C86 Show - Indie Pop

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?

Jesse Rifkin in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://walkonthewildsidenyc.com/about

https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Must-Be-Place-Community/dp/1335449329

Take a walk through almost any neighborhood in Manhattan and you'll likely pass some of the most significant clubs in American music history. But you won't know it--almost all of these venues have been demolished or repurposed, leaving no record of what they were, how they shaped music scenes or their impact on the neighborhoods around them.

Traditional music history tells us that famous scenes are created by brilliant, singular artists. But dig deeper and you'll find that they're actually created by cheap rent, empty space and other unglamorous factors that allow artistic communities to flourish. The 1960s folk scene would have never existed without access to Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park. If the city hadn't gone bankrupt in 1975, there would have been no punk rock. Brooklyn indie rock of the 2000s was only able to come together because of the borough's many empty warehouse spaces. But these scenes are more than just moments of artistic genius--they're also part of the urban gentrification cycle, one that often displaces other communities and, eventually, the musicians themselves.

Drawing from over a hundred exclusive interviews with a wide range of musicians, deejays and scenesters (including members of Peter, Paul and Mary; White Zombie; Moldy Peaches; Sonic Youth; Treacherous Three; Cro-Mags; Sun Ra Arkestra; and Suicide), writer, historian and tour guide Jesse Rifkin painstakingly reconstructs the physical history of numerous classic New York music scenes. This Must Be the Place examines how these scenes came together and fell apart--and shows how these communal artistic experiences are not just for rarefied geniuses but available to us all.

Simon Reynolds in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://store.whiterabbitbooks.co.uk/products/still-in-a-dream

Twenty years after his acclaimed postpunk best-seller, Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds tells the tale of what happened next: the underground explosion of noisepop, shoegaze, slacker rock and grunge that reverberated through the mid-Eighties into the early Nineties.

Capturing the musical exhilaration of the era along with the alienation of youth during a period of ascendant conservative politics and glitzy mainstream pop, Still in a Dream celebrates a golden age of guitar reinvention, a second psychedelia of mind-blowing sounds pioneered by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. In Britain, groups like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive escaped into shimmering dreamworlds while American underground rockers like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement blended apathy and urgency into thrilling noise.

A propulsive and personal account from a journalist who covered this music in real time from the frontlines, Still in a Dream vividly recreates a period that was the last blast for the analogue culture of vinyl records and music papers, before the Internet changed everything.

Peter Guralnick in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://store.whiterabbitbooks.co.uk/products/the-colonel-and-the-king

In early 1955, Colonel Tom Parker discovered a teenage Elvis Presley and declared him destined for greatness. What followed was one of the most extraordinary partnerships in music history and the creation of a bond built on loyalty, ambition and an unshakeable belief in each other.

From the meteoric rise that reshaped popular culture to the struggles that shadowed their final years, this concluding volume of Peter Guralnick's acclaimed trilogy reveals the full complexity of their relationship.

Drawing on previously unpublished letters and telegrams from Parker's own archives, it offers an intimate, unflinching portrait of two American originals: the visionary manager who invented the modern superstar and the artist who became one. Brilliant, flawed and inseparable, Elvis and the Colonel changed the music world forever.

Julia Round in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://www.juliaround.com/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gothic-Girls-Misty-British-Comics/dp/1496824466

Award-winning writer and independent scholar. She is one of the founders and editors of the academic journal Studies in Comics (Intellect Books) and of the book series Encapsulations: Critical Comics Studies (University of Nebraska Press).

Today fans still remember and love the British girls’ comic Misty for its bold visuals and narrative complexities. Yet its unique history has drawn little critical attention. Bridging this scholarly gap, Julia Round presents a comprehensive cultural history and detailed discussion of the comic, preserving both the inception and development of this important publication as well as its stories.

Misty ran for 101 issues as a stand-alone publication between 1978 and 1980 and then four more years as part of Tammy. It was a hugely successful anthology comic containing one-shot and serialized stories of supernatural horror and fantasy aimed at girls and young women and featuring work by writers and artists who dominated British comics such as Pat Mills, Malcolm Shaw, and John Armstrong, as well as celebrated European artists. To this day, Misty remains notable for its daring and sophisticated stories, strong female characters, innovative page layouts, and big visuals.

Richard Langston in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://feralhouse.com/the-clean/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clean-Dreamlife-Need-Rubber-Soul/

In 1978 in Dunedin , New Zealand, the Kilgour brothers, Hamish and David, and their schoolfriend Peter Gutteridge, got together to form a band called The Clean. When Robert Scott joined in 1980, the band found a combination that endured for nearly forty years.

