardist Rick Trowell from local rivals Terminal Ward helped out at some early gigs. Their debut single "Shout Them Down" came out in July of that year, on local independent label Urban Sprawl, and peaked at number 68. This was the closest the band came to a hit.

From the start, ALFFH were a band out of time. The first flush of three-chord amateurism had faded long before they hit the scene, and to an audience hungry for experimentation they already sounded like yesterday's news. In August 1979 they played the University of London Union, supporting Killing Joke; NME reviewer Charles Shaar Murray wrote "Shouty support act Land of Heroes [sic] made what their Mums would rightly call 'an 'orrible racket' for half an hour, then mercifully fucked off." This remains the band's longest review in the national music press.

Always of the fist-pumping, optimistic, "the kids can do it" school of punk, and eschewing theatricality and affectation, they stuck doggedly to their three-chord formula, through a mixture of bloody-mindedness and lack of imagination, during the rise of post-punk, electronic music and the New Romantics. The group's fanbase slowly dwindled from an already low starting point, and discontent began to brew. Matters came to a head in mid-1982, at a gig at a Cambridge May Ball. Disgusted by the "prancing toffs" in the audience, Hoyty led the band offstage. His efforts to drown his sorrows at the free bar led to his being thrown out for not wearing a dinner jacket, and he spent the night on a park bench, only catching up with the other band members the following morning to confirm that it was, indeed, all over.

Coles and Hoyty are still making music: they have a regular Thursday night gig at the Dragon in Epsom as part of Rolling Stones tribute act Gather No Moss. Bassist Paul Brough is an estate agent. Drummer Paulo Cioci disappeared from view for several years, only to resurface as an unlikely pop producer and songwriter; he has masterminded several hit singles for the likes of Kylie Minogue, Girls Aloud and the Sugababes. He lives in Jersey.

Year Of Food And Farming, out of Elma, Washington, were fleetingly signed to Michael Gira's Young God Records in the late 90s, when fey folktronica became briefly acceptable in the rural Northwest. However, they were dropped after only one EP, 'Fear of Owls', with Gira claiming "they couldn't hold their whisky". It is generally held, though, that Gira was less impressed with the 5-piece's inability to best him in a fight - the accepted rite-of-passage for bands on the Young God label.

Singer Hamilton Beys-Ockham III now sweeps up hair clippings in a barbers in Portland; The O'Neill triplets currently act as ballast for tugs sailing from Tacoma, while keyboardist Rusty Jones went back to his parents' farm outside of Elma, but was later sacrificed when their crops failed for the third year in a row after his return. A reunion is not anticipated.

This thread is bringing out the best in the board. I particularly like Mumpo's "citation needed" detail, and WoE's "Gather No Moss".

I've got another band in my head waiting to go, but I just need the right govt. scheme...

Mumpo's 'citation needed' is the stand out moment, I think.