◼ STEVE NORMAN GIVES A THUMBS-UP FOR BARCELONA during one of his dirrrty sax solos on Spandau Ballet’s Reformation tour in 2010 (above). He and the rest of Spandau Ballet returned to Spain this week on their worldwide Soul Boys of the Western World Live tour and tickets are still available for their two weekend dates at the Festival Pedralbes in Barcelona.
Earlier this week on his personal art tour Gary Kemp was bowled over in Bilbao: “Wow. Just seen Gehry’s Guggenheim museum for the first time in the flesh. Even in the rain its magnificent.” Martin tweets: “Thank you Madrid… You were fantastic!” Now Steve is all set: “Ya venimos Barça.”
Surprise acoustic taster: Steve Norman, Tony Hadley and Gary Kemp playing bang in the centre of Madrid. Photo: Carlos Rosillo
Before-and-after designs: left, coloured Plasticine model … right, real food on the plate by El Bulli chefs
❚ EATING CAN BE THEATRE, just as food can be art. The Catalan chef Ferran Adriá is Houdini and Picasso in one, commonly lauded as the best in the world. His three-Michelin starred restaurant El Bulli, two hours north of Barcelona, was an academy repeatedly garlanded by scholars who take dining seriously. Since 1987 it grew to serve 1,500 plates daily, prepared by 50 cooks and served by 30 staff typically to only 50 companions at table. Its culinary revolution is known as “molecular gastronomy” famed for scented gels and foams and for using every part of every animal and plant.
Adrià’s manifesto: No 10 of his 23 principles that summarise El Bulli’s cuisine
Now after 25 years of experiments, Adriá is replacing the restaurant with an inspirational foundation, while his career is being celebrated in Spain’s first major exhibition about cooking. In a series of galleries at Barcelona’s Palau Robert, we are blown away by a fearsomely complete collection of photos, letters, utensils, mementoes, and a vast poster of the 1,846 dishes catalogued by the restaurant. Best of all are the videos in which we see his edible creations being conjured. Another simple but charming glimpse behind the magician’s hand is a table-top displaying before-and-after designs of individual dishes: ingredients modelled from coloured Plasticine are composed as templates for his chefs to translate – abracadabra! – into the resulting plates of food shown alongside.
“ Tonight’s dinner involves all the senses, it engages the mind, and is also, at times, a strangely emotional experience. The dishes can be confrontational as well as exquisite… The constant stream of surprises continues for more than four hours – the green leaf that tasted exactly of oysters; the grilled strawberry with ginger on the outside and an injection of gin on the inside; the polenta gnocchi with coffee and saffron yuba; the perfect razor clam with its gelatin twin in the other half of the opened shell. Playful, arresting, occasionally alarming, the meal is almost like a story… ” / Continued at Guardian Online
❚ THE “WORLD’S MOST USELESS MACHINE” is not new news but it did raise a smile during a trip to the year-old Museum of Ideas and Inventions – essentially a hands-on diversion for restless children – while Christmassing in Barcelona. The co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s laboratory of artificial intelligence, Marvin Minsky, came up with the idea in 1952. Electronics engineer and the “father of information theory” Claude Shannon, who worked with Minsky at IBM, liked the idea so he built the machine. It is a battery powered box, the sole purpose of which is to turn itself off after some human hand has turned it on.
You too can assemble your own useless machine in beginner-level electronics kit form (from US$35 + shipping), or in a ready-soldered version (from US$55 + shipping). Both include printed circuit board.
➢ 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
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ 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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