Category Archives: Pop music

➤ Rusty and Steve raise a storm on the Croisette

Posted on 17 May 2013 | Leave a comment
Canvas-Club on the beach opposite Carlton Cannes hotel

Canvas-Club on the beach opposite Carlton Cannes hotel

❚ IN CANNES FOR THE FILM FESTIVAL TONIGHT? So are former 80s Blitz Kids, club deejay Rusty Egan and Spandau Ballet’s sax-percussionist Steve Norman, and you can catch their storming double act at the pop-up Canvas-Club on the beach opposite Carlton Cannes hotel, on the Croisette May 17–19… Then the pair move off to Ibiza where they perform fortnightly at the Nassau Beach Club on Playa D’en Bossa from May to Sept.

STEVE NORMAN RINGS IN TO REPORT:

“ Our first night was pretty relaxed. Cannes during the film festival feels fantastic. There are full-on business meetings day and night in the Canvas-Club where we’re jamming. The last time I was here was 2009 when Spandau announced we were going to make a film (and that is due out next year). But there was a completely different vibe at the Midem music festival where people do deals all day then let themselves go at night. For the film business it’s all deals. They’re not a club crowd, so we adapt accordingly.

“ Rusty is brilliant at gauging the audience’s mood, making a seamless transition from dinner table to dancefloor. He warmed up the dinner session lifting the pace gradually, then I rocked up about 10pm vibing on top of his music to kick things off into a Latin fury. We play a soulful mix of house music, quite funky but definitely not retro. Next we’re off to Ibiza – my second home, where I left a little piece of me – and we’re appearing fortnightly on Mondays at Nassau Beach Club from May 27 through till September. These places are springing up all over. It used to be a beach bar and has mushroomed into a nightclub on the sand. People will be chilling by day, then going for it by night. ”

Rusty Egan, Steve Norman, DJ, Cannes, Ibiza

Rusty and Steve: discs, drums, percussion and sax!

➢ The Canvas-Club in Cannes requires membership – Restaurant service during the day, bar service with star deejays in the evenings.

➢ While he’s away catch Rusty’s Electricity Club radio show broadcast every Friday from midnight till 2am on Mi-Soul.com

➢ Catch up with Rusty’s Electricity Club shows on demand

➢ Catch up with Steve Norman at Facebook

Rusty adds: “I have been very busy writing and recording new music under the title Welcome to the Dancefloor and will be ready to release some stuff very soon. Visit Soundcloud to sample some.”

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➤ Magic! A million views up for Commander Chris sitting in his tin can singing Bowie

Posted on 13 May 2013 | Leave a comment

❚ SEE HOW PLANET EARTH IS BLUE! Wow how the stars look very different today, rising in the black void! Thrill to the International Space Station whizzing over clouds in a most spectacular way! Here’s a video made by a station commander, sitting in his tin can singing the defining Bowie hit from 1969, the year man went to the Moon. What a way to inspire new generations of would-be space explorers, sung 230 miles above the earth by one of the latest successors to Major Tom.

Last night, this wondrous HD video cover version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity was posted on YouTube by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the space station, which is the largest artificial body in orbit. Viewed at full-screen, its pin-sharp photography combines poetry and awe and speed and perspective and human scale more honestly than any special-effects movie. Seeing stars rise over a black horizon fixed in their constellations itself fixes the vehicle firmly in the firmament of space, while beneath the Great Big World Keeps On Turning. This alone is a magical moment of unparalleled apprehension.

“With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here is Space Oddity, recorded on Station,” he tweeted. “A last glimpse of the World.” 
Overnight his personal post has clocked a million views, quite apart from scores of other media postings. It was Hadfield’s parting act for the digital media on the eve of his return to Earth today after nearly five months in zero-gravity. And Bowie replied with the tweet “Hallo spaceboy”.

Commander Chris, a former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, was the first Canadian astronaut to walk in space. On December 19, he took off for a long-duration stay on board the ISS as part of Expedition 35. He is the first Canadian to command the space station and its six staff. And now, as the song goes, it’s time to leave the capsule …

CLICK ANY PIC TO LAUNCH CAROUSEL:

Video stills courtesy of Canadian Space Agency/Chris Hadfield/EMI/Mercury Records

➢ British astronaut Piers Sellers recalls the unique smell of space

➢ Technology made simple – 18 TED talks from astronauts, including Chris Hadfield

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Posted in Media, North America, Pop music, Technology

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➤ Reborn Alison Moyet lets herself off the mainstream leash

Posted on 4 May 2013 | Leave a comment
Robert Elms ,interview,album, Alison Moyet

No longer “a cheap date”: Robert Elms with Alison Moyet today

❚ ALISON MOYET HAS COMPLETED her eighth solo album, The Minutes, with Guy Sigsworth on production creating a whole new synthesised sound. It is released on May 6 on the Cooking Vinyl label. Today she talked to Robert Elms on his BBC London show about slipping into “electro-jazz” and being able to say No to merely doing more cover versions. “I wanted to play a bit.”

She surprises Robert by saying, yes she is a mainstream artist, but regards herself as an instrumentalist, that her first instrument is “a voice – I love chanson, like Brel or Michel Legrand. But as well as being a voice, I’m an artist where voice is not the main thing, it can be about the lyric or the melody. I don’t always want the voice to be the focus!”

