Tag Archives: New Romantics

2011 ➤ Duran’s round-the-world adventure reaches the UK

Posted on 17 May 2011 | Leave a comment
SXSW, interview, John Norris, Duran Duran

Duran interviewed at SXSW in March: Simon Le Bon checks a runaway thought before the audience jumps to the wrong conclusion (SXSW video grab)

❚ UPDATE, JULY 1: Following the postponement of Duran Duran’s European arena tour owing to singer Simon Le Bon’s vocal problems, consult the band’s website for news… DD have rescheduled all eleven UK concerts to run from Nov 30 Brighton to Dec 17 Newcastle.

❚ UPDATE, MAY 29: Duran Duran now offer a fulsome apology for having to cancel their current UK tour dates — not, as sceptics suspected, because of unsold tickets but because of singer Simon Le Bon’s continuing “laryngeal problems”. Their website today reports: “Following a consultation with both a vocal coach and his team of ENT specialists today, Simon Le Bon has been advised that he needs to continue to rest his voice… Devastated by the news that they will not be able to resume the tour as planned on Tuesday, Simon said ‘We’ve been postponing shows with very little notice, in the hope each day that the improvement would have been significant enough for me to sing again without risking any long-term damage’.”

View John and Nick’s special video apology at YouTube . . . Today too, Roger Taylor blogs on the DD website on the horrible irony of Woody Allen’s famous quotation “If you want make God laugh, tell him about your plans” and he makes the promise: “I know that all the shows are very close to being re-scheduled later in the year.” . . . Read Simon Le Bon’s blog at DD’s website on June 1: “I reckon I got 6 semi-tones wiped off the top of my range and … it’s very difficult not to worry about it.”

❏ Here’s a sparky interview with the band just released by the SXSW festival, recorded in March. With former MTV reporter John Norris in the chair, Nick Rhodes says he still sees Duran as an art-school band and John Taylor reflects on the golden era of MTV. Stills from this interview have been posted at Flickr

Duran Duran, L'Uomo Vogue,Pierpaolo Ferrari
❏ This stylish tuxedoed shot by Pierpaolo Ferrari comes from the current “Long Live the 80s” issue of L’Uomo Vogue, with a feature on DD by former Wag club host Chris Sullivan, translated for the Italian edition.

HERE’S A CATCH-UP ON PREVIOUSLY POSTED
DURAN NEWS FROM THE YEAR SO FAR

❏ It was 30 years in March since the 80s supergroup’s debut single Planet Earth peaked at No 12 in the UK chart… This year their 14-track CD of AYNIN spent five weeks on the UK album chart.

❏ View highlights from Duran Duran’s Unstaged online concert March 23 at the Mayan theatre, Los Angeles, in 1080p HD at the band’s Vevo channel on YouTube /DuranDuranVEVO. Click here to find which global regions are licensed to view highlights at YouTube. The four DD Unstaged concert tracks most viewed via Vevo in the first three weeks after the live webcast drew more than 1.5m views — these are All You Need is Now with 700,930 views, then Notorious 298,505, Planet Earth 290,477, and Friends of Mine 274,935 way out ahead of all other tracks, most of which pulled only four-figure audiences.

John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Duran, Facebook Live, interview, thequietus, SXSW❏ Rhodes and Taylor give a 30-minute video interview on Billboard.com including live Q&A (right) on March 30, 2011.

❏ Rhodes and Le Bon give a seven-minute video history of DD for ABC News, Jan 2011 — “Rio was the album that made us the biggest band in the world. It made us big in America”

❏ Duran have been blessed by an interview at Quietus, its holiness the online magazine whose touchstone is “reverence” and claims “we’re not afraid of surprising our readers”. Writer Simon Price delivers two surprises. Plus this list of post-80s albums the band think most deserve to be listened to: The Wedding Album (1993) … Pop Trash (2000) … Medazzaland (1997) … Astronaut (2004).

❏ On the current AYNIN tour Duran Duran played North America and Mexico March 16–April 27, just before their 11-date UK tour from Newcastle to Sheffield May 18–June 4. They take in Berlin on May 26 and continue across Europe, Paris to Bergen June 10–Aug 28. [Update — These were the original plans, which were substantially cancelled in May and June.] In between they return to the UK for the V Festival on both Aug 20 and 21.

Duran Duran, All You Need Is Now, video, Nick Egan
♫ View Nick Egan’s Bacofoil video for All You Need Is Now, DD’s comeback single at Yahoo Music — available worldwide on iTunes. A 14-track CD package of the same name was released in March for most of Europe, Australia, Far East and North America with South America following in April.

♫ Listen to two new Duran tracks premiered on NYC’s East Village Radio.

