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1983: Neil Tennant as Smash Hits writer. (Photo by Virginia Turbett)
❚ ANOTHER NICELY PACKAGED Radio 4 documentary today celebrated the crucial years 1982–85 which Neil Tennant describes as “the golden age of 80s pop”. They luckily coincided with his tenure as a writer on Smash Hits magazine before stepping into the pop charts himself as half of the Pet Shop Boys. Obviously in a prog titled Neil Tennant’s Smash Hits Christmas Tennant and his cronies were full of back-slapping at the moulds they broke with the mass-selling fan mag, driven initially by two selling points – song lyrics and pull-out pinup posters.
1982: Peter Murphy of Bauhaus (you really don’t want to see its Christmas cover star)
Launched in Nov 1978 as a monthly title, Smash Hits trailed “The words to 18 top singles” as its key feature. The mag was the invention of former NME editor (and later founder of The Face) Nick Logan who conceived it on the kitchen table and initially toyed with the title Disco Fever, presumably in homage to that year’s horror movie Saturday Night Fever. He chose the Belgian new-wave joker Plastic Bertrand for the cover of a pilot issue in the post-punk vacuum when any new direction seemed significant, but actually launched with Blondie. Smash Hits soon went fortnightly, ran for 28 years, and died with Celebrity Big Brother’s Preston gracing its last cover in 2006. In his Guardian obituary for the mag, Alexis Petridis wrote: “The period between the rise of Adam and the Ants and the collapse of Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s ‘Hit Factory’ empire may prove to be the last truly great pop era, in that it produced not just great pop music, but great pop stars.”
Tennant ignores the fact that 80s classic pop began with the music of Spandau Ballet and Adam Ant a couple of years earlier than his joining the mag. Also unmentioned in today’s doc was that the mould-breaking writing of this era was actually led by The Face and the subcultural flagship magazine New Sounds New Styles, which gently parodied the posers of the New Romantics movement and closed in 1982 through lack of promotion by its publisher Emap, who also happened to publish Smash Hits. The fresh rebel writers of NSNS had adopted a tongue-in-cheek tone which kickstarted a shift of power away from stars and their publicists into the hands of writers themselves. Once the 80s had revived the long-dead credibility of pop music – dubbed “pure pop” in vigorous public debates – Smash Hits took its cue by adopting a knowing approach to pop journalism and providing a cheeky foil to Britain’s four seriously po-faced weekly rock-music newspapers. We cannot underestimate how its humour helped sophisticate the Smash Hits reader, pragmatically described by Tennant as “the 12-year-old girl in Grantham”. Which was a neat way of deflating his own pomposity.
Spookiest quote today came from Toyah, after remarking that the pop scene has lost the airy optimism of the 80s: “We now view fame as something dark and faintly abusive.” Oo-er.
April 1985: Tennant as cover star and Pet Shop Boy with Chris Lowe
Posted in Culture, Fashion, London, Pop music, Youth culture
Tagged documentary, Magazines, Neil Tennant, New Romantics, New Sounds New Styles, Radio 4, Smash Hits
Hunderby, bowing in: “Daphne du Maurier on ketamine.” (Photo: Sky Atlantic)
➢ There was plenty to howl about at last night’s British comedy awards, and well-deserved gongs for The Thick of It and Hunderby – Bruce Dessau in The Guardian writes:
“ At the British Comedy Awards 57 judges, drawn from journalism, TV production and performers, shortlisted Olivia Colman against herself for best comedy actress in Rev and Twenty Twelve, only for her to go home empty-handed. She lost, however, to Rebecca Front, whose ministerial meltdown in The Thick of It was undeniably compelling television. It was a particularly good night for The Thick of It, with Peter Capaldi bagging best comedy actor for his portrayal of demented spinmeister Malcolm Tucker. The performances on The Thick of It were exemplary.
The Thick of It, bowing out with series 4 of the political satire: Best comedy actor awards for Peter Capaldi, left, and Rebecca Front, right (BBC)
“ A genuine shock was the double success of Hunderby. Julia Davis’s cold-hearted period piece, screened on Sky Atlantic, was a favourite to win best new comedy, but for it to win best sitcom too, beating Rev, The Thick of It and Twenty Twelve, was a vindication of Sky Comedy head Lucy Lumsden’s investment in original output. Not bad for a show that stretches the definition of sitcom to snapping point.
