We’ve reached the final day of our count down to Toyah’s Birthday – Yes! Toyah’s big day is tomorrow! – and the last day of revisiting past Dreamscape birthday updates… To celebrate Toyah’s 50th Birthday in 2008 a special mini-site was put together, which you can visit by clicking below…
The Official Toyah website also gave fans some great Toyah treats that landmark year, including a gorgeous new look website and lots of special content related to Toyah’s 50th.
Derek Jarman’s The Tempest is being screened next month at Watershed, Bristol as part of the BFI presents Shakespeare on Film programme.
Brooding and darkly laden with symbolic imagery, Derek Jarman’s terrific, homoerotic adaptation of Shakespeare’s final play is considered by some to be the most evocative Shakespeare adaptation ever to reach the screen.
A tale of colonialism, revenge, retribution and reconciliation, it focuses on an ageing magician named Prospero (Heathcote Williams) – who is imprisoned on an island with his beautiful daughter Miranda (Toyah Willcox) and a beast called Caliban (Jack Birkett) – and his plans to seek vengeance on his brother by conjuring up a wild tempest to shipwreck his ship. This is Jarman at his most playful and original – enjoy!
Shakespeare on Film: The Tempest
Sun 19 June 12:00 | Director: Derek Jarman
Cast: Heathcote Williams, Toyah Willcox, Karl Johnson
135 mins, 1979, UK
• Further info at the Watershed website. There’s also a short article on the screening at bristol247.com. Browse further details on BFI presents Shakespeare on Filmhere.
• Aural Sculptors: Toyah The Rainbow London 21st February 1981: Toyah did not support The Stranglers, but Toyah Willcox did lend a helping hand at the early April Rainbow gigs as a guest vocalist. Here is a soundboard recording of the band Toyah playing in their own right at the Rainbow. This is, I think, an audio rip of the long deleted BBC Video of the band’s appearance at the North London venue – Continue reading…
• British Horror Revival: Eight pop stars who wrote soundtracks for British horror films: Robert Fripp – Steve Oram’s bonkers 2015 humans-act-like-apes feature Aaaaaaaah! includes among its cast former 1980s pop star Toyah Willcox. When her husband, King Crimson rocker Fripp, heard about the movie he offered Oram a collection of unreleased tracks from which to collate a soundtrack – Continue reading…
• Radio Times: The Great British Sewing Bee is back with a new judge: Clients at Swanky Modes included Cher, Grace Jones, Toyah Willcox and Julie Christie – Continue reading…
• Loughborough Echo: Tribute acts galore set their sights on Glastonbudget: Top tribute acts and local artists took to the stage at Glastonbudget last year which marked its 10th anniversary with a record attendance. The real-life Toyah Willcox headlined as special guest on Saturday – Continue reading…
• Sunday Post: Spandau Ballet star Tony Hadley admits he had to hold back in the I’m A Celebrity jungle: Tony, who had hits with True and Gold while in Spandau Ballet, lost 10kg in the jungle and he’ll be showing off his still-slimmer shape as one of the big names at this year’s Rewind Scotland festival, which runs from July 22 to 24. It takes place at Scone Palace Perth and also features Adam Ant, Midge Ure, Toyah, Rick Astley, ABC, and more – Continue reading…
Today we are continuing to count down to Toyah’s Birthday and back in 2010 we were doing the same… with rare photos, radio interviews, classic interviews and more in a “1981 themed” celebration. Take the leap back to May 2010…
35 years ago tonight Toyah kicked off a UK Tour at Derby in support of the album Anthem – Click below to view a larger version of the gig poster at The Official Toyah Facebook.
This week (and a bit of next) we are counting down to Toyah’s birthday by revisiting past birthday updates (as you do!).
May 2003 was an exciting month for Toyah fans. Not only did Toyah turn 45 but there was the not insignificant matter of the release of a brand new album. Toyah’s first all-new studio album in nine years and also of the new Millennium:
“Velvet Lined Shell (catalogue number VSR001) is released on Toyah’s own, newly formed, record label, Vertical Species. The CD artwork is dark and dramatic, similar to the actual music. Toyah has cited Mogwai, PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Marilyn Manson and Elbow (among others) as her influences while recording these new songs.”
Quadrophenia: Sky Select HD: Sunday 15th May: 10pm Quadrophenia: Sky Greats HD: Saturday 21st May: 11.50pm
The Who wrote and produced this energetic story of a young man disillusioned with his life in 1960s London. Phil Daniels excels as the alienated anti-hero Jimmy Cooper. Director: Franc Roddam. Starring: Phil Daniels, Leslie Ash, Toyah Willcox, Philip Davis, Mark Wingett, Sting, and Ray Winstone. (Sky Greats HD movie channel is on Sky Channel 304 / Sky Greats HD is on Sky Channel 305)
Ten years ago there were a series of Gallery, Features, Downloads and Press Archive updates to Dreamscape, in celebration of Toyah’s birthday. Click below to take a trip back to May 2006.
It’s exactly one week until Toyah’s birthday. In years gone by Dreamscape has sporadically “counted down” to Toyah’s big day and, what the heck, we are doing it again… There will be a birthday related post right here every day until May 18th.
