MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
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❏ The Blitz Kids outflanked most of the 80s copyists who followed their Bowie-inspired passion for changing their look as often as possible. You’d find the follow-on generation of posers at Studio 21 on Oxford Street or the Batcave, or in a back barrel at Birmingham’s Rum Runner. After the Blitz caravanserai had moved on into the world of work, fashion designer Fiona Dealey said: “You look at these little Bat people with make-up dribbling down their necks and you feel like saying, ‘Sorry darling, not enough loose powder’. The difference was that our make-up was stage slap, Leichner not Factor. The clothes came from a costumier, Charles Fox not Flip. Dressing for the Blitz was real theatre. It wasn’t just another uniform. You felt glamorous.”
✱ Hot news! Blur are set to reunite live at the Brit Awards ...
✱ Also, Madonna must be mad to charge £5,000 for standing tickets for her London tour date. Standing!
✱ And how to apply by March 2 for 10,000 tickets to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert...
✱ Click the hotlink to read many other updates in a regular News Splurge, now published as a front-page post. Shapersofthe80s is changing the role of this side column to point to deeper coverage of topics on inside pages
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✱ Verdicts on 2011: Picky people’s year-ending Best Ofs in fashion, TV, web and film ...✱ Also, Best Ofs across the 2011 music scene✱ Top moments from the past year of trial and error at i-D online
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✱ Hot news! Pulp reissue their weird and groundbreaking first three albums on Feb 20. Then Jarvis and pals head for the States. We have the tour dates for Pulp in the US — plus Spain again in May
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✱ As the moody psycho-thriller Martin Kemp’s Stalker goes to DVD, catch up at Shapersofthe80s with a video interview with Martin as the Spandau Ballet bass-player talks about becoming a movie mogul ... and read how he got blood on his hands during his his directorial debut
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✱ London’s massive new exhibition of vibrantly coloured landscapes by David Hockney concludes with an eye-popping series of “cubistic” multi-screen cine films of exactly the kind he was proposing to Shapersofthe80s in his 1983 landmark interview when he revealed “Suddenly I see cubism differently, more clearly”. Read it inside
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✱ An exhibition of portraits by artists and photographers honouring Richard Hamilton, the father of pop art in the UK, runs until May 14 at the National Portrait Gallery in London ... Shapersofthe80s discussed his second thoughts about his definition of pop art when he died in September
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✱ The bleeps behind Dalston Superstars are free to download! By popular demand the Vice dotcom “structured reality” video series about hipness in Hackney has had to issue a mixtape of its achingly hip soundtracks. Here’s a taster ...
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✱ “If it moves, funk it” — Robbie Vincent’s Essential Rhythms from the pioneering 70s & 80s deejay goes out as a global webcast Sundays 10am–1pm GMT. Listen online live or on demand at Jazzfm.com and retune DAB sets in the UK to find National Jazzfm on radio & TV ... Feb12: introducing the Sunday Soft Centre which includes classic Isley Brothers and Phyllis Hyman, then more from British export Chris Standring ... Here at Shapersofthe80s read how Robbie influenced the shape of British music in his 35 years as master of hot cuts
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✱ At the download website of Haçienda Records, the official digital label of FAC51, fac51thehacienda, you can listen to Graeme Park’s Then Haçienda Now Mix, Basement Jaxx, 808 State and many other Factory mixes ... Shapersofthe80s documents the rise and fall of The ghosts of Fac and Hac✱ Fac251’s Second Birthday comes in two parts, the second being on Feb 11, with free gig by Reverend and the Makers✱ Missionary every Tuesday at Factory 251, M1 7EN: three rooms with Bombed Out hosting the basement
◆ The reviewers say: “A gorgeous history of 80s London clubland” — Alex Petredis, The Guardian ... “To anyone who dismisses Eighties nightlife with the words ‘Peter Stringfellow’, a thorough reading of this fascinating and definitive account should be a priority” — Robert Spellman, Sunday Express
◆ Thud! The first edition of this coffee-table photobook We Can Be Heroes proves to be monumental tombstone of a hardback measuring 28.5x24cm ... It chronicles six whirlwind years from punk to the New Romantics — through Graham Smith’s eye-witness photography, and racy commentary from writer Chris Sullivan, one of the core shapers of British youth culture ... Meet Smith & Sullivan on Feb 22 and buy signed copies downstairs at the The Sun & Thirteen Cantons, 21 Great Pulteney Street, W1F 9NG, from 7pm until late
Archive — Many publication dates are arbitrary, so click and take pot luck!
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❖ Welcome to our latest visitors from 171 countries and dependencies — not forgetting our southernmost visitors at Río Grande in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (53°47′S, 67°42′W), only a smidgeon further south than our reader in Punta Arenas... Our northernmost visitor lives at Hammerfest in Norway (70°39′N, 23°40′E), a nudge nearer the Pole than others at Tromsø in Norway (69°41′N, 18°56′E) and Murmansk in Russia (68°58′N, 33°05′E)
KEY PHOTOGRAPHERS ON THE SCENE
My gratitude to the photographers who have generously permitted use of their images at Shapersofthe80s, because who would believe the preposterous story of the Blitz scene without the supporting pictorial evidence? These are the people whose lenses first caught the magic, and more subcultural images from the 1980s can be found at their own online galleries ❂ Neil Matthews ❂ Denis O’Regan ❂ Andy Rosen ❂ Homer Sykes ❂ Virginia Turbett ❂ Special thanks to:
