Big Bang characters decoded L-R: Howard is dressed as an evil member of the Borg, Raj as the Klingon security chief Lt Worf, Leonard as the intrepid Capt Jean-Luc Picard, and Sheldon as the android Lt Commander Data. (© Monty Brinton/CBS © 2012 CBS Broadcasting, Inc)
➢ Big Bang Theory guys boldly go out in Star Trek costumes – from Entertainment Weekly – Supremely awesome photo from this week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory (aired in the USA). Click on for further explanation
❚ SOME F***BOOKERS might think shedding a load of virtual “friends” a very good New Year’s resolution. “Crack open an ice-cold PBR, stretch out in your skinny jeans, and take the quiz,” says the invitation to discover How hipster are you? Sadly, this irresistible ploy is a Facebook app so will involve compromising all your privacy settings and will of course reset to their defaults “How people bring your info to apps they use”. That means welcoming Facebook’s “one billion active users” to your quiz results. The quizmakers themselves claim that “only 2.5% of all people are true hipsters”. Do you really want one seventh of the world’s population knowing how uncool you might just be? Bit of an own-goal there, Zuckerberg Mi.
On the other hand, Katherine P from Birmingham posts: “Somehow I don’t think I need to do the quiz to know the answer.”
Posted in Europe, Media, North America, Social trends
Tagged hipsters, internet, New Year, quiz, resolutions, social media, world population
Futuristic puppet stars: Gerry Anderson with Virgil, Brains, Lady Penelope and Parker the chauffeur. (Picture: David O’Neill / Rex)
“ Gerry Anderson, who has died aged 83 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, was the main mover behind a number of puppet series commissioned by Lew Grade’s Independent Television Corporation. They made the company a fortune from the space age: perhaps the best known was Thunderbirds (1965-66), and among the others were Fireball XL5 (1962-63), Stingray (1964) and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-68).
Factoid: Thunderbirds hero Jeff Tracy and
his sons John, Scott, Virgil, Alan and Gordon were all
named after early American astronauts
Captain Scarlet as Royal Mail postage stamp last year
“ The pre-ITV world of the early 50s had been one of puppets such as Muffin the Mule and the Flowerpot Men, a mirror for a Britain on extremely visible strings. Rocket men, on BBC radio, Radio Luxembourg and in the Eagle comic, meant Dan Dare and Jet Morgan – recycled Biggles and Battle of Britain pilots. After Anderson, they were destined for the galactic dole queue, just as Eagle’s demise was hastened by the arrival of Anderson spin-offs such as TV Century 21 (1965-71). “Everything we did,” Anderson told his biographers Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn, in What Made Thunderbirds Go! (2002), “was in an endeavour to sell to America”, and Grade spectacularly achieved that with Fireball XL5, a US network sale to NBC. Thunderbirds, shown across the world and more than a dozen times on British TV, is the show that defines the Anderson achievement, yet never attracted a US network… ” / Continued at Guardian Online
➢ F-A-B gallery of Gerry Anderson creations at Guardian Online
➢ 2011, Brains explains “lenticular” Thunderbirds postage stamps
Thunderbirds’ secret base at Tracy Island: model kit comes with miniature versions of the Thunderbird 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. “Some assembly required.” From Dragon Models USA, $115
➢ Paul Hammans on the extraordinary dynamics of Stingray:
Stingray’s Troy Tempest and “Aqua” Marina (Photo: ITV)
“ Anderson’s third series in Supermarionation brought a new level of emotional literacy to the genre, albeit one difficult to define. Gradually the move had been made and puppetry was continuing to move toward greater realism, but let’s not get this out of proportion; it was not the end of innocence. Puppetry of the Gerry Anderson variety, despite being set in an imaginary future began to appear more relevant at a deeper level for the audience of the day. The transaction in any learning process depends upon emotional involvement and increasingly the puppet series got you involved… ” / Continued at Cult Britannia
Posted in London, North America, Technology, TV
Tagged 1960s, Captain Scarlet, Fireball XL5, Gerry Anderson, puppetry, Stingray, Supermarionation, Thunderbirds
Picture sleeve painted by vocalist Chris Sullivan, 1982
❚ TWO VINTAGE MUSICAL GEMS appeared online this week, casting a fresh magic spell. They are two tracks from Chewing the Fat, the debut album by the image dance-band of 80s clubland, Blue Rondo à la Turk. In the view of Shapersofthe80s, the 9-track stereo vinyl LP was then and remains now the standout pop album of 1982 for sheer verve and originality. Chris Sullivan, the band’s driving force who went on to run Soho’s Wag club for 19 years, has been remixing the Diable Noir masters which became available only a few months ago.
