'The Vandals' were a late 1970s English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 band

Rock Band

Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...

 from Basildon

Basildon

Basildon is a town located in the Basildon District of the county of Essex, England.It lies east of Central London and south of the county town of Chelmsford...

 in South East Essex. Playing in the punk rock

Punk rock

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 style, they are mainly notable for featuring vocalist Alison Moyet

Alison Moyet

Alison Moyet , is an English singer, songwriter and performer noted for her bluesy voice.Her UK album sales have reached a certified 2.3 million, with 800,000 singles sold, all in the UK, where all seven of her studio albums and three compilation albums have charted in the Top 40 UK Album Chart,...

, 'Alf' as she was then known, who later found fame as half of 1980s synthpop

Synthpop

Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...

 act Yazoo

Yazoo (band)

Yazoo are a British synthpop duo from Basildon, Essex. They had a number of Top 10 hits in the UK charts in the early 1980s...

. Another member was Robert Marlow

Robert Marlow

Robert Marlow is a synthpop musician and songwriter.-Biography:Robert Marlow grew up in Basildon with future Depeche Mode members Vince Clarke, Martin Gore, and Andy Fletcher. He is also tied to Alison Moyet, with whom he played in a band, The Vandals. He knew Andy and Vince from the Basildon...

, who during his tenure with the band was known as 'the guitarist with no name'. The group also featured two other female backing singers; Kim Forey and Sue Padgett, who also played bass at the bands later gigs, and Simon Kirk on drums, who was later replaced by John Dee, formerly of Southend band The Machines.

They were mainly active in 1978 and some notable gigs included Leigh-on-Sea's Grand Hotel, Woodlands Youth Centre, Basildon and "Upstairs at Turkans" at the Van Gogh in Basildon. They also made an unscheduled appearance at the 1st Rock Festival held at Gloucester Park, Basildon in August 1978.