“ The real mystery though, was the absence of some shows that did not even pick up nominations. There has been frustration about Fresh Meat missing out, but it was no surprise that its posh boy Jack Whitehall won the Public Vote for king or queen of comedy… ” / Continued at Guardian online
➢ Why Hunderby is the best British period sitcom in 20 years – Matt Grundy writes: “ It’s set in the bleak 1830s somewhere in England after a shipwreck, where our Helena is brought back from the dead on the beach by a pastor. The two must have a baby within a year or they lose Hunderby. Strange, but it works. Hunderby is not only one the best British comedies of the last 20 years, it’s also the best period piece I’ve ever seen. Although I don’t watch many, to be honest… ” / Continued at Sabotage Times
➢ Guardian review of Hunderby and Davis’s “potty pen” – “ Yes, sometimes it feels as if Davis is showing off, simply demonstrating that she dares to go to places no one else does (especially places “down there”). ”
King of Comedy Award: Fresh Meat’s cast with Jack Whitehall, left. (Photo: Channel 4)
➢ Fresh Meat: behind the scenes of the new TV series – “ Channel 4’s comedy drama about six students mismatched in a shared house was devised by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the creators of the sitcom Peep Show… The comedian Jack Whitehall, who plays the incorrigibly posh JP, wanders around the set in a vest and boxer shorts. The sneaker-clad feet of Joe Thomas, who plays Kingsley (an everyman similar to his character, Simon, in The Inbetweeners), stick out of one of the bedrooms (he’s trying to sleep off a hangover). Kimberley Nixon, the Welsh dentistry student Josie, ferrets around in a spotted dressing gown; Charlotte Ritchie, who plays the English-lit student Oregon, is in a long printed charity-shop dress; while Greg McHugh, who plays the bearded and bespectacled outsider Howard, struggles under the lights in a thick woolly jumper. “We haven’t come here to play some cool, foam-party-loving students living it up and having a great time,” says Zawe Ashton, who plays the tough-as-nails Vod” … ” / Continued online at The Telegraph
➢ VIEW Fresh Meat, Season 2, Oct 2012:
It’s a new term and the gang have returned to uni
Writer Armando Iannucci: collecting a Bafta for The Thick of It in 2010
– “ Whether we will ever be allowed to return to the dank soul of spinmeister Malcolm Tucker is uncertain now that the final series of The Thick of It went out in a blaze of recriminations and desolation earlier this year. While Iannucci admits that having thought he had severed himself from Alan Partridge a decade ago (a feature film with North Norfolk Digital’s foremost DJ is due out this summer) he can’t say for certain that he will never bring back Tucker, Nicola Murray, Glen Cullen and Co.
“ It was actually quite sad when the last couple of episodes went out, but it was the right point to draw a line under it. I just felt that with the phrases in The Thick of It being used by politicians themselves [Ed Milliband’s use of ‘omnishambles’ immediately springs to mind], there was a danger that if you didn’t stop, it would become too neat and cosy. So I thought stop now rather than carry on for another five years and have guest appearances from David Milliband and Michael Gove and then have a Christmas show with Alex Salmond… ” / Continued online at The List
Posted in London, Media, Politics, Social trends, TV
Tagged Armando Iannucci, British Comedy Awards, Fresh Meat, Hunderby, Jack Whitehall, Julia Davis, Peter Capaldi, Rebecca Front, The Thick of It
Sir Patrick Moore in 2009: a national treasure at home. (Photo: BBC)
❚ THE FAMOUSLY FASHION-BACKWARD astronomer and national treasure Sir Patrick Moore CBE, FRS, FRAS, has long been instantly recognisable from his signature XXL blazers, regimental tie, unkempt hair, lopsided eyebrows and monocle. He has died in his 90th year. As Nanny’s childhood lesson in tying a tie-knot grew ever more distant, his shirt-collar size became comfortably two inches larger than his neck size. The rise on a pair of gentleman’s trousers, he evidently believed, should reach to the chest – a mindset which presumably boosted his own rise to unrivalled heights in the realms of international astronomy and cosmology. His own early Moon maps helped the Apollo Mission plan their landings.
“ You can’t be interested in astronomy and not stumble across something that Patrick has done. It’s such a huge body of work ”
– Dr Marek Kakula, Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Since 26 April 1957 Sir Patrick has presented the BBC TV programme The Sky At Night for more than 700 editions, making him the longest-running host of the same television show ever. Moore’s dishevelled appearance and rapid-fire speaking voice are as much part of the nation’s fond attachment to his personality as the programme’s theme tune, Sibelius’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
On the show’s 50th anniversary, comedian Jon Culshaw impersonated him as the interviewer while Sir Patrick spoofed himself as a Time Lord. The astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May, who wrote a book on astronomy with Sir Patrick, described him as a “dear friend, and a kind of father figure to me”.
➢ British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore has died, aged 89 … “he passed away peacefully this afternoon in his own home, Farthings, in the company of close friends and carers and his cat Ptolemy.”
➢ Space rock the final frontier: Sir Patrick Moore on cosmic pop – 2009 interview with The Quietus
➢ Vintage clips from 45th anniversary of The Sky at Night – Moore plays the music of astronomer Sir William Herschel at the piano.
Posted in Media, Technology, TV
Tagged astronomy, Patrick Moore, Sky at Night, TV series
❚ CONFUSINGLY FOR ROXY MUSIC FANS a UK tour 2013 has been announced under the title of An Evening With Bryan Ferry, pretty much simultaneously with the release of The Jazz Age, an album played by the newly convened Bryan Ferry Orchestra. Familiar tunes include Virginia Plain and Do the Strand among 13 tracks which are all rendered as instrumentals only. It celebrates Ferry’s four decades as an icon of the music scene … Scott Fitzgerald described the sound of the Gatsby era as “yellow cocktail music” and, 80 years on, Ferry reimagines his best known songs performed by a swing orchestra from the Roaring Twenties. Vintage microphones and a bass sax in place of a double bass conspire to create an authentic sound, but without one breath of Ferry’s voice. “I am the Diaghilev figure, directing not playing,” he says. Whether next autumn’s 21-date tour will feature any vocals – or even require his presence on stage – is as yet unknown!
❏ Includes recent Radio 4 interview: “I’ve been listening a lot to 20s music, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, early Duke Ellington. It’s quite raw, but very passionate and dynamic music.”
Posted in Culture, London, Pop music
Tagged album, Bryan Ferry Orchestra, CD, dates, Jazz Age, Soundcloud, UK 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
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