Route to Fame: The Band Demo Tape

In the UK, we might today be tempted to think of the delusional pop star dream as something that was manufactured in some truly evil phonecall between Nigel Lythgoe and Simon Fuller – cunningly wiretapped by Simon Cowell.

But it’s a dream that goes back a lot further than the early 2000s. Right through the heyday of audio tape cassettes, it was possible to find hopeless hopefuls throwing good money at the dartboard of fame, and missing not just the bullseye, or indeed the board, but the entire wall. And actually, if anyone, or anything, sparked that delusion, it was probably punk…

Yngwie Malmsteen – Trial by Fire: Live in Leningrad

If there were a definitive list of things that should have been left back in the 1980s, I think even a large number of modern rock fans would agree that the concept of “Hair Metal” would be on it.

But at its best, ‘eighties “Hair Metal” was something whose technical spectacle was mind boggling. It could so easily be mocked, as the movie This is Spinal Tap demonstrated with the epitome of aplomb. And it could also rank among the most proficient displays of musicianship across any genre in that era. If you were fed up with buying albums on which the lead vocalist appeared at the top of the personnel listing, this one might provide the change you were looking for…

Jools Holland – Live Performance Audio Cassette – 1994

He’d been the keyboardist in Squeeze, but many teenagers of the early 1980s didn’t really get a taste of who Jools Holland was until he barged his way to the forefront of youth culture TV as a main presenter on The Tube.

The Tube exploded onto UK screens in early November 1982 as a flagship programme for the brand new alternative channel – Channel 4. As its name suggests, ‘4 was only the fourth TV channel to join the UK’s broadcasting network.