Rock and roll has Sun Records. Indie has Stiff. Everything released prior to October 1976 -- your Ramones, Iggy and the Stooges -- can be considered proto-punk, much as everything prior to Elvis ...

Born in 1976, just as punk was beginning to revolutionise rock and pop, Stiff Records - motto: "If It Ain't Stiff, It Ain't Worth a F***" - became the first small independent record label to be truly ...

When photographer Peter Gravelle arranged a session with the band, it was not with the intention of producing shots for their album cover. James was going out with Judy Nylon at the time and her best ...

Simply sign up to the UK companies myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. The publishing catalogue of Stiff Records, the pioneering UK independent label behind acts including Elvis Costello ...

Next month’s How To Buy features Stiff Records, home to such immortal ‘70s hits as Nick Lowe’s So It Goes, Elvis Costello’s Watching The Detectives and Wreckless Eric’s (I’d Go The) Whole Wide World.

Eric Goulden a.k.a. Wreckless Eric, whose song “(I’d Go the) Whole Wide World” is one of the most recognizable tunes from the New Wave era and listed in Mojo magazine’s Top 100 punk songs, was part of ...

Founded in 1976, STIFF RECORDS was at the heart of the new wave, bringing the world artists as diverse as Elvis Costello, Kirsty MacColl and Ian Dury and what is generally regarded as the first ever ...

It was the quirky catchphrases leaping out of the pages of the weekly music press, the rude and irreverent slogans adorning T-shirts, badges, posters, sleeves and other types of merchandising that ...

The Adverts, a glorious mess of a punk band with a great pop sensibility but possessing limited musical capabilities, spat out a catchy rocker called ”One Chord Wonders” in 1977. Sang T.V. Smith: ”I ...

"If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a fuck," declared the most notorious of Stiff Records' slogans. Be Stiff reminds that, at the pioneering UK label's zenith, that was likely true. The brainchild of ...

Two of the most influential British record labels of the 1970s and 1980s, responsible for hits by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Kirsty MacColl and Elvis Costello, among many others, are now under the… By ...

The story of inspirational independent Stiff Records has been MALCOLM WYATT’s music book of 2014. He spoke to author Richard Balls about this legendarily chaotic yet influential label. Did you know ...