Another week, another Dreamscape “date”! This time, Brian and I spent the day in, our amazing capital, Edinburgh. Starting with a great breakfast at The Standing Order, then a walk up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle, before spending a couple of hours at, the incredible, Camera Obscura. That was so much fun. For lunch/afternoon tea we had reserved a table at The Dome, an absolutely stunning building/venue on George Street. We rounded off the afternoon with some sight-seeing. Edinburgh has to be one of the finest cities on the planet. Yet another brilliant day!
• Great to hear that some of you are enjoying my “Dreamscape On Tour!” updates, and feel you are finally getting to know me (sort of!). It’s slightly self indulgent, but I’ve run this website for almost 26 years with very little personal content, until relatively recently, and I’m also enjoying sharing my adventures, which always have a Toyah vibe to them!
Fab time yesterday in my home city of Glasgow, and a day out with my long time pal, Alec. We went to an episode recording of Mrs Brown’s Boys – this was a lot of fun, my face was sore from laughing! – at BBC Scotland on Pacific Quay, and then into the city for a fab meal at China Sea on Renfield Street. A brilliant day!
• See all our 2025 “tour dates” :) here! (Photo © David Fleming)
It’s the third date of Dreamscape On Tour 2025, and this week it was a trip to Dundee. Absolutely fabulous city, with so much to see, do, explore… Sharon and I packed a week’s worth of activities, fun and laughter into around eight hours. A brilliant day.
• See all our 2025 “tour dates” :) here! (Photo © David Fleming)
Three Toyah fans – that’s myself, Sharon and Brian – had a colourful and very fun day out in Glasgow last week. We all wore our Toyah t-shirts, sharing Toyahness around my wonderful home city. This photo is from the Transport Museum at Glasgow Harbour, just one of many places where our choice of tops initiated a conversation. A great day out! (Photo © David Fleming)
This isn’t actual Toyah news, but seeing as Spring is finally here – in the UK anyway – after what felt like a very long Winter, I thought I’d post a sun-is-shining shot of myself and my pal Brian spreading the Toyah love in Fort William last week. We found ourselves talking to so many people about Toyah that day. It was a lot of fun, and The Highlands has such stunning landscapes and scenery. Just beautiful! (Photo © David Fleming)
Last year I designed an oversized Toyah card for Christmas, and as I’m known to repeat myself, here’s one for this year too…
Yeeeha!! I just received the prints for Toyah Fanzine‘s bumper celebration of the reissue of Love Is The Law, and I Believe In Father Christmas, as well as Toyah’s Album Discography. As you read this I’ll be festively packaging and postaging (!), while watching MTV Christmas… Ho ho ho!
Celebrating Toyah’s incredible career… Celebrating the unsurpassed imagery… Celebrating some of the finest music ever released… Celebrating 12 years of Toyah Fanzine!
We had an amazing holiday in New York…
Today saw the release of Toyah’s amazing 1983 single, Rebel Run on 10″ grey vinyl, which includes unreleased tracks, including an extended version of the lead song. It feels like a new era of Love Is The Law. I’m celebrating from a fan perspective with a new issue of Toyah Fanzine, which I’m currently working on, focusing on all things Love Is The Law. This bundle also includes part two of our Toyah Album Discography collection – flyers & postcards for every Toyah album release.
• More info on Issue 61, including previews and order link, here.
Dancing the Cha-cha-cha… Sharon and myself just want to send a massive ROCK IT!!! and all the best to Toyah and Neil for this Saturday’s Strictly Come Dancing. Tune in at 7pm, BBC One…
Love Is The Law – Toyah’s final studio album on Safari Records, originally released in 1983 – is reissued in deluxe formats this November, and we are celebrating with a new issue – #61 – of our fanzine. More info will be available tomorrow – which just happens to be my birthday!!
