Here Right Now - 35 Pivotal Dates In The History of Popular Music

October 29th, 1965: The Who release 'My Generation'.

The modernist movement of the mid 1960s found it's anthem in this iconic single; a snarling riposte to the older generation encaspulating youthful rebellion in an almost violently aggressive three minutes and 18 seconds.

February 12th, 1967: The Rolling Stones' mansion is raided by the drugs squad.

The UK drug laws concerning recreational drug use were first called into question following the 1967 raid by police on the Surrey mansion of Rolling Stone Keith Richards. Richards was given a one-year jail sentence and fellow Stone Mick Jagger three months, prompting heated debate in the media; on appeal, they were both acquitted.

September 30th, 1967: Radio 1 is launched by the BBC.

Popular Music is finally given an official home, broadcast across the nation from morning through to early evening. Previously, teenagers could only hear pop music on the radio if they tuned into 'pirate' radio stations, which broadcast illegally from ships based in the seas around the country. Illegal radio broadcasting of non mainstream but in demand music continues to this day.

August 31st, 1968: The first Isle of Wight Festival is held.

The Isle of Wight Festival was first held in the summer of 1968 and lead to similar festivals becoming a major part of British UK summers, the most famous and successful regular festival being the Glastonbury Festival. The Isle of Wight Festival saw a breakdown in control by the authorities and the subsequent celebration of countercultural freedom and people led events in the UK.

May 21st 1971: 'What's Going On? by Marvin Gaye is released

The 1971 album 'What's Going On?' by Marvin Gaye is perhaps the most significant release in the history of black popular music. It is significant because lyrically it spoke of protest, racism and injustice, combined with radio friendly mellow soul melodies. Prior to 'What's Going On?' black popular music, and Motown music had largely been concerned with romance and dancing.

1972 ; King Tubby releases 'King Tubby At The Controls' and creates the template for modern dance music

Osbourne Ruddock, aka King Tubby, was an engineer who experimented with echo and tape delay; he was the first studio engineer to strip a song down just to the bass pulse, enabling toasters - or DJs - to speak and rhyme freely over the top of the recorded music.

July 7th, 1972: David Bowie performs 'Starman' on TV and invents gay pop.

A few months before 'Starman' featured on 'Top of the Pops' David Bowie had told Melody Maker he was bisexual. Homosexuality had only been made partly legal 5 years previously, so when Bowie's androgynous guitarist Mick Ronson draped his arm around the singer's shoulders, it was a seismic moment in the history of both sexual politics and sexually ambiguous pop music. The next day the conversations in schools and youth clubs across the country would concern nothing else but this brief performance.

November 12th, 1976: The First 'Rock Against Racism' gig

Rock Against Racism was formed as a response to rock star Eric Clapton shouting 'Keep Britain White' during a concert, as well as other deeply controversial proclamations around race and immigration.

The first RAR concert was held a few weeks later in the Princess Alice pub in Romford, Essex. Within two years of this concert, much bigger outdoor carnivals were held in conjunction with the Anti-Nazi League as a response to the rising number of racist attacks in the UK.

A sister organisation, Rock Against Sexism was founded by a group of women in response to sexism within the music industry.

July 2nd, 1977: Donna Summer releases 'I Feel Love'

One of the most significant recordings in pop music history, 'I Feel Love' was the future right now, and it's influence spread like a a forest fire, from the late 70s discotheques all the way through to the clubs and raves of the 1980s and 1990s. It was purely electronic, it was sparse, it was euphoric, irresistible, beautiful and it never, ever ages.

December 16th, 1977: Saturday Night Fever opens.

Saturday Night Fever is the film credited with bringing the 'disco' phenomenon worldwide attention. Disco is short for 'discotheque', which is what clubs for dancing were once referred to.

Disco started as a continuation of the rhythmic soul and Motown music embraced by African-American and Latino American gay men in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

By the late 1970s, disco had spread across America and Europe, accompanied by a thriving drug subculture; cocaine and Quaaludes would enhance the experience of dancing to the seductive and sophisticated disco rhythms.

Quaaludes were powerful sedative and hypnotic prescription tablets that earned the nickname "disco biscuits".

A British version of Rapper's Delight, with rewritten lyrics, was recorded for the song's 25th anniversary in 2004 by an ensemble of performers including Rodney P, Chester P, Kano, Simone, Yungun, Sway, J2K, Swiss, Baby Blue, Skibadee, Luke Skys, and MC D.

November 2nd, 1979: Quadrophenia opens.

Quadrophenia was a film that is credited with reviving interest in the 'modernist' or 'mod' movement in the 1960s. 1979 was a year ripe for revivalist movements, including skinheads, rockabillies and rude boys.

Quadrophenia was a basic coming of age story set against the mods vs rockers battles on Brighton Beach tthat occured on the August Bank Holiday in 1964.

July 2nd, 1981: The Specials 'Ghost Town' reaches number 1 as the youth of Britain riot.

The sticky tense summer of 1981 saw riots in over 35 locations around the increasingly less United Kingdom. Meanwhile, over on Top of The Pops is was all synthetic nostalgia, Tight Fit had 'Back To The 60s', Shakin' Stevens had his 'Green Door' and ska clowns Bad Manners were stomping all over the 'Can Can'. But floating high above all the tinsel and balloons, The Specials were number one with 'Ghost Town' a gritty wail of anger, which although not actually inspired by the urban unrest, just happened to be in exactly the right place at the right time.

May 21st, 1982: The Haçienda club opens.

The Haçienda club opened in 1982 at 11-13, Whitworth Street West in Manchester, England. It was disastrously unsuccessful at first, but towards the middle of the 1980s it embraced the then emerging rave/dance/house music culture, and became a mecca for young people keen to experience this new phenomenon, 'raving'.

