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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❏ 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 LtdFIONA ON ‘REAL’ THEATRE…
Picture by © Alan Davidson
❏ 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.”
NEWS — OLD FACES, NEW MIXES FOR THE 20-TWEENS
✱ 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 .............................................................................. ✱ 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 ..............................................................................
✱ 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
STEVE NORMAN’S WEDDING EXCLUSIVE
◆ Two photo reports on Shelley & Steve Norman’s wedding day exclusive to Shapersofthe80s ... First the ceremony, then gossip from the hog-roast reception where the newly-weds took to the stage as Cloudfish ... Plus a video guide to Steve’s wedding-day playlist, ten truly weepy soundtracks to married bliss
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 STRONG
◆ 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
Sade in a nutshell ♫ ♫
✱ After last year’s Grammy Award winning Soldier Of Love LP, Sade this year released The Ultimate Collection. The 29 tracks on two CDs include three new numbers, including a version of Moon & The Sky featuring Jay-Z . . . The band this year 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
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
➢ 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
JUST DON’T CALL US NEW ROMANTICS . . .
✧ ... except of course I *was* the first
✧ Steve Strange has become the Lost Boy of pop after forlornly going solo without Rusty — follow his news 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 THE BOOK OF THE DECADE — yours for £35 !
◆ 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
◆ On video: Chris Sullivan telling his “Ribald tales of excess” from the Blitz era ... Ditto Robert Elms
MONTH BY MONTH INDEX 2011
✦ List of posts for July ✦ List of posts for June ✦ List of posts for May ✦ List of posts for April ✦ List of posts for March ✦ List of posts for February ✦ List of posts for January ✦ 200 new acts tipped for the new year in music
✦ READ this QR Code with your mobile, or CLICK HERE to visit a different random post at Shapersofthe80s every time you click
CLICK TO SEE WHO’S ONLINE
❖ 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:
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
- THEY SAID IT
- NEOS & NOW
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