The Primitives

Coventry gave the world The Primitives, an indie pop band whose sound also strayed into power pop, new wave and post-punk. Critics have tended to file them as indie pop or indie rock, but the group was never easy to pin down. Vocalist Tracy Tracy and guitarist PJ Court were the constants of their recording career, and they came up alongside the Soup Dragons and the Wedding Present in the mid-1980s indie scene. Their rivals in the so-called blonde pop camp included Transvision Vamp and the Darling Buds.

The breakthrough arrived with the 1988 debut Lovely, which reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart and carried the single Crash to No. 5 at home and No. 3 on the US Modern Rock chart. That was the band's peak year, capped by a sold-out UK tour. Pure followed in 1989 with three singles, while Galore's commercial failure in 1991 preceded a split in 1992. After Steve Dullaghan's death in 2009 the group re-formed, and recent work includes the 2014 album Spin-O-Rama and the 2017 collection New Thrills.