Rock fans of a certain age will remember the debut album by the American rock band Living Colour. Released in 1988, Vivid – a heady cocktail of rock, funk, metal, and punk – became a multi-platinum smash. The first single, Cult of Personality, reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on the back of a savvy video and heavy MTV rotation, and scooped a Grammy Award the following year for Best Hard Rock Performance.
The band – Corey Glover (vocals), Vernon Reid (guitar), Muzz Skillings (bass) and Will Calhoun (drums) – may have dressed in eyeball-aching dayglo colours, but they played like demons, rocking up a jazz-tinged, riff-heavy, funk-laced storm. Skillings’ expert slap-and-pop, when allied with the metallic music, virtually defined the alternative-metal scene of the day.