Alison Moyet, the Basildon punk, high priestess of electronic pop and peerless soul singer, set out as Genevieve Alison Jane. An Essex girl born to a French father and English mother, she left school at 16, became famous at 21 as singer in Yazoo, and released her triple-platinum solo debut, Alf, at 23. She found fame hard to handle at such a young age, but hindsight has helped her appreciate those experiences. “For a while in the mid-80s, it was amusing to be a pop bitch, but that changed, and it stopped being enough. Now I am able to put my early work into context and find pleasure in the innocence of it.” Between 1984 and 1987, Moyet was Britain’s biggest female solo star.

➢ Robert Elms interviews Alison Moyet on BBC London 94.9 and plays two singles, 4 May 2013 (last half hour) – on iPlayer for seven days

➢ On video, May 15: Alison Moyet talks to Absolute 80s Martyn Lee about her new album The Minutes

♫ Preview clips from Alison Moyet’s The Minutes, out May 6. The first single When I Was Your Girl is on sale already

➢ The Minutes tour starts Sep 30 in Cork and hits London’s Royal Festival Hall on Oct 15, ends Oct 31

➢ Moyet’s comeback single – ‘my happiest studio experience’

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➤ Material Girl Madonna pops up in LA

Posted on 30 Apr 2013 | Leave a comment
Material Girl ,Madonna, Macy’s

Material Girl retrospective at Macy’s LA

➢ Sneak glimpse on the Material World blog of the Material Girl Collection on display at Macy’s Los Angeles – “We just got back from our Material Girl Madonna Pop-Up Fashion Exhibit. Where should we start? From Madonna’s iconic never-before-seen fashion pieces like Jean Paul Gaultier’s iconic corset, to the blasting music, to the amazing crowd of Material Girls and Boys – it was a night we’ll never forget”

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1983 ➤ A True romance aboard Spandau’s triumphal Thames riverboat

Posted on 29 Apr 2013 | Leave a comment
Spandau Ballet,1983, tour, Gary Kemp

Spandau over Bournemouth, 1 April 1983: Gary Kemp teases the screamers at the Good Friday show in the Pavilion Theatre. © Shapersofthe80s

❚ YES IT’S 30 YEARS SINCE Spandau Ballet scored their only No 1 chart hit single with True, coinciding with their epic “Spandau Over Britain Tour”. By May 3, True the album reached No 1, while the single remained at No 1 as well. The band’s official website is celebrating with a month of recollections from 1983 and asking UK fans to offer their own memories. Naturally Shapersofthe80s was there on the waterfront and has a few inside stories of its own.

The month-long tour ended in triumph at London’s Royal Festival Hall 30 years ago today, on Friday April 29, because True hit the top spot in the UK singles chart and the night before Spandau topped the bill on Top of the Pops – only two weeks after its release. After the London gig there followed a right old knees-up for friends and family aboard a Thames riverboat. As it cast off Shapersofthe80s was onboard and snapped a True romance as Steve “Spiny” Norman took to the dance floor with bass-player Martin Kemp, while Steve’s mum Sheila tried to muscle in. Here are our snaps, never seen before.

CLICK ANY PIC TO LAUNCH CAROUSEL:

Aboard Spandau’s True riverboat: Steve Norman and Martin Kemp take to the dancefloor, while Sheila Norman asks to join in
Steve and Martin are in heaven… See anybody else you know? Of course: future Spandau biographer Paul Simper in dog-tooth suit from Robot with added Wham!
Steve’s mum Sheila joins the chorus line, and backing singer Sam Brown joins Martin
At last, mother and son get to boogey together

The band’s third album True, produced by Tony Swain and Steve Jolley, had preceded the tour and was to yield several chart hits across the world, Gold among them. The tour moved on to Europe in the summer and to North America in the autumn, when Shapersofthe80s will have some wild eye-witness scenes to report – laters…

➢ May 1 update: all five members of Spandau Ballet have agreed to an individual ‘TRUE’ Twitter Q&A session with fans, according to the official Spandau website – Q&A sessions start at 8pm (BST) on the official Spandau Twitter account, not their personal accounts, as follows: Gary May 3, Martin May 6, John May 7, Steve May 9, Tony tbc.

➢ 30th anniversary interview with Gary Kemp
at UK Official Charts website

The Observer OMM Oct 4, 2009

The Observer OMM Oct 4, 2009

HOW IT ALL BEGAN FOR
THE ANGEL BOYS

➢ Read the story of Spandau Ballet,
the Blitz Kids and the birth of the New Romantics
in my feature at The Observer

➢ Photographer Neil Matthews, another friend of Spandau from their earliest days, has been celebrating with an exhibition of his popstar photos titled My 80s Through the Lens, at The Great British Restaurant, 14 North Audley Street, London W1K 6WE. All images can be viewed online and are for sale in limited editions printed on smart archival paper. As well as Spandau, his subjects include Bananarama, Blue Rondo, Bauhaus, Haysi Fantayzee, Malcolm McLaren, The Jam, Nick Heyward, Bow Wow Wow and more.

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