Origins on video ♫ ♫

➤ New Romantics (and friends who
inspired them) pioneering the new sounds and new styles of the early Eighties

✧ Synth-pop legend Vince Clarke confesses that “synthesisers seemed easier to play”! The co-founder of Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure now lives in the USA and shows Motherboard.tv over his collection of holy-grail analogue instruments

✧ Yazoo – Don’t Go (live)

✧ Just look at the “New Romantic” dancing as Depeche Mode perform The Meaning of Love in 1982

✧ Animal Nightlife’s Mr Solitaire on Top of The Pops 1984

✧ A treasure trove of pop videos has been brought out of the attic at the YouTube channel memorylane1980s from tapes that were recorded live. Currently the hoard goes only up to the end of 1984, everyone from the Smiths, New Order, Simple Minds, OMD, Bob Marley, Womacks, Nick Heyward, Matt Bianco, Jimmy the Hoover, Eddy Grant and all the pop supergroups

✧ Alan Wilder joins Depeche Mode on stage during a soundcheck at the Royal Albert Hall in February 2010 for a special performance of Somebody

✧ Young guns go for it – the story of Soft Cell

✧ Klactoveesedstein — breathtaking first promo video by Blue Rondo, with help from Barry Bucknell

Shapersofthe80s video playlists at YouTube: moulding-breaking hits from a musical legacy stretching back 40 years

NOT FORGETTING THE LEGENDS

Music video by David Bowie shot in Soho’s Wag club, 1985

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➤ The horror, the horror — video excesses

❖ Biddie and Eve in cabaret at the Blitz club in Covent Garden, 1979

❖ We would have run away to join Human League say singers Joanne Catherall and Susan Sulley, from 1982

❖ Angela Rippon takes a music lesson from someone she calls Phil Oakley in 1983

❖ Oh no! The bad news is that Ricky Gervais has taken down his seonadancing.com website and its priceless vids of him going through his New Romantic phase in 1983 (protests to rickygervais.com). However – the good news is that one YouTuber has reconstructed his Bitter Heart video from salvaged clips. It originally cost £300 to make and is worth a million dollars today! Give us a smile, Ricky

❖ Former Blitz Kid Pinkietessa™ sings Can’t Help It – The Robbie Mix, introduced by Boy George

❖ More YouTube videos on 1980s musical esoterica than you can imagine at djliberator31…

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ONLINE VIDEOS THAT HAVE BEEN DELETED MAINLY
FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS (YOUR SUGGESTIONS WELCOMED IF YOU CAN FIND THEM ELSEWHERE)

✧ Calvin Harris Acceptable in the 80s New Romantic version – Exquisite and revealing mashup of the Blitz clubbing scene created for an Art and Media Exam

✧ If Bowie was the father of the New Romantics, Visage were his children: Visage on Pop Years 1980

✧ Japan on Top Ten New Romantics

✧ How John Foxx gave way to Midge Ure: Ultravox on Top Ten New Romantics – “They were a real electronic group … and they were Romantic,” says Rusty

✧ Negative electro energy as The Human League hive off Heaven 17: from Top Ten Electropop Pioneers

✧ Two lads from the Wirral launched a dance on the Factory label: OMD on Top Ten Electropop Pioneers

✧ Visage – original video for Fade to Grey

❖ Visage and New Romance dissected on Pop Years 1980: cheekbones, Chinese slippers, and even a touch of makeup

❖ New Romantics video megamix

❖ New Romantic music & fashion guide

❖ Risible recreation of the Blitz for BBC TV’s Ashes to Ashes cop series

❖ … likewise at MannaMachine69 – from Clare Grogan to Tiswas, Blackadder, Kenny Everett and Scalextric

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Was THAT All There Was to the 1980s?

Cristina Monet’s reworking of a Peggy Lee classic was on every Blitz Kid’s turntable during 1980

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