“ We admire the way Justin doesn’t appear until the boring bit, thus ensuring that music channels have to play the entire video when, had he featured in the main bit of the song, most of them would have chopped it off after the proper song finishes… His dancing around is a bit silly and there are no two ways about that, sorry… ” / Continued at Popjustice
MIXES OF THE MOMENT, MARCH INTO APRIL
♫ 2013 has already seen some exciting moments with the triumphant returns of The Knife, Destiny’s Child, Ciara and Justin Timberlake to the OG Sugababes. Now the Dazed April playlist features James Ferraro, MikeQ, The Knife, Sugababes plus new sounds from Bishop Nehru, MikeQ & Brenmar-produced Tigga Calore, Iggy Azalea, Cosmin TRG, James Ferraro and the new one on-cult label L.I.E.S.
♫ This week i-D online teamed up with “the hottest rising label in contemporary dance Blasé Boys Club” to co-host a monthly club night at The Shoreditch Butchery above XOYO. Sebastian Burford played an eclectic mix of dance classics, then deejay MNEK got the dance floor moving with tracks like Montell Jordan’s This Is How We Do It and Fatman Scoop’s Be Faithful. The climax of the evening came in the live performance of Duke Dumont’s new single Need U (100%), with live vocals provided by A*M*E [video interview above]. – More by Declan Higgins at i-D online plus ♫ the i-D February Mixtape
Former Blitz Club co-host and deejay Rusty Egan, pictured then and now
♫ Welcome to the Dancefloor: a fresh club set remix from Rusty Egan:
+++ ❚ OOPS! RECENT RUSTLINGS IN THE DOVECOTE suggest all is not well between founder members of the 80s synthpop band Visage who gave the world The Anvil and a couple of other albums and confirmed Steve Strange as king of the pop posers.
Talks about talks to make their first album since Visage fell apart in 1984 have been going on for a year or more but the three founding members – synth pioneer Midge Ure, drummer Rusty Egan and vocalist Steve Strange – haven’t seen eye to eye since last summer. Then in November differences went public when Strange performed their biggest hit Fade to Grey on German TV [see video above] and in the ensuing interview he claimed that Midge Ure was still collaborating. At the three-minute mark Strange says: “We’re in the studio now doing a new fourth album with Midge Ure – Midge is writing the songs with me.” When a Tweeter asked if this was true, Ure’s denial was immediate: “He is deluded if he thinks that. He knows that isn’t happening.”
Before Christmas Egan suddenly went public with a serious allegation about Strange’s handling of a substantial Visage royalties payment (accumulated revenue intended for all members of the 80s band) which he had allegedly received in 2004. I asked Egan whether his move was a little unwise, and he replied: “Sorry to say but as Steve Strange is blaming the hold up of Visage on me. I just can’t listen to any more of his complete rubbish. There is NO VISAGE ALBUM. There is Steve Stange [sic] and some blokes cashing in on the success of Ultravox.”
The same day Strange tweeted [below]: “there are 2 sides 2 every story”.
Dozens of fans piled into Facebook to comment and in the first week of January Strange typed erratically: “thank you all 4 bringn 2my attention it s,ilegall slanderous lies by an ex member of Visage. As an agreement,we as a 4 piece ?4igned an agreement not 2 mention ,this story ? As this person is talkn in. public a lega restraining order is soon to be put in place .tThis Visage album will not be derailed .”
Only days later Strange announced to the world on Facebook “The New Visage Line up” in a glam studio portrait [below] which showed him beneath a marcel wave alongside Lauren Duvall, Steve Barnacle and Robin Simon. Strange commented on the pre-Christmas allegations: “There s always got ? Too be , the voice of doom n gloom. Not a band reunion a new lineup.” [sic]
This week a despairing Facebook follower asked Egan why the pair couldn’t resolve their differences. Yesterday Egan replied: “the way was to make a visage record and Steve repay ——* royalties. We failed.”
[* word deleted by Shapersofthe80s]
“Mixed live on machines but not by machines. I left a couple of (tiny) mistakes on. I like the flaws. A flaw is what makes something beautiful truly interesting” x 62m
+++
❏ AllMediaNY.com offers the next step in the evolution of modern journalism — “free media” — an outlet where journalists and readers together decide on what is newsworthy and what is not. Editor-in-Chief Drew Kolar says it was “a great year for real music”, sadly marred by the death of Amy Winehouse.
