Check out the Vaultage album covers

Archive March 2008

Following on from last month's free mp3's from the Vaultage 78 and Vaultage 79 albums, our latest offering is Vaultage 80, featuring tracks which are currently unavailable to purchase online. This completes the trilogy of Attrix albums, recorded over three years. Vaultage 80 turned out to be the last. The sub-heading, 'A Vinyl Chapter', actually signalled the end of the label and co-incided with the demise of punk and the new wave.

Its release also coincided with the death of the Resource Centre and the Vault, which burnt down in suspicious circumstances in October 1980. A year later, Attrix Records was to fold and the shop in Sydney Street closed down. By now, the punk scene nationally had gone mainstream with the success of bands like the Pistols, the Clash and the Stranglers.

It seemed glaringly obvious that the appetites of the big record companies had finally swallowed up punk.

All these factors had played their part to undermine the previously thriving Brighton music scene. The Vaultage 80 album sleeve featured photos of the burnt out remains of the building, it was a sad sight, but it all seemed to fit with the prevailing climate and the nature of punk - here today, gone tomorrow.

Punkbrighton has now got 50 of the old Brighton bands on site, so thanks to all of you who have sent stuff in. Stats show that downloads from our Vaultage 08? mp3's have topped 5000. So onwards and ever upwards.

• The launch of our free mp3 downloads page in March 2007 was set up in conjunction with Attrix Records to commemorate 30 years of punk (see our March 07 Archive). If you have mp3's of your Brighton-based band (1976-81) and you want them uploaded, keep sending them in. To download a full size, fairly high-res printable jpeg version of our 'Make Your Own CD Cover' go to the July 07 Archive

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