1980: Clare Thom, Philip Sallon and George O’Dowd on a coach trip to Margate. Photograph by Graham Smith/grsmith@mac.com.jpg from his book We Can Be Heroes
➢ Graham Smith’s intimate portraits perfectly evoke a time when the world seemed destined to be taken over by the young with only the help of a spot of eyeliner — slideshow at The Guardian
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❚ GET AN EYEFUL OF THOSE long-lost cheekbones! Hello! We haven’t seen you since the late 90s. Well, Boy George has been Twittering away for months about his fad diets, his gym routine and doing 100 squats at a time, and this week he unveiled the result — at least from the neck up. And yes, this studio video for Turn 2 Dust does suggest that a few pounds seem to have been shed.
Turn 2 Dust: two dancers among many turns in Boy George’s video
OK the camera is angled from above looking down throughout the three-and-a-half slickly edited minutes. OK he’s shot wearing black and artfully lit in a black void. OK somebody has been paid a fortune to get the maquillage just so. But hey. It’s a start. Welcome to the muscle marys club, George.
This reggaefied version of the highly danceable Turn 2 Dust derives from the track on his MP3 album Ordinary Alien released in March. It’s one of those heartfelt, political George numbers about the outsider “with only truth as my defence” and it pleads for tolerance: “All hatred must turn to dust.” And there’s a break, just for a moment, where you could swear the voice is Bowie’s, oh yes. This very cool video is shot in a no less cool London nightspot, the Lightbox, where George threw his 50th birthday party last June.
The vid is promoting an MP3 package of 11 remixes released this month. To underscore the song’s message, the video features a provocatively camp cast of comic clubbing characters, so it is no surprise that George can scarcely keep a straight face. Cheekbones and all.
MENTION OF LADY GAGA’S NAME
SETS GEORGE OFF, KERPOW!
+++ ❏ Yesterday Boy George was in Macau, the administrative region of China famed for its casinos, to present a deejay session at Club Lotus, preceded by this live videoed press conference. When a journalist asked whether his current musical collaborations might include Lady Gaga, the question seemed to trigger a good-humoured but impassioned rant [scroll forward to the 4-minute mark]. Here’s just a part of it…
“ I’m more interested in working with people in the dance field. I’m talking about house music, not pop. I’m not really involved in pop music — I haven’t been for a long long time. I don’t have anything to do with the modern pop scene. It’s not for me. It’s an alien thing to me. I just don’t get it, don’t feel part of it, don’t understand it. The dance world is more fun — you have more freedom… Pop music is very restricted. Everybody is making the same record, everybody is using same vocal sound, nobody’s singing about anything any more, it’s all crap…
“ That’s a very extreme statement but that’s how I feel. There’s nobody speaking to me in pop music. Everybody just wants to wear the fur coat and drink champagne and talk rubbish. Where’s the David Bowies? Where’s the Boy Georges? Where’s the passion? There isn’t really any. ”
QUIZZED ON THE PRICE OF HIS £499 PHOTOBOOK
❏ Boy George has a chunky 18×12-inch coffee-table picture book titled King of Queens coming out on Dec 12 in a limited edition of 999 signed copies, which includes a 10-inch vinyl anthology of unreleased music, all in a clamshell clothbound case, from Kitchen Sink Publishing, price £499. At the Macau press conference a journalist thought this was very expensive. George replied:
“ It’s 90 pages of photographs, very personal things from my collection, things people have never seen, a beautifully bound collectors’ book. It’s very expensive. But you don’t have to have it. It’s like saying you should put down the price of a Porsche because I want to have it. You know, some things in life, you can’t have. ”
➢ From today’s Middle Class Handbook, a blog written under the auspices of a London-based creative agency called Not Actual Size — although since it was begun in 2009, it has taken on a certain life of its own, with regular contributions from people who who are not directly connected with the company.
❏ Duran Duran play Girl Panic! live at the Coachella music & arts festival, April 17, 2011
❏ Girl Panic! directed for Genaro.tv by Alan Hughes, a professional graphic designer in the UK
❚ ON FRIDAY DURAN DURAN resume their North American tour, which was interrupted in May by Simon Le Bon’s vocal problems. From Sept 23 in Everett, WA, they weave their way to Atlantic City on Oct 29.
❏ Duran Duran’s live version of The Man Who Stole A Leopard ft. Kelis, directed by David Lynch for Unstaged, Mar 23, 2011
❏ Elegant French production of The Man Who… directed by Jethro Massey, with Faith Anne Gosselin, Sorrel & Massimiliano, Mocchia Di Coggiola
❏ Animation of The Man Who… by a production group in Second Life dedicated to use machinima as a medium for telling stories. Producer, Rafale Kamachi
❏ The Man Who… recast as PG-rated kitchen-sink psycho-drama from Russia: scripted, directed, edited by Nina Urmanova. (Some gratuitious bloodshed.)