50 SEVENS THAT REALLY STRUCK ME AT DIS
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❏ At Drowned in Sound Wendy Roby whittles her year’s reviewing down to a top 50 “that really struck me”, starting at Africa Hitech’s Do U Really Wanna Fight, via Metronomy’s The Look and ending on Jamie Woon’s Lady Luck.
❏ An hour’s-worth of vintage sounds mixed by former Blitz Club deejay Rusty Egan: “Some lost classics here plus some bands born in the 80s that sound like they wrote and recorded the songs in the 80s.”
CHRIS SULLIVAN’S TEN BEST MUSIC
DOCUMENTARIES EVER
❏ A Great Day In Harlem (1995) — “A must for any serious black music aficionado,” writes Zeitgeist-Meister Sullivan at RedBull.com. This documentary by Jean Bach tells the story of one summer’s day in 1958 when 57 musicians from jazz history met at 126th Street in Harlem to have their picture taken by Art Kane for Esquire magazine. Keen eyes will spot such greats as Horace Silver, Charles Mingus, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, English-born Marian McPartland OBE, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie. Kane called it “the greatest picture of that era of musicians ever taken”.
KATY PERRY’S FIREWORK SHOCKER
❏ The video for Firework not only outraged British TV stations into censoring the gay kiss, but it then won Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards. Result: the single remained in the UK charts for 58 weeks, way longer than in Billboard’s.
J J WHEELER’S JAZZ PICK
❏ A refreshing selection of five CDs and five gigs from 2011 offered at The Jazz Breakfast by a much-lauded British drummer/percussionist currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music after graduating from Birmingham Conservatoire. Listen to clips from his own quintet’s imminent album Unconventional at Soundcloud.
MUSIC BOOKS ROUND-UP
❏ A broad survey of the year’s music books by the Evening Standard’s David Smyth reveals that in his collected lyrics Jarvis Cocker says “seeing a lyric in print is like watching the TV with the sound turned down: you’re only getting half the story”… Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco and Destiny gives us a tour of the fascinating life story of Nile Rodgers [pictured] — conceived when his mother was 13, raised by beatniks who’d have Thelonious Monk over, he joined the Black Panthers and jammed with Jimi Hendrix, all before he wrote a vast collection of mega-hits, virtually lived in Studio 54’s bathroom and produced Madonna and David Bowie.
LADY GAGA: GOOD THING, BAD THING?
❏ PopJustice’s 2011 In Review asks singer Will Young: As a notorious homosexual, did you feel empowered by Born This Way by Lady Gaga? Will replies: “When it came on the radio I thought ‘She’s basically written this song for me’. Amazing. I actually think I shed a tear as I was driving up to Wales. I stopped at a petrol station and I thought ‘You know what, I don’t care what they think’ and I brought some pink bon bons. Normally I would just go for a Wispa.”
❚ CHRISTMAS APPEAL FROM RUSTY EGAN — The ex-Rich Kids and Visage drummer, and musical co-host at the original Blitz Club in Covent Garden in 1979 now enjoys an international reputation as a society deejay.
On Sunday December 11, he and Spandau Ballet’s Steve Norman are inviting readers of Shapersofthe80s to help raise money for charity. Rusty says: “Please support our Vintage 80s night in a nice Mayfair pub this Xmas and join me and friends. I will DJ and I hope some friends from the 80s will show up for a pint or a cuppa. Please buy a ticket even if you are unable to attend.”
The two 80s popstars have reunited in a unique nightclub double act where deejay Rusty spins the discs while Steve improvises on sax. Proud of their clubbing credentials which reach back to the landmark Blitz Club, Steve and Rusty perform a live deejay set of the coolest tunes from the swinging decade. Every performance is unique and reminds us of their own bands’ legacies and of the abundance of new sounds the 80s bequeathed.
➢ Vintage 80s night anchored by DJ Rusty Egan — from 18:00, The King’s Arms, at the east end of Shepherd Market, W1J 7QB … The evening is a fund-raiser to buy vital equipment to treat children in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital — and the publican Art Bennett even has a letter from the charity to prove it!
➢ Electronic sounds only at Rusty’s new clubnight
Frequency 7 which is held on the first Friday of the month at The Purple Turtle, Camden NW1 1TN, with Jo The Waiter playing dark electro and industrial, plus quality electro bands live and vintage New Romantic visuals, till very late.
➢ 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
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 