The Virgin Encyclopedia of 80s Music

Book excerpt: Remember the 80's? The Virgin Encyclopedia of 80's Music is a complete handbook of information and opinion about the history of the most fragmented and frequently maligned decade in the history of popular music. Here are 1000 entries on the bands, musicians, songwriters, producers and record labels - everyone who had a significant impact on the development of rock and pop music in those ten years, from the New Romantics who brought colour and image to fill the gap left by punk and the new wave, to the stadium acts who provided a launch pad for Live Aid, to the myriad variations of house and techno spawned in the latter half of the Eighties. As well as all the giants of the period the encyclopedia has the range and depth to include artists who flourished briefly and yet were quintessential to the decade. A perfect mix of fact and informed opinion contained in one single volume, distilled from the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, universally acclaimed as the world's leading source of reference on rock and pop history. Informed, infatuating and invaluable.