➢ Elsewhere at Shapersofthe80s — 1980, How Duran Duran’s road to stardom began in the Studio 54 of Birmingham

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➤ A swelle hello from upstart Judith, returning in an explosion of colour

Posted on 7 Apr 2011 | Leave a comment
Blitz Kids, David Bowie,Ashes to Ashes , Judith Frankland

Blitz Kids chosen by Bowie to star in his Ashes to Ashes video, 1980: Darla-Jane, Steve, Judith and Elise with Bowie at centre as Major Tom. © EMI

❚ WE ALL REMEMBER DESIGNER Judith Frankland’s nun-like appearance in David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes video in 1980 alongside Steve Strange who was wearing her infamous black wedding dress. Tomorrow Judith unveils her first women’s collection in eight years at the Holy Biscuit gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne, in a week-long show by a mixed group of women artists. She says her new outfits are designed for “The Woman Who Likes to say Hello!”

Judith Frankland, fashion, Holy Biscuit gallery, Newcastle

Judith’s flyer illustrated by Manny More

They are joyous explosions of colour that, she insists, “come from within my well travelled head” — and here we’re talking the shock tactics of an eternal punkette, whose own looks veer between the immaculate cool of revue star Bea Lillie and the fruitiness of dancer Carmen Miranda. At the height of the Blitz club’s notoriety, Judith’s playful yet tailored outfits adorned Steve Strange as vocalist with Visage to become some of the most distinctive styles of the New Romantics movement. Most memorable was the taffeta jacket with medieval flourishes on the cover for Fade to Grey.

Judith Frankland, Milan, clubbing, Pussy Galore,

Milanese night warrior: Judith during her Pussy Galore hostess era, 1989-96

Where did the last 30 years go for Judith? She has lived more lives than the rest of us ever will, in a whirl of bespoke design partnerships and nightclub promoting from Vancouver to LA to Milan to Paris, fuelled by acerbic wit and a mighty big heart. With such landmark clubs as Pussy Galore and Chocolat City, the Italians branded her one of “i guerrieri della notte” — the warriors of the night.

In the end she returned to Tyneside to look after her ailing mum, and only now has she found the time and energy to return to the fashion fray. Judith’s last business was based in Paris and that’s where she plans to return next year. The new Winter 2011/12 collection is a modest calling card that exploits a secret stash of “school-blazer fabrics” in stripes and vibrant colourways. Judith has suffused uniform wool suitings with a positively romantic glow.

With the left hand, she has been contributing to a smart new blog called The Swelle Life, run by writer-photographer Denise Grayson. Here in her own uninhibited confessional style, Judith pays generous tribute to the inspirational circle of friends she has acquired on her travels.

Judith Frankland, fashion,nun,Sound of Music

Judith’s nun look from 1980, left, echoed in 2011, right. After fashion, her second passion is the film The Sound of Music. “I hate revisiting the past,” she maintains, but for her Swelle Life blog, she couldn’t resist accessorising this vintage German skirt with her own nun’s collar and cuffs. Photographs by Derek Ridgers and Denise Grayson

Judith Frankland, Paris, 2002

From Judith’s 2002 collection while living in Paris: her apartment in rue Montorgueil just by Les Halles converted into a showroom during fashion week

Judith Frankland, Christian Lacroix , fashion

A couture original: When Shapersofthe80s visited Judith’s Old Curiosity Shoppe of a home last summer, she showed off the latest treasure acquired from her local thrift shops, this Lacroix coat, priced 25 pence! Photographed © by Shapersofthe80s

➢ HERE’S HOW JUDITH INTRODUCED HERSELF
AT THE SWELLE LIFE BLOG

“ I’m an upstart and a woman like many who loves — and in my case lives — fashion and the world that lurks around it, a world I have stepped in and out of all my life. I have an excitable, excruciatingly inquisitive mind; I never stop thinking, plotting and some would say talking! I am not a lover of the term ‘On trend’; I like to say ‘On form’. Micro mini to maxi. If it feels right on the day I’ll wear it — no sheep mentality for me. I mix bargain buys, charity shop finds and my own creations. ”

Denise Grayson, Judith Frankland,The Swelle Life, fashion,Winter 2011-12

Judith models her Hello! look for Winter 2011/12: day wear and evening wear giving new life to school-blazer suitings. Jewellery from the designer’s own massive collection. Photographed © by Denise Grayson

London’s Cafe Royal, 1980: Judith’s graduation show from Ravensbourne college of art caused a sensation with a glamorous evocation of the 50s in black and white taffeta, brocade, velvet and satin. Its climax was this black wedding dress worn by Sheila Ming, gloriously crowned by Stephen Jones’s veiled head-dress made of stiffened lace on a metal frame. Blitz club host Steve Strange was later to wear it in David Bowie’s video for Ashes to Ashes. Photographed © by Niall McInerney

