Adam and the ants

The Louis Vuitton don ditches the rapping and the soul and is left with… well, not much, actually

Intermittent greatness from Americana's hardest-working man

One from the heart from Cambridge deviants

Key works of the first New Pop star of the '80s remastered. Must be learnt by heart

Formed around the original Ants, Bow Wow Wow were often dismissed as a cheap and nasty imitation of Adam's tribal formula. If anything, they were bolder, singing about tape piracy ("C30, C60, C90, Go!") and satanism ("Prince Of Darkness") while their Burundi-Drummers-meets-Ennio-Morricone interface often left the Ants trailing.

Art-rock doesn't, as far as we know, have a glorious reputation in the working men's clubs of South Yorkshire. Relaxed Muscle, however, suggest there's a captive market for electro duos in Doncaster, where the regulars suffer half an hour of performance art before bingo.

As the 1980s went on, the British television programme Top Of The Pops developed a split personality. On the one hand it was a...

Welcome to the 1980s, with Joy Division, Pink Floyd, Madness, Talking Heads, Tom Petty,The Cramps, Iron Maiden, Dexys and Kate Bush

A wealth of lost nuggets selected from our own private collections…

This month’s issue of Uncut (September 2012, Take 184) features Joe Strummer on the cover – inside is an in-depth exploration of his secret history, after The Clash split up to his redemption in the late ’90s. To complement this, our archive feature this week finds Strummer looking at the demise of The Clash – from their epic Sandinista! album to their bitter disintegration. This excerpt is taken from a longer piece in the September 1999 (Take 28) issue of Uncut. Words: Gavin Martin __________________________________