The Clean profoundly changed alternative music: hitting the New Zealand charts for months with a single made for 50 dollars, 'Tally Ho!'; helping establish Flying Nun and a music scene independent of the big labels; pioneering a low-fi, do-it-yourself approach to rock music; and touring internationally to influence bands like Pavement and Yo La Tengo.

Raw and immediate, this is the story as told by members of The Clean and their inner circle - fellow musicians such as Chris Knox, Martin Phillipps, Graeme Downes and Ira Kaplan, friends and family, pub promoters and sound engineers, and their good friend, Richard Langston. From teenagers in a Dunedin practice room to New York City on 9/11 - this is the band's history as it unfolds.

Gary Lachman in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Touched-Presence-Blondies-Bowery-Occult/dp/B0DSV388DQ

https://www.gary-lachman.com/

https://garylachman.co.uk/

In this memoir, Lachman recounts how he went from being a successful rock and roller to a writer on consciousness and the Western inner tradition. He shares encounters with rockers such as the Ramones, New York Dolls, Patti Smith, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop and also his time with Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. Living with Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein on New York’s Bowery, a block from CBGB, the birthplace of punk rock, Lachman discovered occultism via a follower of Aleister Crowley.

Post rock and roll, Lachman’s occult studies brought him to the Golden Dawn, Manly P. Hall, Gnosticism, and a stint in Crowley’s O.T.O. He details his time in the Fourth Way, including a visit to the site of Gurdjieff ’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, and his years studying philosophy and literature and working as a science writer while managing a famous metaphysical bookshop at the height of the New Age movement. Excursions to Stonehenge, Avebury, and Glastonbury in search of ley lines and pilgrimages to Colin Wilson’s home in Cornwall are a few of the highlights of this introspective, often humorous account of a nascent writer’s struggle from rock and roll to individuation.

Roddy Bottum in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Royal-We-Memoir-Roddy-Bottum/dp/1636142699

THE ROYAL WE is a poetic survey of a time set in a magical city that once was and is no more. It is a memoir written by Roddy Bottum, a musician and artist, that documents through prose his coming of age and out of the closet in 1980s San Francisco, a charged era of bicycle messengers, punk rock, street witches, wheatgrass, and rebellion. The book follows his travels from Los Angeles, growing up gay with no role models, to San Francisco, where he formed Faith No More and went on to tour the world relentlessly, surviving heroin addiction and the plight of AIDS, to become a queer icon.

The book is an elevated wallop of tongue and insight, much more than a tell-all. There are personal tales of historical pinnacles like Kurt and Courtney, Guns N' Roses, and recaps of gold records and arena rock - but it's the testimonies of tragedy and addiction and preposterous life-spins that make this work so unique and intriguing.

Bottum writes about his dark and harrowing past in a clear-eyed voice that is utterly devoid of self-pity, and his emboldened and confident pronouncements of achievement and unorthodox heroism flow in an unstoppable train that's both captivating and inspirational. A remarkable portrayal of a creative individual in emergence, a gay man figuring out how to be a gay man, and a detailed look at the nuance of 1980s pre-tech boom San Francisco, The Royal We will be greatly appreciated by people who loved Kathleen Hanna's Rebel Girl, Patti Smith's Just Kids, Hua Hsu's Stay True, and other memoirs about the artist's life.

Adele Bertei in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://www.roughtrade.com/product/adele-bertei/no-new-york-a-memoir-of-no-wave-and-the-women-who-shaped-the-scene

In 1975 a young queer singer from Cleveland meets photographer Nan Goldin - an encounter that will lead them to New York's bombed-out downtown, where something unprecedented is brewing. At Max's Kansas City and CBGBs, in derelict lofts and underground clubs, a generation of visionary women artists is rewriting the rules of creativity, sexuality, and power.

Adele Bertei didn't just witness the No Wave explosion-she ignited it. As acetone organist for the Contortions and Brian Eno's assistant, she was at the epicenter when punk collided with post-punk, birthing a counterculture that fused music, art, cinema, fashion and outlaw literature into an uncompromising explosion of creativity. While mainstream culture wallowed in sexism and homophobia, these artists and more created something fluid, fierce, and transgressive.

Raw, gripping, and illustrated with rare photographs from personal collections, No New York is the definitive insider's account of the women who obliterated every barrier in their path, taking you deep into the artistic and sexual experimentation of an era when true expression mattered more than money or fame.

