The Count

Joseph A. Viglione was the driving force behind The Count, a loose and unpredictable underground collective that drifted through the Boston rock scene during the late 1970s and into the 1980s. The project pulled together a rotating cast that included Bill Allen, Carolyn Casey, Chuck Chewning, Chuck Stanton, Fudge Keegan, Jay Roewe, Jeff Hill, Jim Surrette, Joe Tortelli, Mike Quinn and Todd Carnes, among others. Rather than functioning like a fixed lineup with a clean career trajectory, The Count operated more like an ongoing creative laboratory where punk, garage rock, new wave, psychedelic leftovers and experimental ideas all collided at once. 

The roots of the group can be traced back to Viglione’s obsession with underground culture. Before The Count properly emerged, he had already been publishing the Varulven fanzine as a teenager in Massachusetts, documenting outsider music and local scenes long before DIY culture became fashionable. That same restless energy spilled into music projects filled with fuzzed-out guitars, primitive recording techniques and a fascination with strange atmosphere. By the time The Count started recording and performing, the group had become connected to Boston’s fertile post-punk and independent rock world, sharing houses, rehearsal spaces and recording gear with other underground acts orbiting the city at the time. 

Their best-known release was the 1986 album 'New Changes', issued through the French label New Rose Records. The album captured the fragmented spirit of the project perfectly. Tracks moved between jangly garage pop, nervous art-rock, dreamy ballads and rough-edged punk with very little concern for consistency. Carolyn Casey contributed bass, keyboards and co-production work, while Joe Tortelli handled keyboards and Chuck Stanton appeared on drums. Viglione wrote the material, sang lead vocals and shaped the overall direction of the record. Recording sessions took place across several different Massachusetts studios, giving the album a patchwork quality that actually suited the music. 

What made The Count interesting was how unconcerned they seemed with fitting into any single scene. There were traces of glam, proto-punk, 1960s garage rock, experimental tape noise and outsider pop all tangled together. At moments they sounded like a band trying to hold itself together in real time, which gave the recordings a nervous charm. That unpredictability also explains why the group never became widely known outside collector circles and underground music obsessives. Their records circulated mostly through indie channels, fanzines and mail-order networks connected to the Varulven world. 

Over the years, The Count gained a small cult reputation among collectors interested in American underground rock from the pre-alternative era. Viglione himself stayed active through radio, writing, film work and archival projects, helping preserve the history of forgotten independent music scenes that major labels and mainstream rock histories usually ignored. The Count may never have been a household name, but their records document a corner of the 1980s underground where enthusiasm, experimentation and total independence mattered more than polish or commercial success. 

Willie Alexander

Although relatively unknown outside Boston, Willie "Loco" Alexander is familiar to rock trivia experts as the answer to the brain-teaser: Who took Lou Reed's place in the Velvet Underground? He was born in Philadelphia in 1943, but emigrated to Boston in the '60s, where he formed the folk duo Baba & Willie Loco. Alexander founded The Lost in 1964, one of Boston's most popular garage bands of the period, and recorded for Capitol during the mid-'60s. By 1967, he was playing in Glass Menagerie with Doug Yule (who joined the Velvets one year later, replacing John Cale); in 1970, Alexander was invited to join one of the most influential bands of the '60s after its leader departed. He played keyboards and sang until Yule and the rest of the skeleton crew called it quits in 1972, after the album 'Squeeze'.

 
Alexander recorded three solo singles beginning in 1975, and formed the punk-oriented Boom Boom Band the following year. The group recorded two albums for MCA, but broke up in 1978. He released 'Solo Loco' in 1982, and then formed The Confessions, who also recorded two albums, 'A Girl Like You' and 'Autre Chose'. Alexander continued in his solo status throughout the '80s, but formed The Persistence of Memory Orchestra in 1991. Several best-of compilations are available, detailing his solo and group work. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC] 

Das Psych-Oh! Rangers

ZTT Records had a reputation in the mid-1980s for signing acts that sat somewhere between art-pop, experimental electronics and media spectacle, and Das Psych-Oh! Rangers fit neatly into that strange corner of the label’s roster. The group arrived during the period when ZTT was riding high on the success of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Propaganda and other ambitious studio-heavy projects, though Das Psych-Oh! Rangers always seemed rougher around the edges and less willing to play the label’s elaborate game. 

