Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

The full length video for Sensational was released this morning. Uplifting song, great visuals!

A very rare, and fantastic, photo of Toyah from around the time of the release of ‘Sheep Farming In Barnet’ (AP, not album) in 1979, along with a mini-poster by Dreamscape. Please click to zoom on that. (Thanks to Andi for the original photo)

Classic Toyah @ Dreamscape: Celebrating Toyah’s unique, colourful and exciting past while reporting the bang up-to-date Toyah news and views too. The Best Of Both!  ;))

Quadrophenia, which airs this week and next on ITV4, was filmed 35 years ago! It’s as popular now as it ever has been. Here’s a rare promo photo of Toyah. Click to view the original and a couple of “A Way Of Life!” inspired tributes. (Thanks to Andi for the photo)

Return to Dreamscape soon for more rare-ish photos of Toyah from 1979 and ’80, including publicity shots for Quadrophenia and The Tempest. (Thanks to Andi)

In the meantime do take a look at some of our recent Rare Toyah Photos updates.

Urgh! A Music War, which includes an incredible live performance of ‘Danced’, has been playing at Nitehawk Cinema, Brooklyn the past couple of nights.

Take a trip back to early 1980s with this compilation of twenty-six powerful live performances by the eras best Punk, New Wave, and Post-Punk bands.
 
Pre-party for Urgh! in Nitehawk’s street level bar at 10pm on both nights…Nitehawk teams up with Network Awesome for a very special screening of WOMEN IN PUNK at 10pm on Friday and Saturday. Free entry and Free Mike’s Hard Lemonade

Nitehawk Cinema is New York’s original cinema eatery; an Independent movie house bringing a selective approach to film, food, and drinks.

Dreamscape is ‘Remembering ’83’ all through 2013, with sporadic updates related to Toyah’s career in 1983, in the build-up to the ‘Love Is The Law & Greatest Hits’ tour in the Autumn.

Toyah talks ‘Love Is The Law’ in 1983: “For the first time I’ve written real love songs, a field I’ve never ventured into before. The songs are all inter related. There’s a loose story behind it but I’m not telling anyone that. There’s a very emotional feeling to the whole thing.”

Toyah talks the ‘Love Is The Law’ and ‘Rebel Run’ imagery in 1987: “This is the Rebel Run look. I was into armour. A friend, Simon, made a bronze headdress based on the skeletal structure of American football players. What I wanted to put acros was The New Woman. I believe we’ve got into a new kind of feminism. Women’s bodies are becoming more muscular, more streamlined. They’re not based on having babies. I won’t be having babies. By now I’d changed from a girl into a woman. Everything is based on becoming the Ultimate Woman.” (Thanks to Andrew York)

Yes, this is a word in your ear… Just uploaded to You Tube. Excellent quality footage of Toyah performing ‘We Are’, on German music programme RockPop, in 1981. Amazing! (Why didn’t British music shows emblazon huge photos of Toyah as backdrops?)

Exciting news! A newly edited, previously unseen, video for ‘Sensational’, from ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Queen’, is coming your way soon! Tune into Toyah’s official online channels first thing Monday morning. Here are some screen caps from the excellent 2007 video.

Check out Dreamscape’s 2009 feature on Toyah’s most recent studio album, In The Court Of The Crimson Queen. Charting the build up to the album’s release, official updates, reviews, fan opinions, photo sessions and much more. It’s sensational! ;)

There’s also Dreamscape’s ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Queen’ News Archive. Three years of news, info and updates all related to the album…

• How You Feel: Learning To Love British Film: Jubilee: Derek Jarman doesn’t usually pull too many miseryguts Brit flick clichés, and in his punk outing Jubilee – actually one of the only films about punk made in the brief time punk wasn’t dead – he should be even more innovative and outrageous than usual.

• Arran Art: An (Odd) Day in the Dark: The Tempest will be screened at Arran’s free mini-film festival next month (Saturday 2nd February). 3.15-4.45pm – The Tempest: Derek Jarman’s 1979 idiosyncratic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tempest with Toyah Willcox as Miranda. Forget any notions of worthiness – this film challenges the idea of ‘faithful’ literary adaptation and celebrates the visual magic of cinema as thoroughly as the magical arts of Prospero.

• T-Shirts: Fancy a Toyah-related t-shirt? ‘WeAdmire.net’ have Jubilee and Quadrophenia apparel for sale.

• Steve Lamacq’s Roundtable: The edition of Roundtable from ‘BBC 6Music’ in which Toyah was a guest is available to listen to/download via ‘Castroller’. This originally aired in November 2012.

• Folkestone People: Hormonal Housewives come to Leas Cliff Hall: Eighties pop star Toyah Willcox is to appear in sketch show Hormonal Housewives, showing at Leas Cliff Hall later this year.

• Morning Star: Culture: Heathcote Williams – The Queen of Diamonds: Toyah’s co-star in The Tempest.

• A full transcript of Bev Meets… Toyah Willcox, which aired a couple of times over Christmas on ‘BBC WM’, is now available at the really great ‘Toyah Willcox Interview Archive’.

• Love Me: One of my favourite Toyah songs. From the magnificent ‘The Blue Meaning’. I never thought I’d hear someone covering it but littletroll has done just that. Listen at Soundcloud.

