❚ SOME F***BOOKERS might think shedding a load of virtual “friends” a very good New Year’s resolution. “Crack open an ice-cold PBR, stretch out in your skinny jeans, and take the quiz,” says the invitation to discover How hipster are you? Sadly, this irresistible ploy is a Facebook app so will involve compromising all your privacy settings and will of course reset to their defaults “How people bring your info to apps they use”. That means welcoming Facebook’s “one billion active users” to your quiz results. The quizmakers themselves claim that “only 2.5% of all people are true hipsters”. Do you really want one seventh of the world’s population knowing how uncool you might just be? Bit of an own-goal there, Zuckerberg Mi.
On the other hand, Katherine P from Birmingham posts: “Somehow I don’t think I need to do the quiz to know the answer.”
“ Dalston Superstars #Exposed is the untold story of the web series that changed everything. Back in 2011, Dalston Superstars was launched on an unsuspecting internet, clocking up a record three million Facebook likes.
At first glance the show appeared to be just another dramality show in the vein of TOWIE or Jersey Shore, but, on closer inspection, was Dalston Superstars more than that? Was it in fact a searing satire, not only of reality television, but also of the mindless young hipsters who populate East London’s streets? ” / Er, discuss at Vice online
❏ Top Commenter and bad speller Guy Turner declares at Vicedotcom: “I think you started it as a reality TV spin-off with your cool hipster freinds [sic] then realised they were nobs [sic] so pretended it was satire as the abuse came in from all quarters.”
❚ WHICH UK STYLE MAGAZINE is edited to the coolest beats in town? Art director Terry Jones’s mould-breaking “manual of style” i-D which pioneered the straight-up mode of street photography back in 1980? Or fashion photographer Rankin’s playpen Dazed & Confused, which clocks up its 20th birthday this year?
Google Maps place them 2,000ft apart: Dazed in Islington EC1 and i-D in Shoreditch EC2
Only 2,000ft separate the offices of these two fulcrums of hipsterdom. i-D’s HQ is safely coralled by its London postcode EC2 into Shoreditch’s much-aped paradise of cool, where the sounds on its monthly mixtape are as bleepy and chilled as you’d hear in the spoof online soap Dalston Superstars. A ten-minute walk westwards, Dazed & Confused’s address in EC1 brings associations with the intelligentsia of Islington, though you might not guess that from February’s cover boy, Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky, whose swag spells strength and sex. Judge each mag’s soundscape for yourself.
➢ Fresh today, i-D online’s January mixtape features 31 tracks
— “ Opening with a Roska remixed track, Mama Grizzlies, this fully wonky and warped 4 minutes and 26 seconds of bouncy beats should get you thinking weekend… Moving swiftly on, Hoquest, Sacha Robotti, Azari & III, H.O.S.H, Laura Jones and The 2 Bears wrestle out strong sequences of muscly mixes and the stop/start pace slows down to the sound of Odd Future duo Matt Martian and Syd Tha Kyd, aka The Internet, lowering tempo levels, alongside Amateur Best, Gang Colours and Enchante… ” / continued at i-D / Listen here to Mama Grizzlies
+++ ➢ This week also saw the first Dazed Digital playlist of 2012
— “ These 30 tracks have been on constant repeat on the Dazed office stereo over the last few weeks, from this month’s cover star A$AP Rocky’s trill new jam Pretty Flacko to British electronic whizz kids Gang Colours, Alby Daniels, Vesel, Beatoven and Ifan Dafydd. We’ve also been loving Common’s hot comeback track Ghetto Dreams… Oh yeah, if you haven’t seen the video for Forgiven by 18+ yet, make sure you check that out too, but maybe not at work… ” / continued at Dazed / Listen here to Pretty Flacko (baaad language warning) +++
❚ EPISODE 4 OF DALSTON SUPERSTARS, Vice online’s “structured reality” series about hipness in Hackney, is a Christmas special, which means sex, drugs and sausage rolls. Will the wildest Christmas party Dalston’s ever seen solve the gang’s problems, or just add to their hangovers?
