A new date at The Apex, Bury St. Edmunds, on Tuesday 1st June 2021, has just been added to the Electric Ladies Of The 80s Tour. Tickets are on sale now. Click below for more info or to book.
This week Toyah & Robert are both doing what they do best on a Sunday… (© Toyah Willcox)
Rounding off The Blue Meaning‘s 40th with… this! Play loud and celebrate!!
Happy 40th Anniversary to one of the great landmarks of Toyah’s music career – The Blue Meaning. The second long-player (as they were once called) and first full studio album, was released exactly 40 years ago today, in June 1980.
An amazing album and Toyah era, The Blue Meaning is significant for a number of reasons: It was the first Toyah release to enter the Official UK Chart (though earlier singles and the first album had all scaled the peak of the Indie Chart).
It also boasted incredible imagery, artwork and high design standard which would become synonymous with Toyah’s music career and future releases. The album also includes Toyah’s most legendary song, the perennial fan-favourite, Ieya! No Toyah gig is complete without it.
Over the past four decades the album has increased in significance, becoming a crucial part of Toyah’s discography. Everyone loves Anthem (who couldn’t?), The Changeling is a favourite of many fans, Love Is The Law saw Toyah’s vocals soar, Minx still divides opinion, Prostitute mindboggled us all, Ophelia’s Shadow as beautiful, intricate and unique as any album by Kate Bush or Tori Amos, In The Court Of The Crimson Queen introduced Toyah to a new audience while also delighting longtime fans, and yet The Blue Meaning came before all of the aforementioned and 40 years later still intrigues and entertains with each and every listen. Click below for our feature.
Ramblings: Joyful Highlights Part 4 – Singers & Writers is now available to download, from the BBC website or as an Apple Podcast.
Clare Balding recalls her favourite walks with a colourful variety of writers and singers including Bill Bryson, Toyah Willcox, folk duo Ninebarrow, and the choral group Werca’s Folk.
Clare has been walking on air since 1999, and for this lockdown series of highlights has been digging into the archives to retrieve some of her most memorable moments: Today she gets dressed with Bill Bryson, takes a lift across a small puddle with Toyah, discovers that Dorothy Wordsworth avoided marriage so she could continue walking, and hears from author Emma Mitchell about exactly why our mood is lifted when we spend time in nature.
Quatermass: Talking Pictures TV: Tue 9th June: 9pm
Chapter Four: An Endangered Species. Quatermass showing signs of his recent narrow escape emerges from the car park to find the stadium empty. An estimated 70,000 people died there. So many have now been harvested that the particles of dust in the air have turned the sky green. Kapp attempts to repair his equipment in order to contact the alien presence, but the Planet People destroy his efforts. They try to persuade him to join them but he refuses, convinced now that his family are dead. Quatermass, aided by Gurov, who has travelled to London from Moscow, assembles a team of scientists to find a solution. He deliberately selects old people for the task as they are immune to the call of the alien force. Quatermass decides to set a trap. He plans to fake the presence of a gathering of a million young people at Kapp’s observatory and, when the force comes, to detonate a 35 kiloton nuclear weapon. It is a focused charge where most of the force will go upwards, causing little damage in the area. Quatermass does not believe this will be sufficient to destroy the alien machine but he hopes that it will shock it enough to make it go away. Kapp volunteers to stay behind with Quatermass to help detonate the bomb. The pair set up the trap and wait in darkness. Suddenly, Kickalong appears with a group of Planet People, including Quatermass’ granddaughter, Hettie. Kapp tries to warn them away but is shot and killed by Kickalong.
The light appears, indicating that the alien force beam has arrived, but the shock of seeing his granddaughter among the Planet People causes Quatermass to suffer a heart attack. She has recognised him too and struggling to reach the detonator button, Quatermass is aided by Hettie and together they detonate the bomb. Later in a world that is recovering from the recent fall of civilization, Gurov tells us: “The message was taken. It has not come again. We pray it will never come again”.
This episode originally aired on 14th November 1979 on the ITV network and was watched by 11.2m viewers in the UK. The 1979, four-part, mini series Quatermass (also known as The Quatermass Conclusion or Quatermass IV) is airing weekly from Tuesday 19th May. Stars John Mills, Simon McCorkindale, Barbara Kellerman, Ralph Arliss, Rebecca Saire, Toyah Willcox, David Yip, Alison Dowling.
• Talking Pictures TV is An Archive Film & TV Channel. Available on the following platforms/channels: Freeview 81, YouView 81, Freesat 306, Sky 328 and Virgin 445.
Pete Prodge has tweeted that his new interview with Toyah airs this Saturday at Tiswas Online.
Been chatting with Toyah about The Goodies, Kenny Everett, Laurel And Hardy, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and some Saturday morning show called Tiswas. The interview airs this Saturday.
• Watch online at Tiswas Online this Saturday morning at 10.30am (yes, the same time that the show used to air in the 1980s on ITV every Saturday! – Not sure if the Phantom Flan Flinger will make an appearance, but you never know!)
One of the little joys of the past few grim months have been the videos by Toyah and hubby Robert Fripp where they dance, sing and muck about in their kitchen and garden. Here’s a particularly quirky one.