Today – Take a look back at how we marked Toyah’s birthday five years ago: There were previously unseen polaroids and rare photos, screen caps from long-ago TV roles, features (including an Anthem one that is finally being printed as I type!) and much more…
Top Of The Pops: 1981: BBC Four: Friday 20th May: 7.30pm Top Of The Pops: 1981: BBC Four: Saturday 21st May: 0.00am 15/10/1981. David ‘Kid’ Jensen presents the TOTP hits of the week, first broadcast on 15 October 1981. Includes appearances from BA Robertson & Maggie Bell, Squeeze, Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin, This Year’s Blonde, Toyah, the Creatures and Bad Manners. Also includes a dance sequence by Legs & Co. (NB: Toyah’s appearance is via the TITM video)
Top Of The Pops: 1981: BBC Four: Thursday 19th May: 7.30pm Top Of The Pops: 1981: BBC Four: Friday 20th May: 0.30am 01/10/81. Mike Read introduces the pop programme. Includes appearances from Godley & Creme (Under Your Thumb), Sheena Easton (Just Another Broken Heart), The Teardrop Explodes (Passionate Friend), The Creatures (Mad Eyed Screamer), Ottawan (Hands Up [Give Me Your Heart]), Toyah (Thunder In The Mountains), Bad Manners (Walking In The Sunshine), Altered Images (Happy Birthday), Dollar (Hand Held In Black & White), Adam & The Ants (Prince Charming).
Toyah appears in Trailblazers Of… Glam Rock on Sky Arts HD tonight. The programme re-airs a number of times over the next week.
Trailblazers Of…: Sky Arts HD: Friday 6th May: 9pm Trailblazers Of…: Sky Arts HD: Sunday 8th May: 1am/8pm Trailblazers Of…: Sky Arts HD: Tue 10th May: 3am/Thu 12 May: 0.00am
From the flamboyant clothes to the extravagant make up, Noddy Holder narrates this fascinating look at the evolution of glam rock.
There are a series of monologues of work written by Carl Chetty at You Tube. One Bad Apple, performed by Toyah has recently been uploaded. Twist-in-the-tale. This is the first time Coral Farley has told anyone that she is a victim of domestic violence.
Quadrophenia: Sky Select HD: Wednesday 11th May: 0.00am
The Who wrote and produced this energetic story of a young man disillusioned with his life in 1960s London. Phil Daniels excels as the alienated anti-hero Jimmy Cooper. Director: Franc Roddam. Starring: Phil Daniels, Leslie Ash, Toyah Willcox, Philip Davis, Mark Wingett, Sting, and Ray Winstone. (Sky Select HD is on Sky Channel 312)
Toyah fan Dan has compiled and uploaded a great video tribute to “Mayhem” at You Tube. The Battersea warehouse is no more, having been demolished late last year.
Directed by Steve Stone, the British film Extremis will be released in 2016 and the official film poster has now been revealed.
Toyah acts in a cameo scene and will also perform a new original song Our Hearts Still Beat (Willcox/Darlow) for the film’s end titles.
A powerful business executive returns home to his family and their lavish lake house for the weekend. Within hours of his return, a cataclysmic event takes place out there in the landscape. The world beyond their garden is now deserted, the skies above them threatening and toxic. But is it the child who is in need of salvation? What is this strange apocalypse? An ecological disaster or a terror attack?
• Continue reading/View a larger version of the Extremis poster at toyahwillcox.com.
Photos from Derek Ridgers’, soon to be published, book Punk London 1977. are included in one of three events on punk all currently taking place in London.
As previously mentioned, an unseen photo of Toyah is included in the book.
Punk was always more than a t-shirt or a piece of loud music: it’s an irrepressible attitude. Throughout 2016, London will host gigs, exhibitions and events to commemorate 40 years of punk’s ongoing influence through fashion, film, photography, design, literature and of course music.
• Browse further info on the events here. There’s also info and photos at UDiscover. Read an interview with Derek Ridgers at Infringe. Ridgers’ photos will also feature at a forthcoming Punk Weekender event, in June.
Fans of the early John Waters and early Gregg Araki oeuvre may feel right at home with all the vulgarity and body fluids on display in Steve Oram’s Aaaaaaaah! This is adventurous and crude postmodern cinema, and the easily offended need not apply.
Oram displays a ruthless instinct with sadistic lapses into camp and caricature with Aaaaaaaah!, a film hell bent on upsetting the audience in this tale of society’s collapse. In the film the human stock has downgraded, and devolved into grunting, drooling, depraved, inarticulate primitives.
Robbed of the capacity to speak beyond gorilla-like elucidation, chest-beating, and genital-waving, I found the film to enact a Beckett-like scenario but at least half the audience I saw it with thought it was just shit. Their loss.
A winning cast of Brits including Oram, Julian Barrett, Noel Fielding, and Toyah Willcox add street cred to this one-of-a-kind mindfuck. Aaaaaaaah! is a strangely sublime picture, in turns delicate and disorienting, with a Buñuelian bite and a whiff of nasty nihilism, too. You’ll either love it or you’ll hate it but you won’t ever forget it.
