I know that most of my friends that are musical purists are going to disagree with my decision to bundle Synthpop, Gothic, Punk, Post Punk, Hip Hop, Soul, Jazz Fusion, Ska, Rock, New Wave, No Wave, Hair Metal, Arena Rock and P Funk is to a single catch all called ‘80s’. Well in my defence that is how I was first introduced to music.

I turned eight in 1980, and the sum total of all my musical knowledge stemmed from ‘Top of the Pops’, a TV program that aired every Thursday at 7:30pm on BBC 1. The entire family watched in hope that their tunes would be featured, either live (well mimed) or if we were lucky the video would be shown, a rare and new concept back in the 80s. The show was interspersed with the chart run down from 50 to one, this was the moment you got to see if your favourite songs were edging ever closer to the illusive top ten, or had even clawed their way to number one.

When I started watching TOTP, I had no allegiances to any sub-genre, however after seeing Kraftwerk, Herbie Hancock and Malcom Maclaren with the World Famous Supreme Team, I was rooting for team Hip Hop.