When it comes to influential bands coming out of Liverpool, they don’t get any bigger than Echo & The Bunnymen. (Except for one notable exception).

From the reptilian snap of Crocodiles, the other-worldly Heaven Up Here, the sharpened spine of Porcupine to the pop deluge of Ocean Rain, the Post Punk output of Echo & The Bunnymen cemented their place in the pantheon of New Wave greats and for these reasons they will always be the Fab Four.

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Killing Joke emerged from the squats of Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove during what became known as the second wave of punk in late 1978. They cast a long, dark, influential shadow over bands as diverse as Metallica and Nirvana but it is their early works that set the template and reconfigured what the noise left by the end of punk could be.

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Flowers (or Icehouse as they came to be known) and Models might seem like strange bedfellows, but both bands sprang from the same highly concentrated influence the explosion of punk had over the Australian music scene before going on to the wider commercial success they are perhaps better known for today.

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The eighties, unlike any other decade, started with music being created on instruments that had never before existed. Sure, the Moog had appeared in the late sixties and showed up in various recordings throughout the seventies, but by the turn of the decade there were many drum machines, sequencers, analogue & digital keyboards that began to change the musical landscape in many ways.

And this electronic music went from being an underground curiosity to a commercial powerhouse thanks in large part due to todays featured artist, Gary Numan.

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To the derision of many in the punk movement, The Police would go on to become the most successful new wave band of all. Their sparse, insistently rhythmic, impossibly catchy songs simply took the world by storm, and within three years they were arguably the biggest band on the planet. So, with the benefit of almost four decades’ hindsight, how does the legacy of The Police stack up? Pleasant, but forgettable reggae-tinged pop from a best-forgotten band; or creators of some of the most brilliant music of the era?

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In 1977 John Joseph Lydon (nee Rotten) made his name defining punk. 12 months later he arguably went one better to invent post-punk. A mere 9 months after breaking up the incendiary Sex Pistols the first output from his new band Public Image Limited arrived in October 1978 in the perfect form of the single Public Image. Suddenly a lot more seemed possible.

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There has been some debate between the three of us as to whether Japan deserve to be categorized as a Post Punk band. They did start their life in 1974 as an almost glam rock outfit looking like the New York Dolls playing a kind of punk/funk hybrid. They then went through various changes in look, style and performance and unwittingly (much to their chagrin) spearheaded the ‘New Romantic’ movement in the early Eighties. But their music became much admired at this time due to it’s unique instrumentation, the cool slick vocal delivery of David Sylvian and the amazing fretless bass of Mick Karn that made them stand out from so many of their contemporaries.

There was never anyone like them, and there has been no one like them since.

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Conjoined in many ways aside from Robert Smith’s stint as touring Banshee guitarist, the links between these two may not be immediately obvious but as post-punk pioneers they stand out for their early albums in particular. Sounds and the way to treat them – once the shackles were gone nothing was off limits.

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