• Continue reading/Watching at The Afterword.
At time of writing our upload of Toyah: This Is Your Life is just about to hit 200k of unique viewers, with almost 15,000 in just the past week alone!! Pretty incredible stats!
Tomorrow – 06.06.2020 – is the 40th anniversary of the release of an iconic album from Toyah’s music career, The Blue Meaning. Incredibly ahead of its time, both musically and in its artwork/design/imagery. Check back tomorrow for our feature – which is an amalgamation of four of Dreamscape’s previous Blue Meaning articles reworked to create a comprehensive feature.
**Updated** A sprinkling of pure, escapist, fun during these troubling, uncertain times many of us are experiencing. Check out Dreamscape’s Toyah & Fripp: The Lockdown Films News Archive. Watch the films at The Official Toyah You Tube channel. (Screenshots © Toyah Willcox)
• Acapela: Toyah 18th July 2020 rescheduled to 28th January 2021: Following our recent communication via email and social media concerning the closure of the venue due to the recent Coronavirus precautions, I am delighted to inform you that we have agreed a new date for the above concert – Continue reading…
• Acapela: Toyah Willcox returns again to Acapela: Household name, pop icon, TV presenter, and stage/screen actress (Calamity Jane, Cabaret, Peter Pan, Jubilee, Quadrophenia) Toyah comes to Acapela in July with her Acoustic, Up Close & Personal show – Continue reading…
• Official Toyah: Gig Diary: Browse Toyah’s forthcoming tours, gigs and festivals – Continue reading…
• BBC Radio 2 / Sara Cox: Guilty Pleasures: Plus sixty minutes of great music in The Wower and Tracy Hulme from Bourne tells Sara about her First & Last – Diana Ross and Toyah – Continue to listen…
• Tatler: Society photographer Cecil Beaton’s Reddish House is for sale: Since Beaton’s death, the house has been owned by the former Countess of Chichester, Ursula Henderson, and musicians Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox, who have claimed that it is haunted by Beaton’s ghost – Continue reading…
• BBC Radio 2 / Jools Holland: Toyah is Jools’ guest!: There are 11 days left to listen to Toyah guesting on Jools’ first BBC Radio 2 show – Continue to listen…
Toyah’s new June 2020 blog is available to read at toyahwillcox.com.
Andrew Eborn is joined by Toyah with special insight into her amazing life and career. Also including an exclusive announcement! Watch below.
King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and wife Toyah release another tongue-in-cheek lockdown video
King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and wife Toyah have released another tongue-in-cheek lockdown video, this time pondering how to get more women to attend King Crimson shows.
“Welcome to Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch,” says Fripp in the new clip. “I asked Toyah’s advice: how do we get more women to come and see King Crimson. And my wife says ‘If women can dance to King Crimson, they’ll be there!'”
• Contine reading at Louder. Watch the new video, “Women Dancing to King Crimson”, below. Browse toyah.net’s News Archive of posts on Toyah and Robert Fripp’s lockdown dances, Sunday lunch videos and more…
Quatermass: Talking Pictures TV: Tue 2nd June: 9pm
Chapter Three: What Lies Beneath. Quatermass is rescued by a group of elderly people living in a scrap yard who doctor his injuries. At the hospital, the doctors are shocked when Isabel levitates off her bed and explodes in a cloud of dust. Elsewhere, the devastated Kapp is left alone in the ruins of his cottage and observatory. More and more young people are joining the Planet People, including the gangs that have been terrorising the cities and the soldiers assigned to keep them away from the Megalithic sites. Contact is restored with Chuck Marshall and with the Russians in the form of Gurov (Brewster Mason). Quatermass theorises that this is not the first time this has happened; megalithic sites such as prehistoric stone circles are in fact markers where beacons have been left by the people living then as a sign that something terrible happened there, and that there are some kind of alien markers buried underground at these sites. Quatermass believes there is a sphere of energy surrounding the Earth. The Russians and the Americans send a space shuttle, commanded by Marshall, to make contact with the force. Quatermass is sceptical; he believes they are dealing not with an intelligence but with a machine constructed to harvest human protein. The space shuttle reports a giant beam of light stretching from somewhere in deep space to the Earth, just missing them. A second beam just afterwards destroys them.
Meanwhile, the Planet People are gathering at Wembley Stadium in the tens of thousands. Annie and Quatermass travel to the stadium but are powerless to prevent the Planet People from gathering. When they are attacked, Annie drives their car into the underground car park beneath the stadium where she crashes the vehicle and is killed. The lightning strikes the stadium and Quatermass underground, huddles against the wall to try and survive.
This episode originally aired on 7th November 1979 on the ITV network and was watched by 10.5m viewers in the UK. The 1979, four-part, mini series Quatermass (also known as The Quatermass Conclusion or Quatermass IV) is airing weekly from Tuesday 19th May. Stars John Mills, Simon McCorkindale, Barbara Kellerman, Ralph Arliss, Rebecca Saire, Toyah Willcox, David Yip, Alison Dowling.
• Talking Pictures TV is An Archive Film & TV Channel. Available on the following platforms/channels: Freeview 81, YouView 81, Freesat 306, Sky 328 and Virgin 445.
