Spooooky! Quadrocopters performing over a German arts festival last weekend
“ The highlight of this year’s voestalpine Klangwolke in Linz, Germany, was a choreographed air show with 50 small Hummingbird helicopters equipped with LEDs. Ars Electronica Futurelab and Ascending Technologies set a world record because this was the largest swarm of “quadrocopters” (so called because of their four large rotors) outdoors at the same time… ” / Continued online at Asctec
+++ ❚ 2011 WAS THE BIGGEST YEAR for single sales in the history of the Official Charts (founded 1997), according to Official Charts Company data released by the BPI, which operates the OCC jointly with the Entertainment Retailers Association. Over the past seven years, the singles market has been redefined to include legitimate downloads. Since 2004, sales of singles have increased by more than five times, from 32m in 2004 to a record 177.9 million in 2011. The vast majority (99.3%) were sold as digital tracks and bundles. Last year, 1.1m CD singles were sold, representing just 0.6% of the total. All of the top 20 best-selling singles of 2011 sold more than 500,000 copies apiece.
Adele bagged two places in the 2011 year-end singles chart. The recorded and live performance of Someone Like You — recorded at the BRIT Awards — together sold 1.2m copies to become the top-selling single of 2011 overall, with Rolling In The Deep ending the year at No 9. Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera’s mega-seller, Moves Like Jagger, finished the year in second place and has now sold over a million copies despite never actually reaching No 1. LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem comes in at No 3. For all Lady Gaga’s exposure [above], Born This Way made only No 14.
GOVT ATTACKED FOR UK ALBUM SALES SLUMP
❏ Overall sales of albums fell by 5.6% in 2011 to just 113.2m, and the UK has fallen behind Germany as a music market. BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “While other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our government is taking too long to act on piracy.”
In the UK Adele’s 21 was by far the biggest selling album of 2011, ending the year with nearly 3.8m copies sold — more than double the 1.8m sales achieved by 2010’s top album, Take That’s Progress. 21 became the highest-selling album of the 21st century in December, achieving more sales in a single calendar year than any other album in British chart history. 2011 ended with Adele’s debut album, 19, in fourth place, alongside Top 10 placings for Michael Bublé [above], Bruno Mars and Coldplay.
BRITS DOMINATE TOP-SELLING DEBUT ALBUMS
❏ Out of all the debut albums released last year in the UK, eight of the Top 10 are by British acts, topped by award-winning London singer Jessie J’s Who You Are [right] and Ed Sheeran’s +, which holds the record for the fast selling digital debut album in Official Charts Company history.
HMV’S ALTERNATIVE ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
❏ Totally at odds with the official year-ending charts, retailer HMV’s Poll of Polls announces its own Top 50 albums of the year, headed by an entirely different Top 10 for 2011 led by P J Harvey, Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes… The Dorset-born musician and singer-songwriter Harvey, who in September claimed a second Mercury Prize for her tenth studio album Let England Shake, scored an impressive 21 nominations in total from the 35 media outlets surveyed, including “album of the year” selections from NME, Mojo, Uncut, The Sunday Times and BBC music writers.
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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➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU AT TOP to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH, see the sidebar below ➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s
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
✱ James Edward Quaintance III, better known to his friends as Jimmy Q, is the leader of the tattooed male model brigade. i-D online captures the Venice Beach born model-skater stalking the streets of East London, where Andrea Vecchiato snaps an almost masonic single shin-show down at ground level. Watch for this fashion forward detail appearing on a street near you
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✱ “The latest Trash Fashion issue of Dazed & Confused explodes with new fashion director Robbie Spencer’s Trash & Burn manifesto”
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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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✱ Another happy Hadley-Kemp reunion! As part on the ongoing 30th anniversary True celebrations, Tony and Gary are taking part in a special acoustic show and Q&A session about the album. On June 20 at the BBC Maida Vale Studios in London the duo are performing as part the Radio 4 Mastertapes series. Click link to attend
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✱ A new show Sundays at 7pm (BST) on Absolute 80s radio – presented by Matthew Rudd, Forgotten 80s features the best under the radar hits of the decade
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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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✱ “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 Sunday the new George Duke album has the only track completed for a Teena Marie jazz album, plus others from the new Duke album called Dreamweaver ... 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 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
160,000 VISITS PER YEAR
◆ At Dec 31 WordPress recorded 538,000 views since Shapers of the 80s launched in autumn 2009, then in March 2013 Revolver Maps reported 319,207 visits to Shapers of the 80s during the previous two years in global statistics measuring hits from 199 countries
Shapers of the 80s “invaluable”
◆ Shapersofthe80s is declared an “invaluable website” by historian Dominic Sandbrook, author of the rich new cultural analysis, Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–1979. We report how Sandbrook gives generous credit to key influencers on youth culture. His unstuffy combination of high and low life energised the BBC2 series The Seventies aired in 2012
◆ Elsewhere at Shapers of the 80s, telly don Simon Schama succinctly expresses why we should document the “irreverent freedom” that is a special aspect of life in Britain
Cubism cubed!
◆ Until Sept 1, New York’s Whitney Museum is showing 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
◆ 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
Archive — Many publication dates are arbitrary, so click and take pot luck!
CLICK TO SEE WHO’S ONLINE
❖ 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:
