Sublime

XTC, ENGLISH SETTLEMENT This band has been largely forgotten, but their gorgeous instrumentation tempered by edgy lyrics and a pastoral snarl made them my personal Beatles. The lead singer, Andy Partridge, had a nervous breakdown and swore he would never tour again, so the band holed up in some tiny bucolic English town, and their music became less

Six months earlier, the only other superstar survivors from the British punk wars, the Jam, had announced their breakup at the peak of their own career, their front man Paul Weller collapsing under the weight of the ‘spokesman-for-a-generation’ mantle and deciding that, at the age of just twenty-three, he needed to break loose and relieve himself