Cherry Red reach the final studio album from Toyah this Autumn, with the release/reissue of Love Is The Law. A wonderful album which features Toyah’s vocals at their most soaring and glorious thus far in her career at the time.
I’m happy to say I’ve managed to produce an issue of my fanzine for each and every Cherry Red release over the past four years, and currently working on Issue 61 (gulp!!) in celebration of Love Is The Law. More info soon…
Stir it up! Mix it up! Shake it up! Myself and Sharon – both longtime Toyah fans – took the leap to Edinburgh last week for a day of Warrior Rocking. We met up in Scotland’s capital to celebrate the reissue of the magnificent Warrior Rock album and also to mark Toyah’s birthday. It was a brilliant day, a lot of fun, walking, eating and talking Toyah! Toyah! and more Toyah! Watch this space for our next day out!
I’ve had requests for back issues of the fanzine. Unfortunately there aren’t many but what is available I’ve listed on the page you’ll find by clicking below…
The new issue(s) of Dreamscape’s Toyah Fanzine are available to pre-order. Celebrating the reissue of the glorious Warrior Rock: Toyah On Tour live album, as well as 60 issues of the fanzine. This bundle is also the start of a three-part celebration of Toyah’s album discography, via a flyers/postcards collection. Further info/pre-order by clicking below.
Introducing my giant Dreamscape Christmas card… To wish everyone a great run up to Christmas, I thought I’d feature one of Toyah’s inspirational, beautiful images from 1981, in huge Christmas card form as a way of starting things off.
In a 45+ year career of ground breaking, outstanding, pioneering visual creativity this is up there with the best of Toyah’s iconic images.
Christmas is a great season, but the run up is the really special time for many, so please enjoy the next two weeks. It always feels like there is something magical in the air while heading towards Christmas Eve and the 25th. So, here is to the next two weeks of wonderment, fun, surprises and joy… Merry Christmas Run Up!
Something I’d thought about doing for years, and had a spare weekend so I went ahead with “The Toyah In Glasgow Gig History Tour Of Toyah Tours”. A snappy title. See the full set at Instagram. Coincidentally, one of the venues I forgot to include: The Pavilion Theatre is mentioned in this radio clip from BBC Stereo Underground.
Dreamscape goes into its 24th year online in March and I’m currently working on revamping the website. Right now the idea is to completely change the look/format, which I find slightly scary/daunting, but I think it really is time for a radical change as I’ve been using this layout since 2012. During the 12 years before that I altered the format every couple of years.
This is, obviously, going to take a while as we have a huge archive that needs to be reformatted, or at least included in the new website in some form, as I’ve always considered the archives to be a really important aspect of any website. I’m also thinking of a way to incorporate the fanzine in some way.
So, the changes aren’t going to happen immediately but just a heads up that the changes will be happening…
This past weekend Toyah revisited her 1985 album, Minx, by exploring the second single released from it, Soul Passing Through Soul, in Toyah At Home. Here’s a bit of SPTS fan art I put together a few years ago… (While on the subject of Minx – Space Between The Sounds is still one of my favourite Toyah songs. Yup, it’s over-the-top but bloody brilliant!!)
This website flew (almost like a Bird in Flight!) into it’s 23rd year online last month. I started creating Dreamscape in the late 1990s, while I was also, slowly, teaching myself how to build a website with basic html. So I like to think of this website as existing in two millennia… even though it didn’t actually go live until March 2000, after a failed launch in late 1999!
I’ve thought about changing the website – It’s not one of those flashy “with bells on” sites but it does the job it’s supposed to do well I think, and I worry changing it to one of those websites would spoil it. Who knows…
I always said – as certain people like to remind me – I’d stop running a fansite (or a fanzine!) at 50, but I’m now the ripe young age of 54 with no plans, anytime soon, of stopping!!! (NB: I’m hoping to bring the News Archive up to date, at some point this year, by adding links to each of the past 18 months of news that hasn’t been “”archived” yet!)
