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Music Extra: Too Much Fighting on the Dance Floor

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Too Much Fighting on the Dance Floor

19/03/2016 GMT

BBC World Service - Music Extra, Too Much Fighting on the Dance Floor

Why was British music in the late 70s so tribal and violent?

Why was British music in the late 70's so tribal and violent? Adrian Goldberg looks back at a culture divided by style and politics.

Thirty years ago if you went to a music gig in Britain, there was every chance your evening would be marred by violence. Back then fighting was endemic - in pubs, on the streets, on the terraces, and in music venues up and down the land - as fighting erupted between tribes divided by music, fashion and by political preference. Looking back, what is so bizarre is that this all seemed perfectly 'normal' - you expected to see violence on a night out, so deeply ingrained was it in our culture. But why?
 
With a memorable soundtrack of the era, Adrian Goldberg retraces the days when pop, not postcodes, divided the nation’s youth. What did this say about our culture, about what it was like to be young and growing up in Britain in the late 70s and 80s?

We hear from Pauline Black of The Selecter; Neville Staple of The Specials, Clare Grogan from Altered Images, Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order and music fans and journalists.

(Photo: A police officer arresting a punk rocker, with a British flag in the background)

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