On This Day, 31/01/1979 Adam and the Ants

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On this day, 31 Jan 1979, Adam and the Ants played Newport’s Stowaway Club on their Young Parisians UK tour.

Signed to Decca, the band was let them go in early 1979, the group signed with independent label Do It Records and rerecorded and released their second single "Zerox" (with a changed B-side, "Whip In My Valise") before recording their debut album Dirk Wears White Sox.

The group existed in two incarnations, both fronted by Adam Ant, lasting from 1977 to 1982. The first, founded in May 1977 and known simply as The Ants until November of that year, achieved considerable cult popularity during the transition from the punk rock era to the post-punk and new wave era and were noted for their high camp, overtly sexualised stage performances and songs. The final line-up of this incarnation—Dave Barbarossa, Matthew Ashman, and Leigh Gorman—left the band in January 1980 at the suggestion of de facto manager Malcolm McLaren to form Bow Wow Wow.

The second incarnation of Adam and the Ants featured guitarist Marco Pirroni and drummer/producer Chris Hughes, and was noted for its use of Burundi drums.

Setlist

Nietzsche Baby

Day I Met God

Animals and Men

Cleopatra

Kick!

Never Trust a Man (With Egg on His Face)

Catholic Day

Boil in the Bag Man

Family of Noise

Press Darlings

Zerox

Lady

Puerto Rican

Fall-In

On This Day 30/01/1998 Ocean Colour Scene

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On this day, 30 January 1998, rock band Ocean Colour Scene played Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena.

Formed in Birmingham in 1989. They have had five top 10 albums including a number one in 1997. They have also achieved seventeen top 40 singles and six top 10 singles to date.

In 1993, the start of the turnaround occurred. Paul Weller invited the band to support him on some dates of his tour. On the back of these performances, Weller invited guitarist Steve Cradock to play on one of his singles, and vocalist Simon Fowler to sing on his album, Wild Wood.

Cradock was asked to play live with Weller on his tour, and the money Cradock made kept the band afloat during this time.

With the explosion of the Britpop scene, OCS's music became nationally and internationally known. Their second album Moseley Shoals was released to mixed-to-positive reviews, containing four hit singles and reached No. 2 in the UK Albums Chart.

They also played at one of the concerts at Knebworth House supporting Oasis in August 1996.

Marchin' Already, the follow-up to Moseley Shoals, went to No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart, displacing Oasis' Be Here Now at the top of the charts in 1997. In 1998 they headlined their own arena tour in support of Marchin' Already and played three sold out nights at Stirling Castle, Scotland.

On This Day 28/01/1996 Echobelly

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On this day, 28 January 1996, rock band Echobelly played Cardiff University.

Debuting in 1994 with their album Everyone's Got One. They were often compared to Blondie and The Smiths; Morrissey becoming a fan of the group.

The most prominent part of Echobelly's success formula was vocalist Sonya Madan, who was also the group's lyricist.

Born in Delhi, India, before moving to England at the age of two, Madan had an unusual background for a pop star. Her upbringing made rock music an unusual choice for her as a youngster and she did not attend her first rock concert until she was in college.

In a radio interview with Janice Long, on BBC Radio Wales, in December 2017, she admitted that her parents had initially found it hard to accept her choice of career.

Madan's lyrics often ventured into the less explored side of life, addressed in songs such as King of the Kerb. and Dark Therapy. "I wanted to challenge myself as a lyricist on a different level on this album," Madan said in Rolling Stone. "I want people to tell me what they thought the lyrics are about. I'm not a politician. I'm not interested in changing everybody around me. I'm interested in myself."

Health and legal problems interrupted the success of Echobelly in 1995 and 1996. Madan had a serious thyroid problem during her world tour that was potentially life-threatening, but was later cured.

Bass guitarist James Harris joined after Alex Keyser defected because of personal and artistic differences. The group also had disagreements with Rhythm King after the label moved to Arista. The band chose to stay with Epic. In 1996, Madan also ventured away from the group when she sang on a recording of the club band, Lithium. Smith left the band before the release of the band's third album Lustra, which was produced by Gil Norton and issued in November 1997.

Setlist

I Can't Imagine the World Without Me

Today Tomorrow Sometime Never

Pantyhose and Roses

Aloha Lolita

Taste of You

Great Things

Go Away

We Know Better

Something Hot in a Cold Country

Car Fiction

Dark Therapy

King of the Kerb

Give Her a Gun

Atom

Insomniac

On This Day 27/01/1977 Be Bop Deluxe

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On this day, 27 January 1977, rock band Be Dop Deluxe played Cardiff’s Capitol Theatre on their Live In The Air Age Tour, supported by Steve Gibbons Band.

Be-Bop Deluxe was founded in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, by singer, guitarist and principal songwriter Bill Nelson in 1972.

The provided the recordings for their soon to be released Live! In The Air Age album featuring songs recording during the tour.

The band had a few months before released their fourth studio album Modern Music, which was to be the band’s highest studio album chart placing, peaking at No 12 in the UK charts.

Stylistically, the songs took elements from progressive rock, glam rock (the band had flirted with make-up in the early days) and hard guitar rock. "Ships in the Night", taken from the band's third album Sunburst Finish, was their most successful single in both the UK and the US. The single features an alto saxophone solo by Ian Nelson.

The album was notably the first to be produced by EMI employee John Leckie, who had hitherto worked for the company as a recording engineer, in which capacity he had served on Axe Victim, which he also in effect produced. It was clearly a happy relationship: Leckie would go on to produce all the subsequent Be-Bop Deluxe and Bill Nelson's Red Noise albums for Harvest, including the proposed Red Noise album Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam that Harvest refused to release. Nelson shared producing credits with Leckie from Drastic Plastic onward.