❏ Mediterranea uploaded by garibaldino2 in Italy
❏ Blame The Machines set to an immaculate print of the 60s sci-fi movie Barbarella (with glimpses of the crazed scientist Dr Durand-Durand who prompted the band’s name at the keyboard of his orgasmatron in which Jane Fonda is being pleasured). Uploaded by MrChuckChapman in the USA
❏ Winning version of Blame The Machines for Genaro.tv directed by Sebastian Mihailescu, currently studying at the Caragiale National Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography in Bucharest, Romania
❏ Winning Russian animation of Being Followed for Genaro.tv directed by Aleksey Khruslov of Kakadu Collapse
❚ “YOU KNOW WHAT MEN ARE LIKE when they get a new bit of kit — it’s like Christmas.” This is Spandau Ballet sax player and all-round percussionist Steve Norman reliving his teenage kicks. “I’m loving my latest toy. It’s a guitar pedal-board with all the bells and whistles. As a guitarist, when you’ve got sounds at your feet — in literally one stomp of the box — you can go from the driving funk of the Isley Brothers to the more soulful sound of George Benson.”
We tend to forget that Steve was playing rhythm guitar as a co-founder of Spandau when they became the Blitz Club’s house band in 1979 with synthesisers well to the fore. Ten years of international chart fame saw him picking up almost any instrument that was needed in the five-piece outfit, most notably the saxophone, on which he was self-taught. His solo breaks became as much a part of Spandau’s stadium sound as Tony Hadley’s bel canto baritone. By the time they were belting through their 2009–10 reunion tour, Gary Kemp was introducing Steve as “The most soulful saxophone this side of Young Americans”!
Right now Steve has three reasons to be jumping. He’s back in training for the first Cloudfish gig in ages: this is his five-piece band with Shelley Preston, ex of Bucks Fizz, partnering on vocals. Second, his new box of tricks is beefing up his funky guitar-playing with “all those wa-wahs and overdriven solo sounds”. And third, he’s back in the songwriting groove, and audiences at the Cloudfish gig in Holland in November will be the first to hear some numbers that have not yet been recorded.
Steve says: “One’s called Kinda Wonderful and another is called Star. It’s a bit dancey — mad for blues guitar, mad for a groovy drumloop. Everything I do tends to have soul running through it. Even if there are heavy guitar riffs, there’s always an element of soul in there. I’d call it funky lounge music. There’s a lot more edge to Cloudfish these days. These songs are groovier. We’ve moved away from the chillout thing.”
Making funky lounge music: Steve Norman and Shelley Preston as Cloudfish
Steve reckons his return to England after living on the sun-soaked Mediterranean island of Ibiza for 12 years has cranked up the Cloudfish tempo.
“I had this conversation with Paul Tucker of the Lighthouse Family and he agrees with me. Living in Ibiza takes the edge away and makes everything fluffier! I noticed when I got back to the UK I got drawn towards more urban sounds and lo-fi and started messing sounds up for the sake of it. Shelley likes that on her voice, too.”
The outing on November 6 is a toe in the water, proposed by a promoter based in Arnhem who feels Holland and neighbouring Germany have been starved of the Norman talent for too long. It’s bad luck that Cloudfish’s regular percussionist Joe Becket has a prior date in London and can’t make it — his friendship with Steve goes back before Spandau’s 1990 tour. (Steve’s longstanding mate Deuce reminds us that Steve met Joe at a legendary Sunday clubnight called Passion at La Valbonne in Maidenhead in 1988. As host Deuce had the bright idea to invite Joe, “through the haze of strawberry-flavoured smoke, to play along with the deejay’s tunes, to maybe make things more danceable. And thus, ‘Joe Bongo’ was born”. )
For Arnhem, Steve says: “It turns out our bass player Joe Holweger is also a fantastic drummer so he’s stepping in, and we’ve gone for Kerim Günes on bass. Henry Broadbent on keyboard is another mainstay — he’s done a fair bit with Kula Shaker, too — which makes five of us onstage, as usual.”
With the gig being on a Sunday evening, British fans keen to sample the new Cloudfish sound will need to overnight in Arnhem (last week Shapersofthe80s worked out the cost of three ways to get there), but the good news is that it’s a beautiful part of Holland for a sightseeing weekend. Tasty beer too.
Nevertheless, the burning question remains: What about a UK gig? To which Steve says: “Definitely, you’ve got to play your home town. But we want to see how this one goes first.” Right, we’ll take that as half a promise.
❏ Sep 21 update: Next week Steve will be in Arnhem, Holland, on promotional duty for his Cloudfish show at Max Brothers on November 6. Fans can meet him at a meet-and-greet session 19:00–20:00 hrs at the Cafe De Schoof, Korenmarkt 37 on Thursday Sep 29. The next day, you can hear a live interview with Steve on Optimaal FM between 09:00–11:00 hrs, also available via webplayer at Optimaal FM
❏ Sep 21 update: The competition to meet Steve in Arnhem in November is to be decided today and the winners wll be announced online at Six Degrees Promotions
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
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❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2024
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ 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
SEARCH our 800 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ 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
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ 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
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