 
The original line-up revolved around vocalist Be Deckard, real name Umberto Rozzo, alongside guitarist Troy Tempest and bassist/pianist Jules Von Vleet, the stage name of Julian Wright. During 1986 the group also featured Steve Honest on bass and keyboards, Che Atlas on drums and Kathy-Anne Joseph providing backing vocals. Later drummer Darren Edwards joined during the 1987-1988 period, by which time the band’s relationship with ZTT had already fallen apart. Their sound mixed theatrical new wave, art-rock and a slightly chaotic post-punk energy, with enough attitude to make them stand out from the cleaner electronic productions dominating British pop at the time. 

 
Their brief spell on ZTT produced just one official single, but the band gained wider attention after appearing live on the Channel 4 music programme The Tube in 1986. They performed two songs taken from that lone ZTT release, giving viewers a taste of their dramatic, confrontational style. At a time when many chart acts relied heavily on backing tracks and polished presentation, Das Psych-Oh! Rangers came across as unpredictable and slightly dangerous, which suited the atmosphere of alternative music television perfectly. 

 
Behind the scenes, though, tensions with the label were growing fast. The band became increasingly frustrated with the expensive remix culture surrounding ZTT productions. In-house producer and engineer Steve Lipson was creating multiple elaborate remixes for the proposed follow-up single “Power Station”, and the mounting studio costs were recoupable from the artists themselves. Das Psych-Oh! Rangers saw the process as excessive and pointless, especially for a band that preferred immediacy over endless studio experimentation. Their complaints echoed frustrations already felt by Frankie Goes To Hollywood during the making of their second album, while Propaganda and several other ZTT acts also struggled with the label’s controlling and expensive production methods. 

 
The situation reached breaking point shortly before the famous legal battle involving Holly Johnson against Trevor Horn and Jill Sinclair. Johnson’s successful court case became one of the defining music industry disputes of the decade, exposing many of the contractual problems surrounding ZTT. Das Psych-Oh! Rangers were released from the label just before the case exploded publicly, and the planned “Power Station” single was quietly shelved and never officially issued. 

 
After leaving ZTT, the group altered their name slightly to Das Psycho Rangers for later releases connected to their manager’s Stress label. Although they never achieved major commercial success, their story captures a fascinating moment in British independent music when adventurous bands collided with ambitious production-heavy labels that often promised creative freedom while tightly controlling the final product. 

 
One of the more intriguing pieces of the group’s history is their BBC Radio One session recorded for Janice Long on 3 December 1986. The session included the songs “Homage To The Blessed”, “Power Station”, “Intellectual Gangsters” and “Medea Tearorists”. Despite interest from collectors and fans of obscure ZTT-related material, the session still remains officially unreleased, adding another layer of mystery to a band whose recorded legacy ended up far smaller than their chaotic reputation suggested.

 

Max

Formed in the late 1980s by Kevin Mooney and Leslie Winer, Max arrived out of the post-punk and art-pop underground with a sound that mixed sleek production, moody atmospheres and a slightly off-center pop sensibility. Mooney had already built a reputation through his time with Adam and the Ants, while Winer brought a cool, spoken-word edge that gave the early material a distinctive character. 

The group signed to Chrysalis Records and released the single “Little Ghost”, a track that later attracted enough attention to be covered by Boy George. Around the same period, Max recorded an album titled 'One Thousand + 1 Nights' with production from Marco Pirroni, another figure closely linked to the post-punk world through his work with Adam and the Ants and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Despite the pedigree involved, the album never saw an official release, leaving it to drift into the long history of lost major-label projects from the era.

 
After Winer’s departure, Mooney rebuilt the group with drummer John Reynolds. The revamped line-up adopted the name Lomax and signed to ZTT Records, the label famous for its extravagant pop productions and association with Trevor Horn. Horn produced a new version of the '1001 Nights' album, scheduled for release as ZTT 5. Expectations were fairly high, but when the single “Waiting For Vain” failed to connect commercially, the label shelved the record before it could properly emerge.

