On This Day 05/06/1987 Suzanne Vega

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On this day, 5 June 1987, American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall. Vega had just released her second studio album Solitude Standing.

The album proved to be most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album of Vega's, being certified Platinum in the US and reaching number 11 on the Billboard 200, number 2 in the UK albums chart.

"Tom's Diner" was included twice on the album; the acappella version was the first track, and the instrumental version was the last track. In 1990, a remixed version of the song featuring DNA reached number five in the US. The song was later used to test prototype MP3 compression software.

The album garnered critical and commercial success, selling over one million copies in the U.S. It includes the international hit single "Luka", which is written about, and from the point of view of, an abused child. (Not until many years later did Vega reveal the song dealt with the abuse she herself had suffered from her stepfather.

While continuing a focus on Vega's acoustic guitar, the music of her second album is more strongly pop-oriented and features fuller arrangements. Following the success of the album, in 1989 Vega almost became the first female artist to headline the Glastonbury Festival. Female fronted UK band "All About Eve" headlined on Friday night due to a short notice headline switch. Vega performed her set whilst wearing a bulletproof vest, her band having received death threats from an obsessed fan ahead of the festival.

Setlist

Tom's Diner

Straight Lines

Small Blue Thing

Cracking

Ironbound / Fancy Poultry

Luka

In the Eye

The Queen and the Soldier

Gypsy

Calypso

Undertow

Solitude Standing

Language

Left of Center

Neighborhood Girls

Wooden Horse (Caspar Hauser's Song)

Marlene on the Wall

Night Vision

On This Day 04/06/1980 Iron Maiden

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On this day. 4 June 1980, heavy metal giants Iron Maiden played Cardiff’s Top Rank

The Iron Maiden Tour was in support of their eponymous debut album. The band's first solo headlining tour, it followed the co-headlined Metal for Muthas Tour from earlier in the same year.

Although Iron Maiden have since criticised the quality of the album's production, the release was met with critical and commercial success, peaking at number four on the UK Albums Chart and helping the band achieve prominence in mainland Europe.

The tour commenced with a British leg from 1 April to 23 August, although this included one concert in Finland, before the band supported Kiss on their Unmasked Tour from 24 August to 16 October, immediately following which guitarist Dennis Stratton was sacked and replaced with Adrian Smith.After Smith was hired, the band decided to undertake another British tour, taking place from 21 November to 21 December.

Setlist

The Ides of March

Sanctuary

Wrathchild

Prowler

Remember Tomorrow

Killers

Running Free

Another Life

Drum Solo

(Clive Burr)

Transylvania

Strange World

Charlotte the Harlot

Phantom of the Opera

Iron Maiden

Encore:

Drifter

On The Day 03/06/1989 Inspiral Carpets

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On this day, 3 June 1989, Indie rock band Inspiral Carpets played Cardiff’s Square Club.

The band had just released Dung 4, a demo album on Inspiral Carpets' own Cow Records and only on cassette. The name refers to the catalogue number.

Formed in Oldham in 1983, the band's most successful lineup featured frontman Tom Hingley, drummer Craig Gill, guitarist Graham Lambert, bassist Martyn Walsh and keyboardist Clint Boon.

Formed by Lambert and singer Stephen Holt, who departed the band before they signed with Mute Records,

Inspiral Carpets was known for using organs and distorted guitars with influences from psychedelic rock.

Inspiral Carpets came to prominence along with bands such as the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays in the Madchester scene of the late 1980s. The band first appeared on a flexi-disc with "Garage Full of Flowers" that was given free with Manchester's Debris magazine in 1987.

Their first proper release, the Cow cassette, soon followed. The 1988 Planecrash EP on the Playtime label received much airplay from Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who asked the band to record a session for his show.

The band reworked their single "Find Out Why" as the theme song for the show 8:15 from Manchester.

As the band's popularity grew, Playtime's distributor Red Rhino Records went bankrupt, leading Inspiral Carpets to form their own label, Cow Records, in March 1989. The label's first release was the Trainsurfing EP.

With half of the first album, Life, written, Holt and Swift departed and formed the Rainkings, so the band recruited Too Much Texas singer Tom Hingley and Martyn "Bungle" Walsh of The Next Step to replace them. Martyn Walsh became the band's 13th bass player.

After a handful of singles on their own label, with "Move" nearly reaching the UK top 40, the band signed a deal with Mute Records and soon experienced their first top-40 chart success in the UK with "This Is How It Feels."

