✱ After celebrating 40+1 years of music, Toyah Willcox continues #Toyah & Robert’s Sunday Lunch on TikTok at noon Sundays and resumes live concerts with full electric band throughout 2023 – details at Toyah’s website – plus Toyah Live At Drury Lane – her legendary Christmas Eve 1981 concert – is being released during 2023 from Cherry Red Records.
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✱ Ultravox hero Midge Ure’s Voice & Vision tours pursues its rescheduled dates through 2023 until August, revitalising the decade of electronics and celebrating 40 years since the release of Ultravox’s Rage In Eden and Quartet albums.
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✱ Johnny Marr’s fourth solo album Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 features his single Night and Day which dreams of his future: New night new day/ New life a new age/ New times and new ways. . . Still touring.
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✱ One Nation Under the Groove – the Eighties Wag club frontman Chris Sullivan these days deejays for Acklam Village events, Portobello Radio, Soho Radio and at the Groucho club in Soho… playing rare funk and disco from the likes of Mantus, Father Time,The Kinsman Band plus Parliament, Bohannon, Larry Young, and Latin funk. Follow Sullivan’s clubland activity at Facebook. . . His book Rebel Rebel is “a riotous history of people and things that broke the mould”. Vigorous prose and serious research substantiate his invitation to “an exceptional party” profiling cultural giants who embrace Rod Steiger, Fela Kuti, Louise Brooks, Orson Welles, Anita Pallenberg, David Bowie. Intense stuff.
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◆ INSIDE STORY AT SHAPERS OF THE 80S – Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet on our inside page
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Gabby Egan: churning out the remixes
✱ Apart from being a seminal force in forging the new pop music of the Swinging Eighties, Blitz Club deejay Rusty Egan’s own “electro-diskow” album, Welcome to the Dancefloor, amounts to a superb sonic landmark. In 2016 Egan and a starry cast of collaborators set out to humanise the potential starkness many associate with electronica. His 13 chosen tracks showcase, for example, Midge Ure, Kira Porter and Tony Hadley to reflect the wide spectrum of synth possibilities, half being love songs in the spirit of the Eighties generation who were dubbed by the press New Romantics. Read the full album review at Shapersofthe80s… Since then the gabbiest deejay in town turns out ever more remixes. Visit his output online at Welcome to the Remix at Bandcamp plus Mixcloud and personal playlists at Soundcloud.
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✱ Londoner Robb Scott’s 18-track album Siren won the Bright Star Music Award for Best Soul / R& B Album 2018, brainchild of Colourful Radio. Its collection of classy soul/jazz grooves was superbly crafted with a strong supporting lineup for the Expansion label. Purchase directly from the artist’s store. Expected in May 2023 is a new single, Get Over You, with Leee John of Imagination partnering Robb.
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Jools Holland: you too can play live at Canary Wharf tube station
✱ Jools Holland is the second Yamaha artist promoting a #Platform88 piano in London, this time at Canary Wharf tube station, after Tokio Myers launched the first at Tottenham Court Rd. Part of a joint initiative with Transport for London, these public pianos are also at St Pancras mainline station and all over the tube system for you to play your way
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✱ Danmingo is a self-produced singer-songwriter double album of 22 tracks from London clubland’s Steve Swindells, featuring Jon (Culture Club) Moss on drums, Winston (Massive Attack) Blissett and Dale (Amy Winehouse Band) Davis on bass, Jerry (Hawkwind) Richards on guitar and myself on keyboards and vocals. “Deep lyrics and flawless music,” says one Amazon reviewer
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✱ Here is the definitive appreciation of the style bible that shaped the 1980s. . . Cultural guru Paul Gorman tells The Story of The Face from the magazine’s launch with £3,500 of Nick Logan’s savings in 1980 to its sale to Emap in 1999, in between “paving the way for the digital delivery of visual culture in the 21st century”. – From Thames & Hudson, £35 for 352 pages, 379 illustrations!
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“Friend of the stars” Paul Simper, right: lavishing hospitality on superstar George Michael and Bananarama’s Keren Woodward in 1983. (Photo Fraser Gray)
✱ Pop Stars in My Pantry is my showbiz pal Paul Simper’s memoir of the early days of one of pop’s most successful eras: the 1980s. It’s an account of how a wide-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears lad from Wiltshire landed in London just as the capital’s club scene went into orbit. His claim is to have been “corrupted by Spandau, slated by Boy George, mothered by Sade, evicted by Bananarama, private danced by Whitney, jilted by Madonna and commandeered (for carol singing) by Wham!” Available from Amazon… Read an extract here at Shapers of the 80s – Sade’s first foray to New York City
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Survivors CD compilation on Expansion Records
✱ Now enjoying its 18th year, Soul Survivors Magazine dedicates issue 102 to The Music Aquarium in March 2023, available online as a digital edition … Under deejay Fitzroy Facey, the mag provides an interactive website and a weekly events email.
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✱ Check website for activity… Quids In Mons, Rewind Tues, Toxic Weds, Double Drop Thurs, #FRI251, Fac Sats 3-in-1 at the legendary Factory Manchester – clubnights, cocktail masterclasses and live bands – chart, dance, EDM, RNB, house, garage, hiphop and indie over three floors designed by Ben Kelly on Princess St, Manchester M1 7EN – @factorymanchester
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✱ Manchester’s Remake Remodel claims to be “The Nation’s Saving Grace of Alternative, Rock’n’Roll” — though @RemakeRemodel1 seems to have vanished in the lockdown… Now past their 10th anniversary, they’re bound to be still in the Winchester having a pint and waiting for all this to blow over…
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✱ BBC Music’s updates live throughout the week
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HELLO TO VISITORS ACROSS THE GLOBE
❖ Visitors to Shapers of the 80s come from 212 countries and dependencies as recorded at Revolver Maps — 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 Kjøllefjord in Norway (70°56′N, 27°20′E), a nudge nearer the Pole than others in Finnmark, and at Murmansk in Russia (68°58′N, 33°05′E).
TAGS – Chris Sullivan, Johnny Marr, Paul Gorman, Toyah Willcox, Paul Simper, Rusty Egan, Fitzroy Facey, Factory Manchester, Soup Kitchen Manchester, live dates, Steve Swindells, Danmingo, Robb Scott, Jools Holland, #Platform88, Spandau Ballet, Swinging Eighties, Blitz Kids
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 