This week we heard the sparkling Change Club Mix 2, an original Poncioni-Sullivan composition tagged as “Afro-Latino funk”, and only released previously on the album. Sullivan says we can download the remix as a 58MB Wav file from Soundcloud so it plays right away through iTunes. “We’ll leave it up for downloads for a week,” he said. “Blue Rondo recorded this over 30 years ago and remixed it this year… Still shakes it.” At Facebook, Rondo fan Michael Feasey agrees: “Good stuff Chris – love that samba percussion coming up to 4:00 and the gritty sax. Hell, it’s all good.”
Picture sleeve painted by vocalist Chris Sullivan,1982
The band’s second chart single was the witty Klacto Vee Sedstein. (“It’s got to mean something, it can’t be a dream” – Well, the title was inspired by Charlie Parker’s 1947 number, if not the tune itself.) Rondo’s track enlivened the top 100 for nearly six months, and its “mutant funk” has now emerged from the glitz of Godley & Creme’s 80s production. As Sullivan says: “This is how we’d have liked to have done the song initially but all we’ve done is clean it up a bit and take it back to the original idea… This was recorded 31 years ago.” Verdict at Mixcloud from Mark Huxley: “Lovely stripped down mix!”
Best revelation from Sullivan also came this week: “Expect a digital re-release of our album Chewing The Fat in the spring. I’m quite shocked by how well it’s aged.” He’s not wrong there.
♫ Listen to Klacto Vee Sedstein 2012, as it was meant to sound
First published in New Sounds New Styles, August 1981
Michael Zilkha and Michel Esteban: label founders combined their initials into ZE
♫ Sullivan also offered an hour-long Mutant Disco mix for a recent Mark Jones show on BBC 6Music – The party kicks off with Contort Yourself (August Darnell remix from the 1979 US 12-incher) by No Wave pioneer James White & The Blacks on ZE Records, the boutique label based in Paris and New York which recharged the disco genre with edge and credibility while Manhattanites pursued dance-oriented rock and Euro-disco wandered its own byways, both folkloric and electronic.
Launched in 1978 by British-born old Oxonian and Mothercare heir Michael Zilkha, and French graphic artist Michel Esteban, ZE selected style-leading eccentrics of the day to redefine upfront New York disco. The Sullivan mix includes ZE artists such as Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kid Creole & The Coconuts, Was (Not Was), Coati Mundi, Material, though alas no Cristina. The title of ZE’s witty vinyl cocktail of acts tagged “A Subtle Discolation of the Norm” put the term Mutant Disco into the language in 1981, and acted as soundtrack to the first Blitz invasion of the US that spring.
Sullivan explains, Dec 3: “Here’s a live mix straight off the decks I did for Mark Jones Back to the Phuture show on BBC 6Music. Kinda all that early 80s electro Ze records stuff we loved and still do … They’ve edited some of the mixes but still it’s a bit of a gas … With a few exceptions this is what I played at Hell” [the Blitz crowd’s breakaway club of 1980].
❚ DAVE GAHAN, MARTIN GORE AND ANDY FLETCHER of Britain’s original pioneering synth band Depeche Mode, formed in 1980, will play 34 must-see stadium shows in 25 European countries to an audience of more than 1.5 million fans, before taking the tour to North America. The tour kicks off with an open-air stadium show in Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park on Tuesday May 7.
❏ London O2 tickets on sale Friday Oct 26 (pre-sale Oct 25) for May 28 and 29 at:
➢ Live Nation and standing only at ➢ TicketMaster
Updated Oct 30, 2012
Posted in Europe, London, Media, North America, Pop music
Tagged 2013, dates, Dave Gahan, Depeche Mode, Europe, Stadium Tour
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
➢ Search for all on Bowie here
at Shapers of the 80s
✱ “I’m not a rock star” Bowie often said – No, David, you were a messiah – Obituaries and key videos about
the godlike one
✱ Prince Rogers Nelson RIP: ‘A funny cat’ and ‘sole authentic genius’ of the 1980s
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 