Ashes to Ashes, video, Judith Frankland, David Bowie, fashion, Blitz Kids

On the beach at Hastings filming Ashes to Ashes: Judith (right) in the ecclesiastical habit Bowie had seen her in at the Blitz, with Steve Strange (second left) in Judith’s black wedding dress he’d also worn that night (head-dress by Stephen Jones). Elise and Darla-Jane wear their own outfits. What with the shingle and the quicksand and Steve trying to outrun the bulldozer, Judith says the wedding dress was completely destroyed. © EMI

➢ An Eclectic Mix of Arts & Design runs April 8–15 at the Holy Biscuit gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne. Join Judith for a chat at the preview this Friday 6–8pm. Others showing are Tutu Benson, Anne Johnson, Helen Moss, Sheelagh Peace, Susan Stanton, Jill Stephen

➢ Update — Judith’s new collection for Winter 2011–12 reviewed

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2011 ➤ Spandau and Duran square up for battle just like the old days

Posted on 14 Mar 2011 | Leave a comment
Spandau Ballet, 2009, press conference, HMS Belfast, pop music, free CD

Spandau Ballet in 2009: answering our questions at their reunion press conference

❚ EVEN AS A UNIQUE CD COMPILATION of Spandau Ballet’s landmark hits is set for massive free distribution with The Mail on Sunday next weekend, Duran Duran announce a global concert live online at YouTube only days later, along with their own album release on CD. It could be the 80s all over again when the two arch-rival bands vied for the title of leaders of Britain’s New Romantics movement. So which veteran band will score the bigger hit in 2011?

Duran Duran, 2011, All You Need Is Now, YouTube, live stream, pop music

Duran Duran earlier this year: US and European tours, plus a live concert stream. Picture courtesy duranduran.com

Spandau’s special-edition CD features 12 tracks — half, including True and Gold, are remastered from their originals, with six live tracks coming from their show at London’s Sadler’s Wells in 1983, including the club anthem Chant No 1. The cover-mounted disc will be delivered free across Britain with every copy of the MoS, presumably because its marketing director expects Spandau to boost the paper’s circulation well past its average of 1,924,589 copies. Last Sunday Gary Kemp recalled the 80s for MoS readers: “It was madly competitive as we were all tribal. Duran Duran wanted to be more successful than us, we wanted to be more successful than ABC, or Culture Club, or Duran themselves. We spurred each other on.”

Duran Duran, David Lynch,poster,YouTube,Amex, Unstaged,concert, Los Angeles,Meanwhile today, Duran Duran announce that David Lynch — fabled director of the movies Eraserhead and The Elephant Man — has been enlisted to direct a live DD concert to be streamed online on March 23/24 to launch the second season of Unstaged, a music series sponsored by American Express and Vevo. Amex has pushed this internet venture to team breakthrough artists with influential filmmakers using interactive social media as the outlet (full details at Billboard).

During a Facebook Live chat from SXSW John Taylor admitted that how Lynch intended to video the show was still a mystery but “we know it’s not going to look like any concert film has looked before”. Audiences around the world will be able to switch between the director’s high-definition main stream and alternate “Lynchian” artistic viewpoints when they tune into YouTube on Wednesday in the US at 10pm EDT / 7pm PDT — which is Thursday at 02:00 UTC. The concert will also be rebroadcast for the UK on YouTube at 7pm on March 24. (Check here for regions where Unstaged will be viewable live. The Los Angeles concert will then remain online for a month.)

Can Duran attract a bigger audience than Spandau’s 2million Mail readers? With their US tour starting this week, DD’s comeback album is released in the US as a physical disc next Tuesday. The video of its title track All You Need Is Now has scored 629,689 views since it was posted on YouTube on Dec 20, so it’s anybody’s guess how many fans will tune in for the live webcast. What’s yours?

WHAT THE RIVAL BANDS SAY

Talking up the imminent free CD, Spandau Ballet told last week’s Mail on Sunday what the tracks meant to them…

Spandau Ballet, Reformation tour, John Keeble, Dublin

John Keeble: Dublin sound-check as Spandau’s Reformation tour kicks off 2009

Martin Kemp “We gave Instinction to producer Trevor Horn who really turned it on its head. It became a monster.”

Steve Norman on Lifeline “We knew we couldn’t stay an underground band for ever – the mainstream pop charts beckoned and we knew we had to deliver. Cue smiles and kisses to camera!”

John Keeble “Only When You Leave was the lead single from the Parade album as the band established a more rock-based edge. It opened doors to a new group of fans and gave me the chance to rock a bit harder on the drum kit.”

Tony Hadley “Sadler’s Wells was one of the best venues for us. It was an intimate gig and perfect to showcase tracks from our album True, such as Foundation – a slice of white soul-boy funky pop – Communication – a great upbeat number – and Pleasure, which really captures the essence of the era.”