Kevin Cann in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://www.kevincann.com/

https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2011/mar/09/david-bowie-in-pictures

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Any-Day-Now-London-1947-1974/dp/0955201780

Ben Cardew in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-Age-Batchelor-Pad-Music/dp/1916829325

http://jawbonepress.com/space-age-batchelor-pad-music/

Stereolab are one of the most fascinating guitar groups of the past fifty years, a source of constant reinvention and illuminating contrasts, where political ideology meets the sweetest pop melodies and driving guitars rub along with space-age jazz. They are perhaps the greatest Anglo-French collaboration since Concorde—a hugely respected, highly influential group whose fan base grows larger by the year, stretching from chart-topping hip hop artists to underground indie stars. And yet their appeal remains elusive. What kind of music do Stereolab make? What’s their best album? Their greatest song? There are no easy answers.

In writing this book, Ben Cardew spoke to more than fifty people from the Stereolab universe to trace the history of the band from the depths of 90s indie London to their all-conquering reunion tour of 2025. Using twenty of their songs as jumping-off points, he examines in loving detail what makes this most fascinating band work, unpicking the cultural references, stylistic contradictions, and brilliant ideas at the heart of the group.

Alexander Larman in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Lazarus-The-Second-Coming-of-David-Bowie/Alexander-Larman/9781917923446

Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first biography of Bowie that tells the full and candid story of what happened in between those two apparently unbridgeable points. With new and exclusive interviews with the musicians, filmmakers and cultural figures who worked with and befriended Bowie throughout this period, Lazarus is the definitive account of the previously overlooked and fascinating latter half of a great and distinguished career. A career that climaxed with his final masterpiece, Blackstar, and the unprecedented theatrical flourish of his departure from the stage as he passed into legend.

Peter Ormerod in conversation with David Eastaugh 

In this wide-ranging biography, Peter Ormerod explores the quest for spirituality that powered David Bowie's creativity from his earliest recordings to his death-defying final album. Bowie's genre-expanding, era-crossing genius had an extraordinary impact on popular culture but his life-long search for spiritual truth and enlightenment has been overlooked.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/david-bowie-and-the-search-for-life-death-and-god-9781399422826/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Bowie-Search-Life-Death

From Bowie's first musical encounters as a choirboy, this book traces his spiritual obsessions over the years. As a young musician at the start of his career, he was enraptured by Tibetan Buddhism. It was the first step in a spiritual journey that would generate his most profound lyrics and music. From the Kabbalah-influenced tracks of Station to Station to Ziggy Stardust's messiah complex and the profound affinity between Heroes and Christian thought, Ormerod sheds new light on the spiritual traditions behind Bowie's genius. 

Paul Morley in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.headline.co.uk/titles/paul-morley/far-above-the-world/9781472289506/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Far-Above-World-Space-David/dp/1472289471

A landmark exploration of David Bowie as an everlasting cultural force and change maker, by acclaimed writer Paul Morley.

In the ten years since the death of David Bowie in 2016 there has been no loss of interest in and fascination with his life, music and driven, complex personality. He is definitely one musician, one performer, destined not to be forgotten. The significant grief and sadness that greeted Bowie's death has evolved into a deeper, enduring love for his music, style, wit, artistic curiosity, sexual energy, flamboyant outsider spirit and insatiable, provocative appetite for life.

Far Above the World documents one of the UK's greatest creative artists, through the spectacularly colourful and vibrant journey of a man who constantly reinvented himself and his music. Bowie lived in the future, using the pop song to chronicle overwhelming and dangerous times, searching for the light, and creating a communication channel between post-war 20th century times and where(ever) we are now. This anniversary book will place him in the now and next, as much as is past, and argue that his songs, and his messages, reflections and warnings become ever more relevant and compelling as time passes.

Andrew Perer in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Head-Into-Sound-Valentine/dp/1916829147

Turn My Head Into Sound: A history of Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine tells the story of one of the great sonic innovators of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. My Bloody Valentine have released only three albums in their forty-year career, but each of them has made a seismic impact. Isn’t Anything (1988) is often cited as one of the Ur-texts of shoegaze and dream rock; Loveless (1991) is an undisputed masterpiece heralded by many as the best album of the 1990s; m b v (2013) is one of the best-loved comeback albums in recent memory.

For those who know Kevin Shields and his work already, he is an indie-rock icon, but by other measures he’s still a relatively obscure figure in the musical mainstream, and to date there has been no full-length appraisal of his work or his band’s career. Until now. Shields is truly a one-of-a-kind musician, and this book—which fills in the gaps, corrects errors, and takes an objective look at the band’s entire career, warts and all—paints the full picture of one of the most revolutionary sonic artists of our time.

Turn My Head Into Sound is based on numerous interviews with people who were there (some of them speaking on the record for the first time) as well as an exhaustive archive of band-related material that the author has been assembling since 1990. Longtime fans of the band will find plenty of new information here, including the full story of the tumultuous period at Island Records following the release of Loveless. The lost years that followed would see Shields employed as engineer, producer, and remixer while also becoming an auxiliary member of Primal Scream. This book’s analysis of this diverse but lesser-known work offers reader a much fuller picture of the relentless creativity and perfectionism at the center of his process.