MDMA or 'ecstasy' swept through the club creating something both magical but doomed to destroy itself.

The club was financially supported by the group New Order, who also channelled the electronic dance music explosion of the decade; their single 'Blue Monday' remains 'the biggest selling 12" vinyl single of all time'.

September 23rd, 1982: Culture Club replace Shakin' Stevens on 'Top Of The Pops'

Replacing an otherwise engaged Shakin' Stevens on a late September TOTP were a new group, Culture Club, who had just entered the charts at number 38. Culture Club were led by the androgynous George D'Owd, known to the London fashion scene as Boy George. The country as a whole hadn't met him yet though, and the nation gasped at one at a figure who's gender was not immediately clear. Men in make up had been seen before and would be seen again (a lot) but for George a new term - gender bender - was invented.

February 18th, 1983: Frankie Goes To Hollywood perform 'Relax' on The Tube.

'Relax' was a single recorded by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, a Liverpool band fronted by two openly gay men, Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford, who adopted the classic gay 'clone' look of handlebar moustache leather accessories and a cheeky twinkle. The single was advertised in the press with the phrase "ALL THE NICE BOYS LOVE SEA MEN". The in-your-face sexuality that surrounded the song with it's ambiguously sexual lyrics slowly propelled the song up the charts, and by the time it reached number 1 it had been 'banned' by the BBC. But this 'ban' became an embarrassment to the Corporation, and was lifted by the end of 1984. Squelchy gay sex was now here to stay in the nation's living rooms and wasn't going anywhere soon.

April 1983: The first record on the Creation Records label is released.

Creation records was a record label formed in 1983 after the release of the 7" vinyl single '73 in 83' by The Legend.

Creation went on to become a near perfect template for the 'indie' sound and culture in the 1980s, signing so many of the major acts who dominated the alternative music landscape of the next 15 years.

March 15th, 1985: A Jesus & Mary Chain concert gets violent.

In early 1985, noise popsters the Jesus and Mary Chain played a gig at the North London Polytechnic. The organisers had overbooked the venue, leaving hundreds of fans locked outside. The band kept the audience waiting for over an hour before taking the stage, leaving the stage after playing for less than twenty minutes. Members of the audience became increasingly violent, before police eventually took control. The band issued a statement afterwards saying "the audience were not smashing up the hall, they were smashing up pop music", going on to say "This is truly art as terrorism". People began attending Jesus & Mary Chain concerts for the violence rather than the music, which was sad, as the music was excellent.

July 13th, 1985: The Live Aid concert.

The Live Aid concert at Wembley in the summer of 1985 changed white popular music forever. It was now all grown up, something that could not just feed the world but change the world. It was no longer 'just' about dancing, dressing up, love and sex. It was a responsible powerful force and it would never be young and innocent again. Madonna was the first post Live Aid superstar, Global domination was now an instantly feasible career move for the new music icons, and pop music entered the world of clipboards and corporate packages.

August 1st, 1987: MTV launches in the UK

MTV had launched in America in 1981 and six years later Europe was given it's very own version. MTV was pivotal in visualising music, gelling fashion, image and the cult of personality in one TV shaped addictive package. Music was now sold a kind of ever shifting wallpaper in the background, and music videos became one of the principal elements of YouTube, launched 19 years later.

June 18th, 1989: Soul II Soul reach No.1.

Soul II Soul were a collective of black British musicians, singers, designers and artists who emerged from the sound system scene, playing records at house and street parties in the mid 1980s. Aside from making records, and performing they had their own clothing label - Funki Dred.

They were uniquely black and British. Their 1989 single 'Back To Life (However Do You Want Me)' reached number one in 1989, and was seen by many as the moment the style of black, British youth went overground.

September 21st, 1991: Ministry of Sound night club opens.

The Ministry Of Sound nightclub opened in 1991. It took the exploding rave movement and attempted to contain most of the elements - very loud beat driven dance music, talented and renowned DJs - in a single building. That building was a former bus garage in Elephant & Castle which remains a successful nightclub to this day.

It helped give the once free counterculture of warehouse raving a newly legitimate arena, policed and regulated, the very opposite of the free flowing youth culture it borrowed heavily from.

Superstar DJ culture happened here in the early 1990s which lead to global DJs being paid exuberant fees, and the rise of corporate EDM (electronic dance music).

November 3rd, 1994: The Government Tries to Ban Partying

The Tory government passed the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act one grey November day in 1994, outlawing music played for groups of people.

The act defined music as including "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats."

The Act was described as a piece of legislation which was "explicitly aimed at suppressing the activities of certain strands of alternative culture", the main targets being squatting, direct action, football fan culture, hunt sabotage and the free party. The sections which specifically refer to parties or raves are seen as badly defined and drafted in an atmosphere of "clear moral panic" following the Castlemorton Common Festival of May 1992.

September 13th, 1996: Tupac Shakur is murdered.

Tupac Shakur and Christopher “The Notorious BIG” Wallace were killed in drive-by-shootings a mere six months apart from one another in the late 1990s. Both rappers were part of the Gangsta Rap movement espousing 'Thug Life'. The friendship between the two rappers became a feud resulting ultimately in their murders, but sealed the legacy of rap music across the globe.

January 6th, 2009: The last branch of Woolworths closes.

From the late 1990s the consumption of popular music changed dramatically. The birth of the internet in lead to music being able to be directly fed into peoples homes, which ultimately led to the end of record shops on the UK high street. However, some record shops managed to save the apocalypse and vinyl is now on the rise again as the way many young people choose to listen to music.