APB's music should sound immediately familiar even if you haven't heard it before. And unless you were in the New York/New Jersey area in the 1980's there's a good chance you wouldn't have.

WLIR 92.7 was a local Long Island radio station that gave everyone in the area access to really, really good alternative music. They played artists like The Cult, Depeche Mode, and The Smiths before they could be heard anywhere else in the states and were one of the only stations that played APB. Sometimes their signal wasn't even strong enough to reach New York City, but there were still enough listeners to spark an East Coast cult following. In their Screamer of the Week segment their listeners would call in to vote on their favorite singles which were often unfamiliar international hits. 

The Scottish band toured and opened for legends like The Clash and James Brown, but their best shows were back at Hofstra University in Long Island. In the liner notes of the Something To Believe In album, Matt Pinfield of MTV's 120 Minutes goes into detail about how those shows in particular were incredibly intense and visceral. The live recordings even made it onto a re-release of the album.

There aren't many albums you can listen to all the way through nowadays, but we're convinced that APB's influential LP has been listened through over and over by some of today's bigger names. Keep the playlist going and you'll hear it for yourself.