❚ CONFUSINGLY FOR ROXY MUSIC FANSa 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!
♫ HEAR JAZZ AGE TRACKS AT SOUNDCLOUD
❏ 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.”
❚ DAVE GAHAN, MARTIN GORE AND ANDY FLETCHER of Britain’s original pioneering synth band Depeche Mode, formed in 1980, will play 34 must-see stadium shows in 25 European countries to an audience of more than 1.5 million fans, before taking the tour to North America. The tour kicks off with an open-air stadium show in Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park on Tuesday May 7.
SECOND UK GIG ADDED
❏ London O2 tickets on sale Friday Oct 26 (pre-sale Oct 25) for May 28 and 29 at: ➢ Live Nation and standing only at ➢ TicketMaster
National treasure: Jarvis Cocker on the road again this year with the original members of Pulp. Photographed by Shannon McClean
❚ ARE THEY MAD? They’re letting Jarvis Cocker into the States in April, with his Britpopping band who reunited last year! Following those hugely popular festival dates in Europe, and several in the UK which re-established Jarvis as the single most credible face of indie pop, Pulp in the US kicks off April 11 at Radio City Music Hall, storms into two Coachellas, sidles over to San Francisco, and that’s not all… parachutes into Spain again in May, so get booking!
On top of which, the retro-obsessive site The Second Disc reports the historic background to remastered reissues on Feb 20 of Pulp’s first three albums on the Fire Records label, on which the band spent a tempestuous and frustrating decade into the 90s. The awesome and undeniably strange albums It (1983) and Freaks (1987) and Separations (1991-2) have been expanded to include a host of non-LP singles and B-sides. Fire claims: “They cover a staggering sonic range from the pastoral, acoustic sounds of It, to the darkly romantic Freaks and the disco-tinged Separations. They point to Jarvis Cocker’s varied sources of musical inspiration and show a band in the process of finding their own unique voice.”
Cocker’s exceptional and seeringly honest song-writing skills were finally endorsed when the distinguished literary house of Faber published his lyrics last year under the title Mother, Brother, Lover. Read more about his creative coming of age and view Jarvis in a video interview where he protests: “If I’m a national treasure, dust me off.”
Y SUS CONCIERTOS INCLUYEN ESPAÑA
➢ Pulp, confirmados para el festival murciano SOS 4.8 — Pulp estarán en el SOS 4.8 de Murcia. Sí señor. Finalmente era verdad. Tras semanas de rumores, un misterioso anuncio en su twitter en el que dejaban caer que habría más conciertos de Jarvis Cocker & co en 2012 tras su exitosa reunión el año pasado (actuación en el Primavera Sound incluida), y la confirmación de su presencia en Coachella, el festival murciano se ha llevado el gato al agua en cuanto a fechas en España… / El informe siguió en crazyminds
Together last July at Berlin’s Melt festival: the original Pulp line-up fronted by Jarvis Cocker
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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 2022
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm in 2021… 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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