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. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb)
“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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➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s
❏ Header picture of Darla, Steve, Bowie, Judi and Elise in David Bowie’s 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes © 1983 Jones Music under exclusive licence to EMI Records LtdJUDI’S EYE VIEW
Judi at Spandau’s 1981 Sundown show, pictured by Shapersofthe80s
David Bowie spotted Steve Strange, of 1980s group Visage, wearing one of Judith Frankland’s creations, a black wedding dress, and asked if he could use it in his video. Judi says now: “Steve and I became firm friends. The Blitz was the place to be seen. It wasn’t big and could only hold 200 people, but you could never be too outrageous and only the wildly dressed got in. Those who stood around never met anyone… I can’t remember going to *meet* men in the Blitz. In purple, black and white make-up you felt like death anyway.”
NEWS — OLD FACES, NEW MIXES FOR THE 20-TEENS
✱ Monday May 27 at 9pm BST Big Tone is on Absolute Radio with highlights of star interviews from the Let’s Rock The Moor festival ... Tickets are on sale for three concerts by Tony Hadley backed by the Southbank Sinfonia Orchestra conducted by Anne Dudley, Oct 13, 15, 16 ... Catch Big Tone’s party show Saturdays 7–9pm BST on Absolute 80s Radio
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✱ Grizzly new video from Bowie as a mad prophet for his album’s title track, The Next Day. Parental guidance advised for explicit content – and have smelling salts at the ready! ... Next Saturday, BBC2 screens the new Bowie doc Five Years at 9.20pm
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✱ The “Face of 68” supergroup guitarist and songwriter Peter Frampton follows his album Thank You Mr Churchill with a rare UK concert at London’s Camden Roundhouse on Nov 5. Tickets at kililive
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✱ i-D 325 The Time Is Now Issue gives one of its May covers to Sudanese supermodel raised in Kansas City, Grace Bol, here photographed by William Baker. Other options feature 19-year-old American model Lily McMenamy, Xiao Wen Ju and The Great Gatsby
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✱ Dazed & Confused gangs up with post-punk priestesses Savages, Chicago drill rappers, Rick Owens’ extended family and Genesis P-Orridge on NYC’s IRL crew in its Tribes issue for May. Plus the anti-yuppy brigades reclaiming south east London
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✱ “If it moves, funk it.” Catch the global webcast weekly, more than 150 shows since the re-launch of Jazz FM in October 2008 — Robbie Vincent’s Essential Rhythms from the pioneering 70s & 80s deejay every Sunday 10am–1pm BST... This week our Sunday long one visits Brazil and we have three truly brilliant tracks from the Isley Brothers proving that music is more powerful than politics... Retune digital radios in the UK to find National Jazzfm on radio & on TV or listen
live online and later on demand at Jazzfm.com ... Shapersofthe80s tells how Robbie influenced the shape of British musical taste in his 35 years as master of hot cuts
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✱ The two big UK Rewind Festivals unite 24 acts at Rewind in Perth (July 26–28) ... and another 24 acts for Rewind at Henley-on-Thames (Aug 16–18)
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✱ Remake Remodel claims to be “The Nation’s Saving Grace of Alternative, Rock’n’Roll” — pure indie every Monday at South nightclub, Manchester M2 6DQ ... Every Tuesday, all new Student House pushes cutting-edge house music through South’s renowned Funktion One sound system
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✱ Blacklight every Weds, Stonelove every Sat at Factory251 – house, RnB, hiphop, Rock n Roll, Soul and indie disko over three floors designed by Ben Kelly ... At Princess St Manchester, a programme of clubnights and live bands
Cubism cubed!
◆ From May 23, New York’s Whitney Museum is to show a video installation entitled The Jugglers (below) by David Hockney, shot by 18 HD video cameras and screened in one mighty panorama... Hockney spent last summer on the country roads of Yorkshire videoing more of the eye-popping series of “cubistic” multi-screen movies that concluded his Royal Academy show in London — and which he proposed to Shapersofthe80s in his 1983 landmark interview when he revealed “Suddenly I see cubism differently, more clearly”. Read it inside, along with his latest adventures on an iPad
Sade in a nutshell ♫ ♫
✱ After 2010’s Grammy Award winning Soldier Of Love LP, Sade went on to release The Ultimate Collection. The 29 tracks on two CDs included three new numbers, plus a version of Moon & The Sky featuring Jay-Z . . . In 2011 the band won a Grammy award for Best R&B Performance By A Group for the track Soldier Of Love
✱ 2010 — Shapersofthe80s finds comeback Shard comfy as ‘Auntie Sade’
✱ 1981 — Pix of Sade’s Demob designs during the first Blitz invasion of the US
✱ 1982 — Pix of Sade helping backstage during Steve Strange’s fashion show in Paris
GEORGE O’DOWD SINCE 1979
➢ 1980, Three key men in Boy George’s life
➢ 2010, Ex-Blitz Kids give their verdicts on the TV drama Worried About the Boy (pictured)
➢ 1979 — Unbelievable! The voice of sweet reason in George’s TV debut
➢ 2010, Ex-jailbird George takes his first trancey steps on the path to sainthood
➢ June 14, 2011, Boy George celebrates the big Five-0 and tells the world, yes, finally he has “lots of regrets” ...