Dreamscape’s photo feature from Summer 2012, Toyah: Thru A Photographer’s Eye. Taking a look at a selection of, excellent, live Toyah (and The Humans) photos from the unique perspective of photographer Paul Crutchley. View all of our PAC Photography news, and our full list of Features. (A huge thanks to Paul | Photos © PAC Photography)

A few screen caps of Toyah from last night’s Channel 4 News. Please click on them to view larger versions. Read all of Dreamscape’s news related to this appearance here.

There’s now just one week left to collect all the songs from Twenty Four From Toyah: Live Archive Selections 1993-2102.

The page at Soundcloud, where all the tracks can still be listened to, will expire on the 24th January. Get your cover/artwork for the album, plus a digital booklet with photos and info here. The complete Twenty Four From Toyah can be downloaded at Media Fire in two zip files.

Twenty-Four From Toyah – Side 1 | Twenty-Four From Toyah – Side 2 (These are officially provided links).

• Toyah’s appearance on last night’s Channel 4 News saw an increase in visitors to Dreamscape, certainly our busiest day for a while. Unfortunately a high-profile appearance also brings out the keypad warriors of Twitter, questioning whether Toyah was “punk”. There’s something slightly hilarious about people associated with punk nitpicking about who was more punk! Wasn’t that the sort of petty, elitist, judgemental way of thinking punk was fighting against?

• You Tube: Fart For Your Rights: Toyah tweeted on Monday: “Take note, my hubby’s response to no royalty payments“.

• You Tube: It’s A Mystery and I Want To Be Free – Acoustic covers of two Toyah classics by Danny McEvoy.

• This is Sussex: Go on and have a bit of a laugh this year: The Hormonal Housewives are back, and this time they mean business.

• WS County Times: Comedy classics at the Hawth: The Hormonal Housewives are back, plus this time Toyah Willcox takes on a leading role.

BBC Breakfast Time went on air 30 years ago this morning. The original programme logo and memorable theme tune still remind me of getting ready for school.

Toyah has guested on the programme numerous times over the years: In 1983, talking about ‘Love Is The Law’ and The Ebony Tower; in 1985, around ‘Minx’ time, talking about a tour that didn’t happen (see below); in 1987, talking about ‘Desire’ and Cabaret; in 2007, talking about panto in Reading and in 2008, talking about Vampires Rock.

BBC Breakfast is celebrating 30 years of broadcasting with a trip down memory lane

Considered a “huge risk” when it launched on 17 January 1983, Breakfast Time was the UK’s first regular national breakfast show. Famous for its magazine-style approach, it combined news and lighter features. The 30th anniversary show will feature appearances from some of the original team.

Introduced two weeks before rival broadcaster ITV’s TV-am with David Frost, Breakfast Time hoped to lure audiences away from radio with a combination of news, travel information and lifestyle segments. Although breakfast TV had been the staple diet in the US for three decades, the British public was wary of the innovation in 1983.

• Continue reading at BBC News. View Toyah’s 1985 Breakfast Time appearance below.

Toyah’s full interview, recorded last week at The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, from this evening’s Channel 4 News. “I accidentally saw the Sex Pistols at a gig in Birmingham and it changed my life forever.” So Toyah Willcox told me this week, nearly four decades after punk exploded onto the British music scene, writes Channel 4 News Reporter Katie Razzall.

At that stage, in the late 1970s, she was a teenager from Birmingham who’d been told she must behave demurely and in a “feminine” way. At the gig, there were “people out there who were misbehaving“. As she puts it: “Suddenly I was in a room of spitting, shouting, angry people. I thought, right, I belong. I’ve found my voice.”

The Channel 4 News feature on PUNK magazine’s forthcoming 40th anniversary, including interview footage with Toyah, aired earlier this evening on ‘Channel 4’. Click below to watch.

In the 1970s, Punk Magazine documented a scene which began in New York with bands like the Ramones, and then spread to Britain to produce the revolutionary sound of the Sex Pistols and the Clash.

Written by Toyah and Joel Bogen, the opening song on ‘Love Is The Law’, the wonderful Broken Diamonds. Strange to consider that this album marked the end of the Willcox/Bogen songwriting partnership after six years of creating incredible music together!

The interview Toyah recorded last week for Channel 4 News will air on the programme tomorrow evening. Toyah will be discussing punk and how it changed the role of women in a feature on the new book ‘PUNK: The Best Of Punk Magazine’. A short clip of Toyah’s interview was shown at the end of tonight’s news.

Channel 4 News: Channel 4: Wednesday 16th January: 7pm
News, sport and weather from Channel 4.

The Smash Hits Archive uploaded the full ‘Smash Hits Yearbook 1983’ over Christmas. The annual includes two pages on Toyah, with a great late 1981 photo and quotes from three previous interviews, plus a BNW photo at the start of the book. Visit the Smash Hits Archive here and click below to go directly to the scans at flickr.

A new ongoing Dreamscape feature for 2013: Remember ’83 – Sporadic updates looking back at Toyah’s year.

1983 was a really interesting time for Toyah and her fans, the last one at Safari Records, a final Toyah band album/tour and a real period of change!

It’s a busy year to recall; Toyah’s fifth studio album ‘Love Is The Law’, Trafford Tanzi, The Ebony Tower, the ‘Rebel Run’ Tour, more great images and photo-shoots, many TV and radio appearances & interviews, numerous magazine covers & press articles…