 
Mooney refused to let the material disappear. After leaving ZTT, the project moved to Red Dot Records, another Warner-affiliated label, and went through yet another reshuffle. The Lomax name was dropped and Max returned, while the Trevor Horn gloss was stripped back in favour of a harder, rock-oriented sound. The album resurfaced under a new title, 'Silence Running'. By that stage the early momentum had faded, and neither the album nor its singles managed to gain traction. Warner eventually dropped the group, and Max split in 1994. 

There was a tragic postscript to the story. Guitarist Matthew Ashman, best known for his work with Bow Wow Wow, died in 1995 at the age of 35. Bassist John Keogh also died not long afterwards. Those losses added a darker edge to the history of a group that spent years hovering around success without ever quite getting the breakthrough their connections and recordings seemed to promise.

 

Sinéad O'Connor

When Sinéad O'Connor showed up in the late ’80s, she didn’t just sound different; she completely shattered the mold. With a voice that could cut like glass one minute and feel heartbreakingly tender the next, she turned her own pain into music that called out injustice, hypocrisy, and abuse. The shaved head became iconic, but it was never about style alone. O’Connor rejected conformity in every sense, and she made that clear from day one on 1987’s 'The Lion and the Cobra', where rock, hip-hop, and electronic pop collided with brutally honest lyrics about sex, religion, oppression, and trauma.

 
Unlike a lot of mainstream artists at the time, O’Connor wasn’t afraid to bring politics and personal grief into her work. Her haunting take on "Nothing Compares 2 U" turned her into a global superstar in 1990, but the emotion behind it came from a deeply complicated relationship with her late mother. At the height of her fame, she shocked audiences by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live to protest abuse within the Catholic Church; a moment that sparked massive backlash years before the wider public fully understood what she was talking about. The controversy hurt her commercial career, but it also freed her to follow her instincts creatively. 

Over the years, O’Connor refused to stay in one lane. She explored jazz standards on 'Am I Not Your Girl?', blended spirituality and electronic textures on 'Universal Mother', reworked traditional Irish songs on 'Sean-Nós Nua', and dove headfirst into reggae with 'Throw Down Your Arms'. Even decades into her career, albums like 'I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss' proved she still had that fire. Her 2021 memoir, 'Rememberings', showed the same raw honesty that defined her music.

 
Born in Dublin in 1966, O’Connor had a difficult childhood marked by family trauma and instability. Music became both an escape and a form of survival. After time spent at a strict reform school, where a nun introduced her to guitar and songwriting, she slowly found her way into Dublin’s music scene before eventually signing with Ensign Records and moving to London. 

Her debut album, 'The Lion and the Cobra', instantly made critics pay attention thanks to songs like "Mandinka" and "Troy". But it was 1990’s 'I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got' that launched her into another stratosphere. Powered by “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the album became a worldwide hit and cemented her as one of the defining voices of the era. Still, O’Connor never seemed comfortable with celebrity culture. She famously refused Grammy recognition and regularly challenged media expectations and political institutions alike.

 
Throughout the ’90s and 2000s, she kept experimenting, collaborating with artists like Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, and Wyclef Jean, while continuing to make deeply personal records about faith, survival, motherhood, and identity. Even when the spotlight faded, her influence only grew stronger. 

By the time of her death in 2023 at age 56, Sinéad O'Connor had become more than just an incredible singer-songwriter. She was a fearless protest artist, a truth-teller, and a huge influence on generations of emotionally open, politically outspoken musicians who came after her. 

Andrew Poppy

Andrew Poppy has always done things a little differently. Back in 1981, he helped launch The Lost Jockey, a sprawling experimental ensemble digging into the hypnotic, repetitive sounds pioneered by minimalist heavyweights like Glass, Reich, and Andriessen.  

 
By the mid-’80s, he’d landed at ZTT Records, the famously adventurous label run by Paul Morley and Trevor Horn. There, Poppy pushed minimalist ideas into a more pop-oriented world. His album 'Alphabed' blended classical composition with studio experimentation, layering sequencers, samples, and synths alongside vocals from the likes of Annette Peacock, Ashley Slater, Udo Scheuerpflug, and Dee Lewis. 

