Motormouths back in action: Strange and Egan interviewed on BBC London news in the club where they once reigned. Such were members’ powers of self-promotion at the Blitz, Egan said, that it was the 80s equivalent of Facebook Live!
Shock’s 1980 12-incher, Angel Face b/w R.E.R.B. — rare vinyl costing £58.21 from Black Rhythm Records in the Netherlands
❚ re:VOX #12 IS A FAT special issue of Rob Kirby’s pocket magazine dedicated to 80s electronica, which celebrates the 30th anniversary earlier in January of the release of Ultravox’s hit single Vienna. This 40-page issue tracks the origins of Vienna as a monster hit that set a benchmark for pop’s new wave, both musically and with its innovative, cinematic video.
There is a lengthy interview with Barbie Wilde of Shock, the mime/dance troupe whose single Angel Face was produced by Rusty Egan of Visage and Richard Burgess of Landscape who also produced Spandau Ballet’s first records (today a director for Smithsonian Folkways, the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington). The Shock B-side R.E.R.B. is the first re-release by the new label Blitz Club Records — here’s a 30-second clip of the 2011 extended version:
In re:VOX Barbie describes the emergent mime scene inspired by visiting Paris in the late 1970s, and being involved at the age of 19 with Tim Dry in the formation of Shock in 1979, along with Robert Pereno, Lowri-Ann Richards, Karen Sparks and Sean Crawford (later Tok of Tik & Tok) and how all paths crossed at the Blitz, resulting in Shock becoming dance figureheads for the New Romantics. In October 1980 Barbie didn’t have much fun dodging explosions as she ran around Beckton Gas Works with Tok when they added romance to Ultravox’s video for Passing Strangers, one of the first pop promos directed by Russell Mulcahy, in which moustachioed Midge Ure thinks he’s Clark Gable.
Midge, Sean and Barbie: Ultravox’s video for Passing Strangers, 1980, which would later be runner-up for the Best Video award in the British Rock and Pop Awards
Robo-mimes Tik & Tok: Sean Crawford and Tim Dry
Tim Dry, another ex-Shock performer, continues the saga of how in 1980 he span off to form the white-faced robo-mime duo Tik & Tok with Sean Crawford who was already familiar on London’s fashionable streets as a robot character called Plastic Joe. Dry had been completely unaware of the Blitz as a “secret underworld the rest of London was oblivious to” (along with the indolent record industry to whom the scene came as a monumental surprise once it exploded).
He gives full credit to Robert Pereno as the social networker who was key to both acts getting bookings on the clubbing circuit, and persuaded Tik & Tok to ditch disco in favour of cutting edge Euro-synth music. The duo made £30 from their first street performance outside San Lorenzo, the smart Beauchamp Place restaurant. From that pavement debut, television, fame and fortune beckoned…
Steve Strange: reliving his former glory on the door for the Return to the Blitz party, Jan 15. Captured from video by Shapersofthe80s
Kirby has also produced a separate 16-page issue, re:VOX #13, to report the Blitz Club Reunion party itself, held at the site of the original 1980 club on Jan 15 jointly to launch the book Remembering Eden by Jus Forrest and Helen Waterman, as well as Egan & Strange’s website for their label Blitz Club Records. Rob gives his first-person account of the party, confessing that he was too young to be one of the original Blitz Kids and reminds us that he’d fallen in with Rusty quite recently as an obsessive archivist who can trace every track Rusty had ever played as the Blitz club’s deejay. They have already shared their playlists with Graham Smith, the designer of Spandau Ballet’s graphics whose anthology of 80s photographs, We Can be Heroes, is published in September by DJhistory.com
❏ Each issue of re:VOX costs £1.50 from Rob Kirby, 2 Bramshott Close, London Road, Hitchin, Herts SG4 9EP
WHICH TRACKS WOULD YOU LIKE ON
A BLITZ CLUB COMPILATION?
Egan plans to produce a Blitz Club album, not of the usual suspects who are wheeled out on 80s compilations, but artists as cutting-edge as those Rusty was so eagle-eared at finding on his travels through Europe in the late 70s. “Not 12-inch disco remixes,” he says. “Our clubs played great weird music like Can, Neu and Magazine.”
He is inviting lovers of Billy’s, Blitz and Club for Heroes music from 1978 to 1981 to propose the key tracks they think made London’s clubbing scene so inspirational. He names as examples the German version of Bowie’s “Helden” (1977) that he played relentlessly at Billy’s, RAF by Snatch featuring Brian Eno (1983) and Eno’s own King’s Lead Hat (1978), Television’s Little Johnny Jewel (1975) which he says has “great drums” from Billy Ficca, Klactoveesedstein by Blue Rondo a la Turk (1982), and the French model Ronny’s If You Want Me To Stay (1981).