Guy Mankowski in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://iknowhowtolive.substack.com/p/welcome-to-i-know-how-to-live-the

Dorothy Max Prior in conversation with David Eastaugh 

https://www.roughtrade.com/product/dorothy-max-prior/sex-is-no-emergency-adventures-in-a-post-punk-wonderland

Further adventures in psychedelic rock, ballroom dancing, performance art, and parenting in 1980s Britain. Further adventures in a post-punk wonderland from the author of the acclaimed 69 Exhibition Road.

In this new volume, focusing on the 1980s, Dorothy Max Prior recalls her days as a ballroom dancing tutor in South Kensington, drumming and touring with infamous experimental pan-sexual psychedelic rock group Psychic TV, exploring London and New York City's queer clubbing undergrounds, the tangled worlds of the UK’s indie music scene at the height of its influence, performance art, and parenting.

Rob Janicke in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.robjanicke.com/

HAVE I GOT A LITTLE STORY FOR YOU...

The year was 1984. I was eleven years old and popular music was in a state of confusion. Along with songs by artists I liked such as Van Halen, Prince, Quiet Riot, Duran Duran, Billy Idol, and The Police, Top 40 radio constantly played songs from bands or artists that didn't quite do it for me. Apologies to Kenny Loggins, Phil Collins, Bananarama, Wang Chung, and Ray Parker Jr.

Due to the divorce of my parents and telling my mom that I was so unhappy that I no longer wanted to live, I was now a couple of years into therapy. It was around this time that I really began to find solace in music. The mid to late '80s gave me hope. Rap, punk rock, and alternative music befriended me at a time when I needed them the most.

A mixtape from 1989, courtesy of a high school friend, opened my soul to the music that would change my life forever- the gritty sound of grunge.

I know that this experience is not unique to me or my life. History has shown that millions of Gen X kids who were going through some heavy times in the late '80s and early '90s, found comfort in the grunge and alternative music and culture that came first from Seattle, then the world.

Music can save lives; we are proof of that. This book and that sentiment is for the SLACKER in all of us.

- Rob Janicke, author of Slacker

Howard Wuelfing in conversation with David Eastaugh

https://www.diwulf.com/products/available-for-presale-descenes-and-discords-an-anthology

On August 19, 2025, Descenes and Discords: An Anthology will be released, offering a powerful time capsule of the birth and early evolution of punk music through the pages of two influential fanzines: Descenesand Discords. These publications, originally printed and distributed in Washington, D.C. during the late 1970s and early 1980s, captured the raw energy, irreverent spirit, and revolutionary ethos of the underground music scene — the first locally, the second nationally.

Published by writer and musician Howard Wuelfing, Descenes was a hyperlocal chronicle of D.C.'s burgeoning punk, hardcore and new wave communities. It featured scene reports, interviews, and passionate live and record reviews of now-legendary acts like Bad Brains, Slickee Boys, and Half Japanese and dozens of others that never gained national recognition. As vital local music scenes sprung up around the country, Discords picked up the baton with a wider lens — covering bands like Black Flag, Pylon, Circle Jerks, Mission of Burma and many more, all with the same DIY authenticity and zero-corporate gloss.

Descenes and Discords: An Anthology presents full facsimiles of every issue of both zines, preserving the original cut-and-paste layouts, typewritten rants, and Xeroxed charm that defined a generation of independent media. The anthology is enriched with new commentary by Howard Wuelfing, reflecting on the zines’ creation and impact. It also includes a transcribed conversation between Wuelfing and Ian MacKaye — the iconic frontman of Minor Threat and Fugazi — where they discuss the fanzine era’s role in shaping punk’s identity and legacy. A Foreword by esteemed D.C. cultural critic, and contributor to both ‘zines, Mark Jenkins sets the historical stage for readers.

John Ellerby in conversation with David Eastaugh 

http://www.waveneyclarion.co.uk/

The Waveney Clarion was a unique publication, born of the Barsham Fairs. A monthly magazine, it hammered away for eleven years at social injustice, music, ecology, beer, art and the best type of potato to grow on your allotment.

“The beginning of the Waveney Clarion resulted from the kind of unexpected, fortuitous coincidences that don't come knocking every day, making a venture feel like it is meant to happen and cultivating a sense of inevitability.” Sandra Bell, first editor and founder of the Clarion.

Published over a tumultuous decade, the Clarion chronicled an extraordinary period from a perfectly particularperspective – the outlands of rural East Anglia, where coypu were hunted and music, fairs and the fate of our earth seemed to be the only concerns.