 
Around the same time, Poppy was also getting deeply involved in London’s experimental theatre scene, collaborating with the Institute of Contemporary Arts on visually ambitious productions like "Secret Gardens" and "Midday Sun". That eventually evolved into a series of chamber operas and music theatre works, including "The Songs of the Claypeople" and the wonderfully strange "The Uranium Miners Radio Orchestra Play Scene’s From Salome’s Revenge". Later projects included "Baby Doll", commissioned by the National Theatre Studio, and "Ophelia/Ophelia" in 1996.

 
The ’90s saw Poppy return to concert music with a string of ambitious chamber works and orchestral commissions. Pieces like "14 Poem and Toccatas", "Ember", and "Eight Movements for Piano Trio" helped cement his reputation as a composer equally at home in avant-garde concert halls and experimental studio spaces. In 1997, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned "Horn Horn", a concerto for two alto saxophones and orchestra. Around the same time, pianists Jed Distler and Tania Chen began performing selections from "Fruits and Shavings", his collection of solo piano works. 

 
Outside the classical world, Poppy’s résumé gets even more eclectic. Over the years he’s worked in the studio with bands like The The, Erasure, and Nitzer Ebb, while also composing for theatre productions directed by figures such as Kenneth Branagh. Choreographers including Michael Clark and Heidi Latsky have also created dance works set to his music. Add film and TV scoring into the mix, plus a stint as head of music at the National Film and Television School in the late ’90s, and you get the picture: Andrew Poppy has quietly built one of the most fascinatingly unpredictable careers in modern music. 

 

Nasty Rox Inc.

Nasty Rox Inc. were one of those late-1980s groups that arrived before the music industry really knew what to do with rock and club culture colliding together. At a time when most guitar bands and dance acts stayed in completely separate lanes, Nasty Rox Inc. were already throwing together live bass, guitars, hip-hop scratching, go-go rhythms, funk grooves and heavy club production. Their sound sat somewhere between underground warehouse culture and experimental pop, which made them stand out during the rise of UK dance music and the early acid house era. 

 
The core lineup featured Dan Fox on vocals, John Waddell on guitar, Mark "Leo T" Townsend on bass, alongside DJ and production figures who gave the project its club edge. Dave Dorrell played a huge role in shaping their identity and was famously described as the group’s “pop instigator,” which was somewhere between creative director, producer and manager. Dorrell already had a strong reputation in the London club scene, and his influence helped push the project toward a more futuristic blend of rock attitude and dancefloor energy. 

 
Another important early figure was Nellee Hooper, who worked as the group’s DJ before leaving to focus on production work. Hooper would later become one of the most respected producers of the 1990s through collaborations with acts like Massive Attack, Soul II Soul, Björk and Madonna. After his departure, he was replaced by CJ Mackintosh, whose turntable skills and club credibility brought another layer of energy to the lineup. Mackintosh later became a major name in UK dance culture through remix work, Ministry of Sound residencies and his involvement in M/A/R/R/S and the classic single “Pump Up the Volume.” 

 
Nasty Rox Inc. recorded for ZTT Records, the label known for ambitious and genre-bending projects connected to producer Trevor Horn. Their 1988 album 'Ca$h' captured the group’s chaotic hybrid style, bouncing between hip-hop beats, live funk instrumentation, industrial textures and dancefloor experimentation. Tracks like “Escape From New York” showed exactly what made them unusual at the time: they sounded like a club act and a live band fighting for control of the same song.

 
Even though Nasty Rox Inc. never became a massive mainstream act, they ended up feeling ahead of their time. Long before rap-rock, big beat or dance-punk became common, they were already treating turntables, live instruments and club production as parts of the same language. Their work now feels like an early blueprint for the crossover culture that exploded during the following decade. 

 

Novecento

Novecento was one of the most distinctive Italian acts to emerge from the vibrant European pop scene of the 1980s. Formed in 1984 by brothers Pino Nicolosi and Lino Nicolosi together with bassist Rossana Nicolosi and vocalist Dora Carofiglio, the group quickly built a reputation for sleek productions, sophisticated arrangements, and a style that constantly evolved over the years. Their sound first leaned heavily into Italo disco and synthpop, full of shimmering keyboards, dance grooves, and catchy melodies that fit perfectly into the mid-80s European club scene.

