2010 ➤ A giant dies: Charlie Gillett, the man who defined rock’n’roll and world music

Posted on 18 Mar 2010 | Leave a comment
Charlie Gillett, BBC, Radio London

Charlie Gillett at BBC Radio London: he presented the influential Honky Tonk from 1972 until 1978

❚ ONE OF THE MOST ENDURING INFLUENCES on the British and other music scenes died yesterday. Charlie Gillett was a passionate music publisher, journalist, author in 1970 of the first serious book to appraise the birth of rock’n’roll, and a much-loved deejay who presented “possibly the most engaging show on British radio”.

In 1997 he celebrated some of his discoveries in a massive Sunday Times reference work, 1,000 Makers of Music. He was part of a panel who first coined the term “world music” and from 1999 became internationally renowned through the BBC World Service. From January this year, for health reasons, Charlie decided to take a rest from his work. This morning, his own Sound of the World website was inundated with tributes, while Charlie’s choice of music was still streaming at his djjackdaw page at MySpace, along with a beautiful and resonant video of the French chanteuse Soha singing C’est bien mieux comme ça…

➢➢ Full tributes and links to Charlie
Gillett’s world of music

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2010 ➤ Barcelona: Spandau wow lifelong fans in their other spiritual home

Posted on 14 Mar 2010 | Leave a comment
Steve Norman, Barcelona

Steve Norman doppelgangers in BCN: live in yer face at front of stage and caught on the video backdrop. Pictured © by Shapersofthe80s

➢➢ View the video of Normski’s live sax break here

❚ STEVE NORMAN GIVES A THUMBS-UP to Shapersofthe80s during one of his dirrrty sax solos on Friday in the closing stages of the European leg of Spandau Ballet’s Reformation world tour. The band had to take in Spain, obviously, and we were there along with their families who weren’t going to miss a weekend in Barcelona – and that included two grannies, Steve’s mum Sheila and Tony Hadley’s mum Josie, both of whom once cut fine figures on the dance floors of yore.

During the Swinging 80s the cosmopolitan and leafy capital of the “autonomous community” of Catalonia – proud to have its own language and its own parliament – became the hippest city on the continent. Any number of London’s pop cognoscenti from Sade to writer Robert Elms made their homes in Barcelona and those who didn’t made this global city a civilised holiday destination to rival the naked hedonism of Ibiza or the Costa Brava. For the Spanish, Spandau enlivened the pop scene at exactly the right moment…

➢➢ Click to continue reading full reports
on the Barcelona contingent

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➤ Albums that defined the new 80s funk

Posted on 8 Mar 2010 | Leave a comment

Spandau Ballet,Journeys to Glory, Diamond, teen scream,Glow, UK tour, 1982, live, Bournemouth

HITS FROM 1981 & 1982

◆ These are the unique rhythms of Spandau Ballet’s earliest tracks, which changed the sound of the British pop charts for ever. Released today are remastered special editions of Spandau’s first two albums across four CDs: March 1981’s synth-led Journeys To Glory, and Diamond, the first soulful singles for which were being released to satisfy fast-changing tastes in the UK even as the first album took off in North America. Bonuses include 12-inch remixes of the band’s debut single To Cut A Long Story Short, The Freeze and Glow — a much underestimated gem driven by Keeble’s “boom-ka” dancebeat — plus a previously unreleased BBC session from March 1981 … Bonuses on the Diamond set include remixes of what became 1982’s clubbing anthem for soulboys and girls, Chant No 1 (just pipped at the post for the chart No 1 spot), Instinction, Paint Me Down and She Loved Like Diamond — all of which are appearing for the first time in CD format. The listing contains five previously unreleased BBC tracks recorded on April 10, 1982, live at the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth, during the UK tour that saw Spandau trigger the return of the full-throated teen scream.

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2010 ➤ Rusty decrees who’s in, who’s out and what’s up

Posted on 23 Feb 2010 | Leave a comment
Rusty Egan

Egan today: “slower and warmer”

On Feb 22, 2010 Rusty Egan – onetime Blitz club deejay and livewire promoter today – gave a long assessment of current trends to the website of Glasswerk, the new music promotors. Here’s one squib:

❚ “VISAGE STARTED AS A COLLECTION of my favourite musicians currently available to make music for me to play at the Blitz club. I had a sound in my head and heart and wanted to make people dance and think and to send them on a trip during the evening…

“I would love to create a Visage 2010. What would I need? Creativity in the writing and the performance of the vocal. If I were to compile a CD of amazing music from all genres and play it in a club it would be slower, warmer and melodic and the lyrics would have to have meaning… Imagine Massive Attack, Portishead and Beth Ditto on vocals and the clarity of Kraftwerk… plus Calvin Harris and Deadmau5 and Chris Lake remixes. These people have the soul and the right structure for me. Chase & Status, Pendulum have the excitement…”

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2010 ➤ Feast of remixes on new ‘Very Best’ of Visage album

Posted on 11 Feb 2010 | 1 comment

Visage 1980 outside the Blitz: Rusty Egan, John McGeoch, Barry Adamson, Dave Formula, Billy Currie, Steve Strange, Midge Ure. Picture © by Sheila Rock

❚ MARCO PIRRONI, GARY KEMP AND BROADCASTER GARY CROWLEY were among the 80s faces who turned out for last night’s launch of a new CD compilation, The Face: The Very Best of Visage which goes on sale March 8. It contains 15 Visage tracks including new 2010 remixes of classic New Romantic dance anthems. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of their first chart hit from 1980, Fade to Grey, there are no less than four versions onboard (one by Michael Gray of The Weekend and Borderline, and another by Ministry of Sound deejay Lee Mortimer), plus remixes of Mind of a Toy, The Anvil, and a 12-inch dance mix of the single Visage.

Fronting their “Evening of sublime 80s self-indulgence” club-night in Chelsea were two 80s clubbing wizards Chris Sullivan and Rusty Egan (read more) who was the drummer with Visage and the Rich Kids.

Supercool in ’78: Egan, Strange and Ure establish Visage

Egan also became a deejay because he hated those flash guys who talked incessantly over the music in discos. He wanted to pioneer a new kind of synth-driven British electro-diskow and sought inspiration in Germany from the likes of Kraftwerk and avantgarde producer Konrad “Conny” Plank. In 1979, the Blitz club-night in London became his sounding board and it went on to inspire a vast slipstream of new British bands who changed the sound of the charts during the early 80s.

Along with Egan, Visage’s founding members in 1978 were the Blitz greeter Steve Strange, and musical polymath Midge Ure, who simultaneously became the lead singer with Ultravox in April 1979. Echoes of their pioneering electropop resonate in the charts today through acts such as Lady Gaga, La Roux, Little Boots and MGMT.

➢➢ Steve Strange celebrates the launch of The Face album at London’s Green Carnation on March 19

➢➢ Read about the fashion show Steve Strange and Rusty Egan took to Paris in 1982

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