The single reached No. 14 on the singles chart, and the debut album Life reached No. 2 on the albums chart in 1990.

On This Day 02/06/1994 Oasis

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On this day, 2 June 1994, Manchester rockers Oasis played Cardiff University on their Definitely Maybe tour.

The Definitely Maybe Tour was in support of their hugely successful debut album Definitely Maybe. The tour, which spanned the UK, Europe, Japan, the US and Canada, included 143 shows over a period of several months in 1994 and 1995 amidst 10 different tour legs. The tour started on 6 February 1994 with a short concert at Gleneagles, Scotland, and ended on 22 April 1995 at the Sheffield Arena. The latter show featured an acoustic debut of the future hit "Don't Look Back in Anger", and was also the last concert to feature original drummer Tony McCarroll.

Definitely Maybe was released midway through the tour and was widely acclaimed, propelling Oasis to become one of the foremost British acts and put them squarely at the forefront of the emerging Britpop scene. The Gallagher brothers regularly made tabloid headlines for their frequent fallouts and rockstar lifestyles, and the tour had several disruptions and cancellations.

One such occasion occurred when the band used drugs prior to the 29 September 1994 gig at the legendary Whisky a Go Go in California. The gig was a failure with numerous mistakes and afterwards, Noel left the band for several days. He was ultimately tracked down by the band's management and persuaded to continue the tour. Noel wrote the song "Talk Tonight" during this time while away from the band. They then headed to a recording studio and recorded new songs.

The Cliffs Pavilion gig on 17 April 1995 was filmed and later released as the Oasis VHS/DVD Live by the Sea.

Setlist

Shakermaker

Fade Away

Digsy's Dinner

Live Forever

Bring It On Down

Up in the Sky

Cigarettes & Alcohol

Supersonic

I Am the Walrus

(The Beatles cover)

On This Day 01/06/1984 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

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On this day, 1 May 1984, electronic pop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall n their Junk Culture tour. Support was provided by Fiction Factory.

Formed in the Wirral, Merseyside, in 1978. The group consists of founding duo and principal songwriters Andy McCluskey (vocals, bass guitar) and Paul Humphreys (keyboards, vocals), along with Martin Cooper (keyboards, saxophone) and Stuart Kershaw (drums).

Regarded as pioneers of electronic music, OMD combined an experimental, minimalist ethos with pop sensibilities, becoming key figures in the emergence of synth-pop; McCluskey and Humphreys also introduced the "synth duo" format to British popular music. In the United States, the band were an early presence in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion.

The band had just released their fifth studio album Junk Culture. After the commercial disappointment of the experimental album Dazzle Ships (1983), OMD and Virgin intended for the group to shift towards a more accessible sound on its follow-up release.

The band retained much of their early experimental approach but embraced a wider range of influences than previously, drawing inspiration from pop, dance, Latin and black music. Frontman Andy McCluskey characterised Junk Culture as "the catchiest, poppiest album we've ever made".

Despite alienating some listeners, the record met with a generally positive critical and commercial response. It became OMD's fourth consecutive Top 10 album in the UK, and has been named as one of the best releases of 1984. Junk Culture spawned four singles, including the UK Top 20 entries "Locomotion" and "Talking Loud and Clear", and the club hit "Tesla Girls". The album was remastered and re-released in 2015, with a bonus disc of B-sides and extended mixes.

Set list

Junk Culture

Tesla Girls

Messages

Love and Violence

Julia's Song

Motion and Heart

White Trash

Apollo

Never Turn Away

Joan of Arc

Maid of Orleans

Talking Loud and Clear

Hard Day

Souvenir

Telegraph

Bunker Soldiers

Enola Gay

Locomotion

She's Leaving

Electricity

Waiting for the Man

Locomotion

On This Day 31/05/1960 Conway Twitty

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On this day, 31 May 1960, American country music legend Conway Twitty played the Gaumont Theatre in a show that featured other American stars, Freddie Cannon (Way Down Yonder In New Orleans), Johnny Preston (Running Bear) plus Brits, Wee Willie Harris, known as "Britain's wild man of rock 'n' roll", Chris Wayne and the Echoes and Tony Crombie. The compère was Don Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne.

Twitty was best known as a country music performer. From 1971 to 1976, Twitty received a string of Country Music Association awards for duets with Loretta Lynn. He was inducted into both the Country Music and Rockabilly Halls of Fame.

