Category Archives: North America

➤ George Michael celebrates his golden years of Faith


❚ NEWLY RELEASED JAN 31, 2011: A remastered version of George Michael’s debut solo album, Faith, from November 1987, is out on Epic/Legacy in the UK and tomorrow the US. There is also a DVD featuring a TV special from 1987, George Michael and Jonathan Ross Have Words, a 25-minute Music Money Love Faith EPK, plus seven remastered promo videos. All available through Michael’s international online retail store.

Faith won a Grammy Award as album of its year, for which Michael wrote and produced every track except one, among them six top-five singles. The first released, I Want Your Sex, went to No 3 in the chart and not unexpectedly caused censorship problems around the world. The daddy of US pop radio hosts, Casey Kasem, refused to say the full song title on air, referring to it only as “the new single from George Michael”. Having gone solo, Michael was after all trying to lay the ghost of his teenybopper image so successully established in Wham! at the age of 20 with his best friend Andrew Ridgeley. Sample their first Top of The Pops appearance as Young Guns, which hit No 3 in 1982, below.

Michael had of course already enjoyed  two UK chart-toppers, Careless Whispers in 1984 and A Different Corner in 1986, and in all has achieved eight No 1 singles in the US, his last in 1991. Before all that stuff happened.

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➤ Index of posts for December 2010

Duran Duran, 80s, pop

The early Duran Duran: discovered by invitation in 1980

➢ 80s shapers win 2010 New Year Honours for fashion, music and walking in space

➢ 1980 secrets revealed about the SAS, arming Afghanistan and death of the tanner

➢ 1980, As Spandau play in Heaven, all around we can hear the new sounds of 1981

➢ 1980s, So many shapers shaped the decade that people think was all down to Margaret Thatcher — key books of the year

John Lennon death, Daily Mirror, people magazine, 30th anniversary
➢ What larks! Festive fun and games and British ways to make merry

➢ A jolly festive tree by Andrew Logan

➢ 2010, Duran no turkey: here’s the Bacofoil video and two new tracks premiered at East Village Radio

➢ 1980, How Duran Duran’s road to stardom began in the Studio 54 of Birmingham

➢ A feast of Bowie-ana served in waffeur-thin slices

➢ Whatta they like? Essex reality stars shake their vajazzles in the face of Hollywood

➢ 1980, The Lennon we knew: unfulfilled talent with a genius for making friends the world over

Adam & The Ants, David Bowie, Swinging 80s,Top Of The Pops
➢ 1980, The week the Swinging 80s clicked into gear

➢ Live online now, mad hatter Stephen Jones

➢ This £5m iPhone has to be a spoof! Yes, that’s $7.8m or €6m or 52m Chinese Yuan or 245m Russian Rubles

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➤ 200 new acts tipped for the new year in music

new music,tips for 2011
Shapersofthe80s has picked one act, almost randomly, from each of these lists published online by enthusiasts who between them have tipped more than 200 entertainers for the year ahead, so don’t say you’ve nothing new to listen to!

Nicki Minaj, pop Pinglewood — The world’s oldest music blog claims to have been at the bleeding edge “Posting mp3s since 1983” (unlikely since MPEG-1 didn’t appear till 1988, so may be record-holder for digital irony)
♫ Pick: Nicki Minaj

Drowned in Sound — Editorially independent music webzine, founded 1998, edited by Sean Adams
♫ Pick: Paris Suit Yourself

NME — Popular music magazine published weekly in the UK since 1952
♫ Pick: The Vaccines

Louder Than War — “We believe in the power of Rock’n’Roll” … a website dedicated to international punk rock pop culture, founded November 2010
♫ Pick: Deadbeat Echoes

Brother, acidlove, pop Designer Magazine — Gig promoters and Manchester’s third largest source of indie entertainment news set up five years ago for readers who access the web through low-spec computers at university, work or school
♫ Pick: Brother

Female First — Naomi Havergal’s selection for a “celebrity gossip and lifestyle” magazine website launched 2002 and published by First Active Media Ltd in Wigan, Lancashire
♫ Pick: We Are Enfant Terrible

NewBandDay — Totally anonymous and unaccountable “community” website published since 2010 on WordPress, so why heed a thing it says?
♫ Pick: Playfellow

