C86 Show - Indie Pop

Bridget St John in conversation with David Eastaugh

English singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for the three albums she recorded between 1969 and 1972 for John Peel's Dandelion record label. Peel produced her debut album, Ask Me No Questions. She also recorded a large number of BBC Radio and Peel sessions and toured regularly on the British college and festival circuit.

St John appeared at leading folk venues in the UK, along with other folk and pop luminaries of the time such as Nick Drake, Paul Simon, and David Bowie, among others. In 1974 she was voted fifth most popular female singer in that year's Melody Maker readers poll. Blessed with a "rich cello-like" vocal style, she is also an accomplished guitar player who credits John Martyn and Michael Chapman as her "musical brothers".

Graeme Revell in conversation with David Eastaugh 

Soundtrack composer, experimental musician and author. Born in Auckland, New Zealand on 23 October 1955. Moved to Australia where he founded the legendary industrial band SPK in 1978. After 3 records of extreme noise assaults and controversial subjects, SPK turned toward synth-pop, consisting of just Revell and his then wife Sinan Leong.

In the mid 1980s Revell started the Musique Brut label to release some solo recordings in the fields of ambient and experimental music. He then evolved into composing soundtracks for a lot of mid and high-budget Hollywood productions, becoming very succesful at it.

Barry Blue in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://barryblue.co.uk/home

English singer, producer, and songwriter. As an artist, he is best known for his hit songs "Dancin' (on a Saturday Night)" and "Do You Wanna Dance" (both 1973).

Blue has also been a prolific songwriter and producer for many artists and has had over forty worldwide hits, including those by Andrea Bocelli, Diana Ross, Celine Dion, The Saturdays, The Wanted, and Pixie Lott. In film and television, Blue has provided soundtracks and/or themes for productions including Eyes of Laura Mars, The Long Good Friday, and Escape to Athena.

Alfie Agnew in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://professorandthemadman.bandcamp.com/

https://professorandthemadman.com/

American mathematician, singer, musician and songwriter. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Agnew is best known for being a member of the punk bands the Adolescents and D.I. as well as the group Professor and the Madman. Alfie's brothers Rikk Agnew and Frank Agnew are also former Adolescents guitarists.

John L Williams in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heatwave-Summer-Britain-Boiling-Point/dp/1800961715

With temperatures soaring to 35ºC, severe water shortages and a sunburned population queuing at the standpipes, the summer of 1976 was always remembered as Britain's hottest.

But the wave that hit the UK that year was also cultural and political, with upheaval on the streets, in parliament, on the cricket pitch and on the radios and TV sets of a nation at a crossroads.

Before this blistering summer, Britain seemed stuck in the post-war era, a country where people were all in it together - as long as you were white, male and straight. In July, Tom Robinson writes a song called Glad to be Gay, and by August bank holiday, Black youth are making the police run for their lives in the almighty riot at the Notting Hill Carnival. But with the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson suddenly quitting, the pound sinking and the economy tanking, a restless immigrant population and increasing dissatisfaction in the old world order, the weather seemed to boil up the country to the point where the lid blows off.

Weaving a rich tapestry of the news stories of the year, with social commentary and dozens of first-person interviews with those that were there at the time, Williams's reappraisal of the summer of '76 is an evocative, sometimes nostalgic but always an unflinching read. Heatwave takes us back to relive the events of that summer and asks - have we really moved on as much as we would have liked?