✰ Stefan: “Dad found my Tumblr and freaked out and he cut me off”
✰ Sam considers whether it’s right to throw a recession party
✰ Maeve becomes a working girl and discovers what “the Occupy Wall Street thing” is all about
✰ Anna thinks she wants to do fashion styling
✰ Stefan and Maeve transition to the working class
✰ Vital vocab: get gaddafied, satanic Mean Girls, ghetto-fabulous snacks
❏ Vasilisa Forbes, Photography and Multimedia “This was a really emotional one.”
❏ Charlie Mass, European Institute of Design “I’m from australiaN.”
❏ Laura O’Reardon, Senior College “Maeve, get a job you user.”
❏ Daniel Heronneau, Wallington County Grammar School for Boys “Vee looks like Kreayshawns dj Lil Debbie.”
❏ Jimmy Dallas, Preston, Lancashire “thisiswanknow”
❏ Jack Van Cooten, CEO at Banana Hill “Awesome”
❏ Huw Williams, Central Lancashire “I just envisage a coked up editor screaming at staff: It IS funny! They’ll get it eventually, you’ll see!”
❏ Robsta Hendricks, London “Brilliant. From living West travelling East to living East working West Gastro part time, I get it. Well done.”
❏ Thibaud Guerin-Williams “In Richmond VA this is real.”
❏ Pierre Chambaud, London “how can I be a part of dis gang?”
❏ Grant Armour, Sarfend High School for Dudes, Uni. Sussex, da blud behind da wkd #christmasmixtape “these outta town muthafuckas in efes think they run the game, they going to get it in the knees. we about to blow the roof off alibi in 2012 mane. smokin big damn dank.”
❏ Sean Otley, Manchester “dalston s.s = toss.”
❏ Rich ‘Catface’ Brooks, UCLAN “Chris Morris did this seven years ago, but much better, and aimed at Vice.”
AND NOW THE #christmasmixtape
❏ Update Dec 24 By popular demand, here’s a mere taster of the download featuring largely Grant Armour [see comments] available at, like, #christmasmixtape
❏ Subcultural decryption: Dalston is the area of east London that UK hipsters regard as, like, paradise. Unless they live a mile away in Shoreditch, then it’s Shoreditch. (Hoxton is SO yesterday.)
❏ Subcultural analogy:Nathan Barley was a UK television series featuring hipster role models for Dalston Superstars, like, six years ago… Not to mention the even holier Mighty Boosh (2004–7).
❚ IN EPISODE 3 OF DALSTON SUPERSTARS, Vice online’s “structured reality” mockumentary series about who’s more hip than who in Hackney, this week’s highlight is an exhibition of work @ Wagwan Studios. An infamous art collective called NoiNoiNoi from Dalston E8 describe themselves as “an experiment in cosmic dissonance”, and produce installations collaged from photos and consumer brands which are spookily close to the art stuff in galleries throughout the east London postcodes of E1, 2 and 8. Also this week …
✰ Vee says “Just say no to capitalism: uncapitalise.”
✰ Sam and Anna’s relationship is on the rocks.
✰ Dweeby Stefan becomes Captain Scarlet, psychedelic astronaut, then gets confused about the meaning of reality — “We’re real, right?”
✰ “All the boys want… lipstick paradise.”
✰ Just wait for the punchline when Stefan says “I think I know a little something about art…”
❏ Festive question for the producers — As Top Commenter Struthers notes, some great tracks backing Ep3 of Dalston Superstars but… where’s the free Christmas download of tunes from the show, such as Grant Armour’s theme tune Dalston Riddim, and Mum Dad I’m moving to Dalston, by DJ Platinum ft Decland’n’Karl? … Update Dec 23: By popular demand, here’s a taster of the download at, like, #christmasmixtape
❏ Subcultural decryption: Dalston is the area of east London that UK hipsters regard as, like, paradise. Unless they live a mile away in Shoreditch, then it’s Shoreditch.
❏ Subcultural analogy:Nathan Barley was a UK television series featuring hipster role models for Dalston Superstars, like, six years ago… Not to mention the Dalston-based absurdist series The Mighty Boosh (2004–7) — its four way crimp-off (below) led by Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, says it all for the coolest of the cool.
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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
LANDMARK FAREWELLS. . . HIT THE INDEX TAB UP TOP FOR EVERYTHING ELSE
✰ Stefan: “Dad found my Tumblr and freaked out and he cut me off”
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