➢ . . . then Shapersofthe80s reports from the fruit-cakiest party of summer 2011 ➢ 2011, Boy George released Ordinary Alien, The Kinky Roland Files, a CD import on the independent Decode label — his first solo album in more than a decade ➢ 2012, Boy George reunites with Culture Club for New Year’s Day — and a new albumSPANDAU 30 YEARS ON
◆ Tony Hadley at Facebook: “My wife and I are pleased to announce the safe arrival of our beautiful baby daughter born on February 6, 2012” ... But for Spandau, Tony dropped another bombshell on ITV’s Loose Women on May 16
◆ Shapersofthe80s tells the story of Spandau Ballet’s comeback tour after two decades apart — Videos, interviews, free downloads, links and background articles from the 2009-10 Reformation tour ... That’s all folks, possibly for ever
◆ Story behind the making of Spandau’s Olympic Gold, remixed by deejay Paul Oakenfold and turned into a slick vid
DURAN DURAN THEN & NOW
✱ 30 years ago the 80s supergroup’s debut single Planet Earth peaked at No 12 in the UK chart . . . Shapersofthe80s tells how Duran’s road to stardom began in the Studio 54 of Birmingham, UK, in 1980
✱ Catch up on 2011: Highlights of Duran’s round-the-world adventure ... and DD’s delayed return to the UK ... Plus ten killer videos other people made as tributes
to Duran’s return to creativity
ESSENTIAL LANDMARK READS
➢ Spandau Ballet, the Blitz Kids and the birth of the New Romantics — a brisk history of who did what to make stars out of a club houseband, change the rhythm of the UK charts — and ultimately transform the British media
➢ How three wizards met at the same crossroad in time — a brief scene-setter on the forces shaping the Swinging Eighties
➢ 1980, Strange days, strange nights, strange people: at The Blitz a decade dawns
➢ 1980, One week in the private worlds of the new young: London blazes with creativity
➢ 1980, Shapersofthe80s tells how Duran Duran’s road to stardom began in the Studio 54 of Birmingham, UK
➢ 1981, Birth of Duran’s Planet Earth ... when other people’s faith put the Brummies into the charts
➢ 1983, The Making of UK Club Culture — definitive Face cover story seen here in the Wham Rap! video
➢ 1976–1984, How creative clubbing started and ended with the 80s
➢ 2010, Comeback Shard comfy as ‘Auntie Sade’
➢ 2009, Onstage, Spandau’s Hadley and Kemp finally get huggy: a mighty Reformation
➢ 40 years since “I picked on you-oo-oo”! July 6, 1972 saw the seminal pop moment — David Bowie’s first appearance on Top of the Pops as Ziggy Stardust, the day he created the next generation of popstar wannabes
JUST DON’T CALL US NEW ROMANTICS . . .
✧ ... except of course everybody claims they were the first
✧ Steve Strange remains the forlorn Lost Boy of pop after falling out with Rusty Egan and Midge Ure over use of the 80s band name Visage ... Follow Steve’s daydreams at Facebook: Steve “Visage” Strange
✧ Blitz Club co-host and deejay Rusty Egan still going strong
✧ Follow the adventures of an international deejay at The fabulous World of Princess Julia
✧ Judith “frankly” Frankland blogging at The Swelle Life
✧ Boy George dates and official news
✧ The World of Animal Nightlife
✧ Gary Kemp blogs on his own website
✧ Danilo Monzillo’s exhaustive Blitz Kids compendium
✧ The official line on Duran Duran
✧ New Romantics on video
✧ Landmark pop videos from the 80s and all crucial points before — on the Shapersofthe80s channel at YouTube RANDOM CLICKER
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❖ Welcome to our latest visitors from 198 countries and dependencies — not forgetting our visitor in the world’s southernmost city, Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (54°48′S, 68°18′W), only a smidgeon further south than our readers in Río Grande and Punta Arenas... Our northernmost visitor lives at Hammerfest in Norway (70°39′N, 23°40′E), a nudge nearer the Pole than others in Finnmark, and at Murmansk in Russia (68°58′N, 33°05′E). A special Hello to our one visitor in Greenland!
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:
British youth culture at its finest
- Home
- WHAT THE ?!
- REVOLUTION
- CLUBBING
- 69 Dean Street and the making of UK club culture
- 1981, Six golden rules for keeping Studio 54 ahead of the pack
- Ace faces, always there!
- 1983, Posing with a purpose at the Camden Palace
- 1983, Who’s who in the New London Weekend
- 1978, When French semioticians come stalking Le Palace, you know it’s serious
- BLITZ KIDS
- SOUND+VISION
- 88 acts who set the style for the new music of the 1980s
- Origins on video ♫ ♫
- 1981, Blue Rondo create a new buzz with Latin sounds and an extreme suited dude look
- 2009, On tour with the reformed Spandau Ballet
- 2010, Spandau overseas: so British, so gracious
- 2011, Tony Hadley band wow US fans
- 2011, Duran Duran celebrated in video
- THE FACE, i-D, MEDIA
- 80s IN THE MAKING
- SEISMIC SHIFTS
- 1980, A new decade demands new comedy
- 1981: Quest for the most unbelievably unpalatable cocktail
- 1983, Hockney’s new vision of the world
- 1983: Showdown for Worlds End, Vivienne and Malcolm
- 1962, One TV show changes the way the British laugh
- 1966, More popular than Jesus: the Lennon interview
- 2010, A giant dies: Charlie Gillett
- THEY SAID IT
- NEOS & NOW
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