Category Archives: Culture

1981 ➤ Blue Rondo create a new buzz with Latin sounds and an extreme suited dude look

Posted on 14 May 2009 | Leave a comment

Blue Rondo a la Turk was among the first of the Blitzworld’s new image bands to change the musical gear of 1981 towards a tongue-in-cheek collage of carnival rhythms. Fronted by future Wag club host Chris Sullivan, the eccentric seven-piece staged a series of invitation-only tease-dates through the summer of 1981. Their frantic music and their zoot suits were unveiled in the New Romantics’ magazine, New Sounds New Styles …

➢➢ Click here to read the first feature published about Rondo: “He thinks he’s Geronimo”

➢➢ VIEW ♫ fine Northern Soul footwork in the video for Klacto Vee Sedstein here:

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Posted in Culture, London, Media, Pop music, Social trends

Tagged Blitz Kids, Chris Sullivan, New Romantics, New Sounds New Styles, Reviews, Tipping points, Video

1983 ➤ 69 Dean Street and the making of UK club culture

Posted on 13 Apr 2009 | Leave a comment

69 Dean Street is an address implanted somewhere in the folk memory of every Face reader. During the four years when the launchpad for musical experiment shifted from traditional rock gigs to the dancefloor, one Soho building became a factory farm that has fattened each passing cult en route to today’s richly flavoured mainstream…

➢➢ Click here to read The making of club culture, published in The Face, February 1983

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Posted in Chronology, Clubbing, Culture, London, Media, Pop music, Social trends, Youth culture

Tagged 69 Dean Street, Batcave, Billy’s club, Bowie Night, Comedy Store, David Ogilvy, Don Ward, Gargoyle club, Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues, Gossips club, Matisse, Meard Street, Mick Collins, Rusty Egan, Soho, The Face, The Red Studio, Tipping points

1983 ➤ Hockney discovers a truer way of seeing, with help from Proust

Posted on 5 Apr 2009 | Leave a comment

David Hockney, 1983, photo joiners, cubism, Proust, interview, Picture © by Shapersofthe80s

Hockney at his London studio, Jul 3,1983: after a pause of two years, new canvases indicate the urgency with which has resumed painting. Picture © by Shapersofthe80s

“Have you been to the cubism exhibition at the Tate?” David Hockney enthuses during a trip to London. “I’ve been seven times!” An impromptu tutorial ensues in which the painter tests his new ideas

➢➢ Click here to read

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Posted in Culture, London

Tagged Art, David Hockney, Interview, Tipping points

1983 ➤ Showdown for Worlds End, Vivienne and Malcolm

Posted on 3 Apr 2009 | Leave a comment

The creator of this website, Shapers of the 80s, was photographing the runway in Paris on the day the King and Queen of Outrage realised the end was nigh. His backstage interviews provided scoops for the London Evening Standard and subsequently for The Face magazine, “style bible” of the 80s. Again and again, the emerging stars of the new decade observed that he was “always there”…

First published in the Evening Standard, Nov 4, 1983

An Evening Standard exclusive breaks the news of an acrimonious power struggle that threatens to split the infamous couple who unleashed the punk revolution. Malcolm McLaren, manager of the pioneering punk-rock group the Sex Pistols, and Vivienne Westwood, the eccentric designer who clothed them, became King and Queen of Outrage overnight in 1976. Today they are daggers-drawn in a battle royal for control of their company, Worlds End, which has become the hottest name in avant-garde style.
➢➢ Click here to read on

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Posted in Culture, Europe, London, Social trends

Tagged Evening Standard, Paris, The Face, Tipping points, Vivienne Westwood