The first three Be-Bop Deluxe albums are all, in one way or another, named after guitars. "Axe" is slang for a guitar, "Futurama" is a particular make of guitar, while "Sunburst Finish" refers to a style of finishing for the instrument.

The title track of the fourth album, Modern Music, was a ten-minute suite of songs inspired by the experience of the band's touring the US.

Setlist

Life in the Air Age

Fair Exchange

Piece of Mine

Sister Seagull

Mill Street Junction

Ships in the Night

Swan Song

Maid in Heaven

Shine

Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape

Twilight Capers

The Modern Music Suite

Forbidden Lovers

Down on Terminal Street

Encore:

Blazing Apostles

On This Day 26/01/1992 Teenage Fanclub

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On this day, 26 January 1992, Scottish alternative rock band Teenage Fanclub played Cardiff University.

Formed in Bellshill near Glasgow in 1989.[1] The group were founded by Norman Blake (vocals, guitar), Raymond McGinley (vocals, lead guitar) and Gerard Love (vocals, bass), all of whom shared lead vocals and songwriting duties until Love's departure in 2018.

A few months earlier the band had released their third album.

Bandwagonesque was more deliberately constructed, the hooks became stronger, the guitar riffs were brought under control, and the harmony vocals took shape.

Bandwagonesque topped Spin magazine's 1991 end-of-year poll for best album, beating Nirvana's Nevermind, their Creation stablemates My Bloody Valentine's album Loveless, and R.E.M.'s Out of Time.

Their sound is reminiscent of Californian bands like the Beach Boys and the Byrds, and their seventies counterparts Big Star. Teenage Fanclub are influenced by Big Star and Orange Juice.

They performed a cover of Orange Juice's "Rip It Up" with Edwyn Collins.

In December 2010, at the ATP Bowlie 2 music festival, they performed as the backing band for Edwyn Collins.

Teenage Fanclub were regularly name-checked in interviews by Kurt Cobain, who described them as "the best band in the world". Juliana Hatfield covered the song "Cells" on her 2012 self-titled album.

On This Day 25/01/2000 Coldplay

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On this day, 25 January 2000, rock giants Coldplay played Cardiff University along with Shack, Campag Velocet, Les Rythmes Digitales.

The band had recently recorded their debut album, Parachutes, recorded at Matrix (London, England), Wessex (London, England). Parr Street (Liverpool, England)' Rockfield (Rockfield, Wales), Orinoco (London, England),

The album was a commercial success and was met with positive reviews. Upon release, it quickly reached number one in the United Kingdom and has since been certified 9× Platinum.

Formed in London in 1996. They consist of vocalist and pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, drummer Will Champion and creative director Phil Harvey.

They met at University College London and began playing music together from 1996 to 1998, first calling themselves Pectoralz and then Starfish.

Setlist

Don't Panic

Shiver

Spies

Sparks

Yellow

Trouble

Parachutes

High Speed

We Never Change

Everything's Not Lost

Help Is Round the Corner

Bigger Stronger

On This Day 24/01/1978 Judas Priest

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On this day, 24 January 1978, heavy rock bands Judas Priest played Cardiff’s Top Rank, on their Stained Glass tour.

Stained Class is the fourth studio album by the band released on 10 February 1978 by Columbia Records.

It is the first of three Judas Priest albums to feature drummer Les Binks, as well as the first to feature the band's now well-known logo.

The album features "Exciter", considered an early precursor to speed metal and thrash metal, as well as a cover version of "Better by You, Better than Me" by Spooky Tooth, which garnered the band a great deal of negative attention several years after its release when a pair of fans were allegedly influenced by the song to make a suicide pact.

Nonetheless, Stained Class is regarded by some as one of Judas Priest's best albums.

Formed in Birmingham in 1969. They have sold over 50 million copies of their albums, and are frequently ranked as one of the greatest metal bands of all time.

Despite an innovative and pioneering body of work in the latter half of the 1970s, the band had struggled with indifferent record production and a lack of major commercial success until 1980, when they rose to commercial success with the album British Steel.

On this day 20/01/1998 Barry Manilow

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On this day, 20th January 1998, showbiz legend Barry Manilow played Cardiff International Arena as part of his ‘Manilow Tour of the Word’ Tour.

He has recorded and released 51 Top 40 singles on the Adult Contemporary Chart, including 13 that hit number one, 28 appeared within the top ten, and 36 in the top twenty. Manilow has released 13 platinum and six multi-platinum albums. Although not a favorite artist of music critics,

Manilow has been praised by entertainers including Frank Sinatra, who was quoted in the 1970s as saying, "He's next."

In 1998, Manilow released the record album Manilow Sings Sinatra which earned him a Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album Grammy Award nomination in 1999.

Setlist

I'd Really Love to See You Tonight

(England Dan & John Ford Coley cover)

Reminiscing

(Little River Band cover)

I Want to Do It With You

(The Pointer Sisters cover)

Once in Love With Amy

(Frank Loesser cover)

I'm Your Man

Sweet Heaven (I'm in Love Again)

Could It Be Magic

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

(Duke Ellington and His Orchestra cover)

I'll Never Smile Again

(Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra cover)

Chattanooga Choo Choo

(Harry Warren cover)

Bermuda Triangle

Life Will Go On

It's a Miracle

Mandy

(Scott English cover)

Can't Smile Without You

Sometimes When We Touch

Copacabana (at the Copa)

As Time Goes By

(Herman Hupfeld cover)

A Weekend in New England

(Randy Edelman cover)

I Don't Want to Walk Without You

I Write the Songs

(Bruce Johnston cover)

It's a Miracle

(Reprise)

You're There

We Live on Borrowed Time