❏ Send your track suggestions to Rusty Egan through the contact page at
❚ HERE’S THE ITEM FROM London Tonight, ITV’s six o’clock news magazine, reporting on the Return to the Blitz party hosted on Saturday by Steve Strange, Rusty Egan and Rose Turner on the site of the original Blitz club in Covent Garden. [Choose 360p for better quality video.] They’re celebrating the launch of their official website The Blitz Club and a load of moist-eyed old New Romantics from 1979 find themselves mingling with a sprinkling of floral Neo Romantics from 2011 who seem to have been let out of Shoreditch for a reality check. Featuring King of the Posers Steve Strange, Krautrock’s biggest fan, the deejay Rusty Egan and Spandau’s Martin Kemp (kept in hand by the wife, Shirlie) — you wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see Michael Aspel appear with his big red TIYL book.
Motormouths back in action: Strange and Egan interviewed on BBC London news last night in the club where they once reigned. Such were members’ powers of self-promotion at the Blitz, Egan said, that it was the 80s equivalent of Facebook Live!
❚ FED UP WITH BEING IMPERSONATED by the many lookalike websites online, Steve Strange and Rusty Egan have resolved their differences to collaborate on a brand-new official Blitz club website at:
The partnership of Strange as greeter and Egan as deejay famously hosted the Blitz club-nights which launched the New Romantic fashion and electro-pop movement in 1980, and opened the door for much more sparkling new music during that decade. Last night the legendary motormouths blagged themselves a couple of valuable minutes on London’s TV news to announce a reunion party actually at the site of the original Blitz, then a Covent Garden wine bar which these days is an after-hours saucy gentlemen’s club called The Red Rooms (pictured above). And though the BBC presenters banged on about a 30th anniversary, any original Blitz Kid knows the club actually opened in 1979.
Then and now: Egan and Strange photographed in 1979 at the Blitz by Derek Ridgers, and yesterday, Jan 7, 2011
Not one to let that stand in the way of a party, Strange says: “The furniture may have changed but there is no doubt we are heading back to our spiritual home.” Next Saturday night the Blitz partners wrap up three celebrations in one shebang, with live entertainment thrown in.
The Return To The Blitz party both celebrates their reunion and launches their website. It is an evening-only event from 8pm to midnight, with Rusty and Princess Julia on the decks while Steve and Rosemary Turner are hosting. In addition, from 7.30pm (doors open 7pm), Jus Forest will be reading from her book Remembering Eden, which is a celebration of Ultravox’s 30th anniversary tour. Jan 15 itself was chosen to mark the day in 1981 when the single Vienna was released — the hit single that established Ultravox as the driving force for the new wave of electronic music. During the previous couple of years their vocalist Midge Ure and keyboard player Billy Currie had also played crucial roles in creating new music tailored to the Blitz club through the studio group Visage, which was fronted by Strange as vocalist.
Quilla Constance photographed by Simon Richardson
Performances on Saturday include a set by the new livepop band Paradise Point, whose bassist is Roman Kemp, son of Martin whose own band Spandau Ballet were launched from the Blitz in 1979. We’re also promised Quilla Constance, an electro-punk singer and lap dancer who will no doubt be taking advantage of The Red Rooms’ dance-poles.
True to the New Romantic ethos that insisted “the band holds a mirror up to the audience”, Rusty says: “The real stars are the people who come, dress up, dance and enjoy electronic 80s music at its best.” He is shrewdly inviting guests to “hit me with your own Top 10 — tunes I would hear in the Blitz club if it were open now … Current acts I like are LCD Soundsystem, Gossip, Muse, La Roux, The xx, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga.”
➢ Remembering Eden – 30th Anniversary Tour Book celebrates the return of Ultravox, the synth-pop pioneers, to the live stage in 2009-10. Compiled by Jus Forrest and Helen Waterman, it tells the band’s story from the 80s right through the Return to Eden 2 tour, with interviews by Rob Kirby, fan reviews and many previously unpublished photos.
❏ During its busiest month, May 2010, Shapersofthe80s was viewed more than 18,000 times. Among the top stories that month was How real did 1980 feel? an extended post in which we hear verdicts from many of the original Blitz Kids depicted in the BBC’s TV play about George O’Dowd, Worried About the Boy, screened on May 16.
❏ The most popular page of all with 5,661 views last year was the who’s who among the Blitz Kids which, like so many parts of this website, keeps on growing.
❏ After Google and Facebook, one of the most popular specific sources of visitors to Shapersofthe80s was DJhistory.com which says it is “where clued-up DJs, record collectors and unshaven misanthropes gather to chat”. Right on, or should that be Kewl? Whateva.
➢ 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 2026
✱ 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”.
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 925 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
LANDMARK FAREWELLS. . . HIT THE INDEX TAB UP TOP FOR EVERYTHING ELSE
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