I don’t know as much about Sheffield as I should. There was quite a good novel about the miners’ strike, inter alia, called The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher which I can mildly recommend. It’s the tallest city in Europe (I think). My football team travelled there in the quarter and semi-finals during our triumphant F A Cup run of 1987, just two years before Hillsborough became synonymous with tragedy.
Musically I did once travel to Sheffield after work (I was in Coventry at the time) to see The Teardrop Explodes at the university. Travelled back after the gig, got back home at 3 a.m., then showed up for work, no problem.
Musically there’s an electronic post-punk thread in the experiments of early Human League, Heaven 17, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA (the latter of whom time did not allow to be featured). Then the idiosyncratic twin peaks of Pulp and The Arctic Monkeys (plus Alex Turner’s many other projects). All very fine music, and enough to organise any episode around.
But researching this programme I came across a slew of hidden gems including two excellent featured tracks from Chakk and They Must Be Russians, indicating a very vibrant local scene, overshadowed perhaps by Manchester and Liverpool’s reputation as musical epicentres to the west. There is a host of other post-punk bands which would merit further exploration included in the book/CD Beats Working for a Living: Sheffield Popular Music 1973-84.
And, on a personal note, Into The Garden by Artery is one of those tracks that, once heard, has stayed with me for life.