Red Bull — Music journalist Bella Todd’s selection for the website of Red Bull, the controversial Austrian energy drink, created 1987
♫ Pick: Daley

JessieJ , pop BBC Sound of 2011 — Part of UK national broadcaster’s website where the Sound of 2011 list “aims to highlight the most promising new music for the year ahead, chosen by 161 UK-based tastemakers”, listed in alphabetical order from Sean Adams of Drowned in Sound to Radio 1 presenter, Reggie Yates
♫ Pick: Jessie J

The Guardian — Paul Lester’s first selection this year in New Band of the Day series published on UK national newspaper website
♫ Pick: D/R/U/G/S

Music Week’s key signings 2010 — Stuart Clarke’s selection of newish acts snapped up by A&R departments “all of whom will be vying for attention this year” according to 50-year-old UK music industry business magazine
♫ Pick: Creep

Still Corners, pop The Line Of Best Fit — An “editorial community of creative people united through a mutual love of good music”, founded 2007 in the UK by bloggers Rich Hughes and Rich Thane
♫ Pick: Still Corners

Nopaininpop — Religious music label since 2007 adminned at Facebook by Tom King and Thomas Oldham (both ex-Goldsmiths College London) and trading at Greedbag without any credible credentials while their original domain nopaininpop.com appears to be offline (registered by Tobias Jones of Peckham, London). Would you trust your soul to this dodgy bunch of missionaries?
♫ Pick: Forest Swords

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➤ Discover Ubu while Christopher Walken takes flight to Fatboy Slim

➢ IF YOU’VE NEVER VISITED UBU.COM,
CLICK HERE NOW FOR THIS
♫ ♫ NEW YEAR BON BOUCHE

Weapon of Choice,Spike Jonze,  Fatboy Slim, Christopher Walken

Weapon of Choice: director Spike Jonze, music Fatboy Slim, image © Panopticon

❚ WEAPON OF CHOICE is a short video clip of a Fatboy Slim track directed by Spike Jonze. Yes, that is Christopher Walken performing a swing-from-the-rafters dance solo as a weary businessman who unexpectedly launches himself into the hotel lobby. And, yes again, Walken has a long history as a dancer, and you’ll be even more impressed with his tap-and-strip routine in the 1981 film musical Pennies From Heaven, below, which derived, clunk-click, from Dennis Potter’s Bafta award-winning BBC television drama in 1978, clunk-click-whirr, which made a star of Bob Hoskins.

But Shapersofthe80s is sending you first to UbuWeb to view Weapon of Choice because if you’ve travelled this far into the 21st century without discovering the mightiest single website for the 20th-century’s outsider avantgarde, this is your electric moment. Weapon of Choice (2001) is among the UbuWeb Top Ten videos for January 2011 selected by Paula Scher, an American graphic designer who turned out her fair share of album sleeves en route to Pentagram.

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2010 ➤ Index of posts for December

Duran Duran, 80s, pop

The early Duran Duran: discovered by invitation in 1980

➢ 80s shapers win 2010 New Year Honours for fashion, music and walking in space

➢ 1980 secrets revealed about the SAS, arming Afghanistan and death of the tanner

➢ 1980, As Spandau play in Heaven, all around we can hear the new sounds of 1981

➢ 1980s, So many shapers shaped the decade that people think was all down to Margaret Thatcher — key books of the year

John Lennon death, Daily Mirror, people magazine, 30th anniversary
➢ What larks! Festive fun and games and British ways to make merry

➢ A jolly festive tree by Andrew Logan

➢ 2010, Duran no turkey: here’s the Bacofoil video and two new tracks premiered at East Village Radio

➢ 1980, How Duran Duran’s road to stardom began in the Studio 54 of Birmingham

➢ A feast of Bowie-ana served in waffeur-thin slices

➢ Whatta they like? Essex reality stars shake their vajazzles in the face of Hollywood

➢ 1980, The Lennon we knew: unfulfilled talent with a genius for making friends the world over

Adam & The Ants, David Bowie, Swinging 80s,Top Of The Pops
➢ 1980, The week the Swinging 80s clicked into gear

➢ Live online now, mad hatter Stephen Jones

➢ This £5m iPhone has to be a spoof! Yes, that’s $7.8m or €6m or 52m Chinese Yuan or 245m Russian Rubles

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