 
The first big breakthrough came with the debut single "Movin' On" in 1984. The track became a major success, selling more than 100,000 copies and giving the group immediate visibility across Italy and several international markets. That same year, Novecento received the “Revelation of the Year” award during the television event "Azzurro 1984", confirming that they were far more than another short-lived dance act from the decade. 

As the years passed, Novecento kept reinventing their sound. The glossy disco energy of the early singles gradually opened the door to funk influences, soft rock textures, jazz-inspired arrangements, and polished pop rock songwriting. Albums released throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s showed a growing interest in sophisticated production and international sounds, which helped the group gain listeners outside Italy as well. Dora Carofiglio’s voice became one of the defining elements of their identity, shifting effortlessly between soulful ballads and upbeat dance tracks. 

A major part of Novecento’s appeal came from the Nicolosi family’s songwriting and production skills. Pino handled keyboards and arrangements with a style strongly influenced by American funk and contemporary jazz, while Lino brought melodic guitar work and production ideas that gave many recordings a rich, layered atmosphere. Their collaborations with international artists and producers during the late 80s helped strengthen their reputation among collectors and fans of European pop and funk. 

After recording seven albums and spending more than a decade exploring different styles, Novecento officially disbanded in 1997. Even after the split, interest in their catalog remained strong among fans of Italo disco and sophisticated European pop. The group reunited briefly in 2002 and later returned again in 2008, attracting renewed attention with the single "Cry". That comeback introduced their music to a younger audience while longtime listeners welcomed the return of a group that had always stood apart from many of their contemporaries thanks to their polished sound and willingness to experiment. 

Anne Pigalle

Anne Pigalle doesn’t fit neatly into a single artistic box. Born in France, she built her identity around the idea of the chanteuse, then expanded it into something far more layered. Her work moves between music, literature, performance, and visual art, always carrying that unmistakable Parisian mood, romantic, slightly decadent, and touched with theatrical flair. 

She first gained attention in the mid-1980s, when alternative pop was brushing up against art-school experimentation. Her debut album 'Everything Could Be So Perfect' (1985) set the tone: a sound that feels like stepping into a late-night cabaret where synth textures and chanson coexist in the same dim glow. It never leaned fully into mainstream pop, yet it wasn’t completely underground either. There’s a careful elegance running through it, paired with a sense of distance that gives everything a distinctive edge.

 
Her music is only part of the picture. Pigalle also writes, performs, photographs, and paints, treating all these forms as interconnected pieces of a larger artistic vision. Her lyrics often feel like fragments of poetry, intimate, melancholic, sometimes playful, sometimes elusive. Themes like love, illusion, and identity keep resurfacing, often framed through a stylized femininity that feels both classic and quietly subversive. 

As time went on, her work leaned more into multimedia territory, blending spoken word, visual storytelling, and performance art. Her live appearances can feel closer to small theatrical pieces than traditional concerts, drawing from cabaret traditions while reshaping them through a contemporary lens. That hybrid approach places her somewhere between a singer-songwriter and a gallery artist, which seems entirely intentional. 

Her visual art -especially photography and painting- continues exploring similar ideas: beauty, fragility, transformation. There’s a strong sense that everything she creates belongs to the same evolving narrative, each project adding another layer rather than standing alone. 

Anne Pigalle never really chased mainstream visibility. Her career reads more like a carefully constructed artistic universe than a conventional path, and stepping into it means entering something personal, stylized, and deliberately outside the usual lines.

 

Act

After the original line-up of Propaganda disbanded, German vocalist Claudia Brücken (b. 7 December 1963, Berchenz, Germany) joined the electronics composer and vocalist Thomas Leer to form Act. Staying at Trevor Horn’s ZTT Records label, the pair’s first single, "Snobbery & Decay", revealed their continued experimentation in the studio, and they appeared on the BBC Television science programme "Tomorrow’s World" discussing new music technology. "Absolutely Immune" followed in September 1987 (plus a remix, "Absolutely Immune II"). In March I988, Act issued "I Can’t Escape From You", backed by a bizarre reworking of the Smiths’ "Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now", before unleashing their only album, 'Laughter, Tears And Rage', in June. Like their singles, this combined an array of studio wizardry with superbly crafted songs. Brücken went on to record a solo album, 'Love: And A Million Other Things'. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]