Duran Duran ,All You Need Is Now,Nick Rhodes, video

Nick Rhodes: last November's video for the comeback single, All You Need Is Now. Courtesy duranduran.com

Over in the States, Duran founder and keyboardist Nick Rhodes discusses the David Lynch webcast with Billboard today:

“The stranger it is, the more beautiful it will be. What appeals to us very much about working with David is that we like the way he thinks about things and how he’s always gone out on a limb to make things different. He works completely outside of the system, and that’s what we try to do. I think the combustion between us and David should create something that nobody’s ever seen before, something mysterious and magical and surprising.”

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➤ Gary Kemp puts his neck on the block — Spandau ‘the best live British band of the Eighties’

Posted on 13 Mar 2011 | Leave a comment

Gary Kemp, interview, Mail on Sunday, Spandau Ballet
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“I’m going to stick my neck out and say that we were the best live British band of the Eighties. Spandau Ballet’s records are an important part of the evolution of British pop music, and I’m enormously proud of them. We were part of the golden age of pop. We were a gang who made records.”
— Gary Kemp on Spandau Ballet in their heyday
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➢ Read today’s bold interview with Spandau’s songwriter Gary Kemp in the Mail on Sunday … In the zoot-suited shadows of Le Beat Route club, student journalist Dylan Jones — today the editor of GQ magazine — watched Kemp shoot the video that would launch Spandau Ballet to stardom. Thirty years later, they meet again

Jones writes:
Kemp’s band was more than just timely – the music they made was genuinely groundbreaking. No, the critics were not kind, painting them as dim, inner-city mannequins, yet their songs resonated with a generation of young men and women who were determined to explore social mobility in much the same way that their parents did in the 60s. Their most important record from this early period was Chant No 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On), a song that mirrored Ghost Town by the Specials.

“Chant No 1 was all about urban paranoia,” says Kemp. “I wanted to make a Soho film-noir song, something that was evocative of an urban experience. Dark shadows, dark corners. A fear of living on the edge in an urban environment as a young man. The early 80s were rough for most people, and I wanted to reflect that in the song. It’s a very dark track and one that mirrored the economic plight of the time.”

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1981 ➤ The day Duran’s fortunes really took flight

Posted on 5 Mar 2011 | Leave a comment

❚ HAPPY 30th ANNIVERSARY to Planet Earth. On March 5, 1981, Duran Duran made their first appearance on the nationwide TV show Top of the Pops, a vital consequence of their debut single hitting the UK Top 40. Along with Spandau Ballet and Visage, Duran were the third British band to confirm the gathering force of the New Romantic movement, and TV’s pop flagship was to showcase a rush of new bands as springtime blossomed. Duran’s strongly contemporary electronic style is attributed to producer Colin Thurston, who had co-engineered David Bowie’s “Heroes”, and on his death in 2007 John Taylor paid tribute to Thurston as “a major catalyst for the 80s sound” which he was to reinforce on the band’s first album. “Without Colin’s depth of vision, we would never have become the band we became.”

Duran Duran, Simon Le Bon, Rum Runner, 1980, New Romantics,Planet Earth, video

Simon Le Bon: live on video at the Rum Runner in 1980

In the Planet Earth video mix above we see original footage of DD performing in 1980 at the Rum Runner, home of Birmingham’s then underground New Romantic scene.

The futuristic and stylish official video, shot later in a studio by director Russell Mulcahy, has been spliced in, all overdubbed with the audio track recorded at EMI’s Manchester Square studio with lyrics refreshed opportunistically to include the line Like some New Romantic looking for the TV sound (available as the Manchester Square Demo on the debut Duran Duran album remastered in 2010). One of Duran’s earliest songs, Late Bar, completed the B-side of the single released on Feb 2, 1981. An alternative arrangement of Planet Earth was also released on a 12-inch extended remix as what DD called a “night version” for the dancefloor. The single spent 14 weeks in the chart, peaking at No 12 in late March.

Among comments at YouTube, Jeremy Thirlby, musician and school friend of Nick Rhodes, points out that the dancers we see during the filming at the club were “drafted in actors” because for some reason “most regulars were excluded”! Unknown to everyone at Birmingham’s Rum Runner the very week when Duran were being filmed in July 1980, London’s ITV station was to air its 20th Century Box documentary about the Blitz club house band, Spandau Ballet. Bang! This was the starting gun that signalled the record-industry race to sign up the first of the New Romantic bands.

New Romantics, Duran Duran, Rum Runner, video, 1980, Planet Earth

New Romantics in full fig at the Rum Runner in July 1980: note the tell-tale moves in the Planet Earth video, such as the Ballet sway at 1:20, crucial handpasses at 2:18 and Pierrot’s wonky head at 3:06

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