Twitty was known for his frequent use of romantic and sentimental themes in his songs. Due to his following being compared to a religious revival, comedian Jerry Clower nicknamed Twitty "The High Priest of Country Music", the eventual title of his 33rd studio album. Twitty achieved stardom with hit songs like "Hello Darlin'", "You've Never Been This Far Before" and "Linda on My Mind".

Twitty topped Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart 40 times in his career, a record that stood for two decades until it was surpassed by George Strait, and topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart once with "It's Only Make Believe". He wrote eleven of his Billboard Hot Country Songs chart-topping hits.

On This Day 30/05/1986 The Mission

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On this day, 24 May 1986, gothic rock band The Mission played Cardiff’s New Ocean Club on their Expedition I tour. Support was provided by Pauline Murray and The Storm.

Formed in 1986 and initially known as the Sisterhood, the band was started by frontman Wayne Hussey and bassist Craig Adams (both from the Sisters of Mercy), soon adding drummer Mick Brown (Red Lorry Yellow Lorry) and guitarist Simon Hinkler (Artery and Pulp).

Aside from Hussey, the lineup has changed several times during the years and the band has been on hiatus twice.

After an aborted recording session with Andrew Eldritch in the summer of 1985, Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams left the Sisters of Mercy. Based in Leeds, the duo continued to work on various musical ideas and recorded them over the autumn.

Dismissing the use of a drum machine, Adams and Hussey asked Mick Brown (Red Lorry Yellow Lorry) to help out with the sessions. By the end of the year, he had joined the band on a permanent basis. With Hussey as both the frontman and principal songwriter, the trio required a second guitarist to facilitate a live setup.

They recruited Simon Hinkler (Artery), who also contributed keyboards and thus completed the four-piece. The name the Sisterhood was chosen with a nod to the past and rehearsals for the first shows started in January 1986.

The new name quickly became a point of discussion in the UK music press, giving the four-piece a significant amount of publicity. As the Sisterhood, the band made their live debut on 20 January 1986 at the Alice in Wonderland, London.

While the band was on tour as support to the Cult around Europe, Eldritch released a single as the Sisterhood. Back in the UK, Hinkler was briefly dismissed and reinstated for three dates where the band revealed their new name, the Mission.

Although Hussey and Adams were still under contract with WEA, manager Tony Perrin prepared their material for a release. In May, the EP I (Serpents Kiss) appeared on the Chapter 22 label as the Expedition I tour took the band around Europe. Two months later, II (Like a Hurricane/Garden of Delight) was released on the same label and supported by a number of festival slots that culminated in an appearance at the Reading Festival.

Setlist

Wasteland

And the Dance Goes On

Garden of Delight

Naked and Savage

Bridges Burning

Stay With Me

Serpent's Kiss

The Crystal Ocean

Wake (RSV)

1969

(The Stooges cover)

Sacrilege

Like a Hurricane

(Neil Young cover)

Wishing Well

(Free cover)

Shelter From the Storm

On This Day 29/05/2004 Jesse Malin

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On this day, 29 May 2004, American rock musician, guitarist, and songwriter Jesse Malin played Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach.

He began his performing career in the New York hardcore band Heart Attack, and rose to prominence as vocalist of D Generation. Since 2015, he is a solo recording artist, having recorded numerous albums including the Lucinda Williams-produced Sunset Kids. Over the course of his career, Malin has collaborated with Bruce Springsteen, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Ryan Adams and numerous other musicians.

Born January 26, 1967, Malin began his music career at the age of 12, as the frontman for the seminal New York City hardcore band Heart Attack. The band auditioned at CBGBs but were denied because they couldn't bring in a drinking crowd to the bar.

Following the demise of Heart Attack in 1984, Malin worked on several other projects, including the band Hope, before joining the band D Generation for which he was the lead singer. As one of New York City's most noted bands of the 1990s [citation needed], D Generation released three albums, including the critically acclaimed [citation needed] No Lunch, before eventually disbanding in April 1999. The band reunited and released its fourth album, Nothing Is Anywhere, in 2016.

Malin didn't stop writing music and went on to form two other projects, PCP Highway (with former D Generation bandmates Howie Pyro and Joe Rizzo) and Bellvue (also named Tsing-Tsing for a brief time); the latter band released one album, To Be Somebody, on Goldenseal Records. The album included versions of songs that would later be reworked for Malin's first two solo albums, including "Solitaire", "Basement Home", "Brooklyn" and "Downliner"