Audley End Concerts 2012
Friday 3rd August – Sunday 5th August
We are thrilled to announce that the much-loved Summer Picnic Concerts at Audley End House and Gardens will go ahead as usual this summer. English Heritage has teamed up with independent concert producers, Portal Events Ltd to deliver a fantastic line-up of musical stars and the concerts will take place from Friday 3rd August to Sunday 5th August 2012.
MORE INFORMATION WILL BE ANNOUNCED TOMORROW, FRIDAY 30TH MARCH.
A star-studded line-up including Jools Holland and Rick Astley will entertain crowds at the Audley End Picnic Concerts this summer after they were saved from the axe.
It had been feared the popular concerts would be cancelled after a promoter pulled out, but English Heritage has found another partner – Portal Events. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 9am. This year the concerts will be on three consecutive nights, from Friday to Sunday, August 3-5, rather than consecutive weekends.
On the Saturday, the venue, near Saffron Walden, will rock to an 80s party with Rick Astley, Jimmy Somerville, Midge Ure, Nik Kershaw, T’Pau, Toyah, Wang Chung and Dr and the Medics.
With the very recent discovery of two rare, and fantastic, ‘Desire’ photos now seems as good a time as any to take a look back at some of the imagery from this era. In a 10 year career this was probably the first time Toyah had looked “conventional”. The ‘Desire’ album and related image seems to be more appreciated retrospectively than at the time of release… dive in!
• View the 25th anniversary ‘Desire’ feature at Dreamscape here. (Photography by Carrie Branovan)
From ‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan’ Facebook: This is just advance warning of a promotion – the Kindle edition of the book will be available FREE from Amazon on 29 March 2012 (tomorrow) only. The competition to win an ‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan – Were You?’ t-shirt is also still open.
Quadrophenia is to show at the ‘San Francisco International Film Festival’ next month. The 55th prestigious festival runs from 19th April – 3rd May.
Tommy (1975) may be Pete Townshend’s most famous rock opera, but Quadrophenia (1979) is his most personal. In the hands of director Franc Roddam, the tale becomes a kitchen-sink drama of near-vérité realism and a timeless tale of teenage alienation and identity. “I don’t wanna be the same as everybody else. That’s why I’m a Mod,” says Jimmy (Phil Daniels), the parka-wearing, scooter-riding London teenager who spends his days at a dead-end ad agency job and his nights grooving to the likes of The Who.
Held each spring for 15 days, the ‘San Francisco International Film Festival’ is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in one of the country’s most beautiful cities.
Summer 1985, Toyah performed ‘Don’t Fall in Love (I Said)’ on German music show Formel Eins. This was the only time Toyah ever wore the black rubber dress during a performance. Click below for larger caps.
The photographer Eric Watson, who took great photographs of numerous pop stars in the 80s, including Toyah, for ‘Smash Hits’ magazine, died on 18th March.
Born in Newcastle, Eric moved to London in 1974 and studied fine art at Hornsey College of Art from 1977 to 1980. His fellow students included Stuart Goddard (who became Adam Ant) and Mike Barson from Madness. On leaving college, he worked as an assistant to the photographers Red Saunders and Gered Mankowitz (known collectively as the Rembrandt Brothers), then photographing covers for Madness and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.
In 1981 he was invited to work for Smash Hits, after the editor, David Hepworth, saw photographs Watson had shot for Madness. He became the magazine’s main photographer and at around the same time Neil Tennant, whom he knew through a mutual friend from Newcastle, was made assistant editor.
Read a tribute to Eric, from former ‘Smash Hits’ editor, David Hepworth and his obituary from ‘The Guardian’. (Thanks to Gill)
Toyah’s 10th song choice from My Vintage, ‘Mad World’. “I don’t think I’m alone in making the mistake I made with this song when I asked a member of REM when they released ‘Mad World’. They very kindly pointed out it was Tears For Fears.
When the film Donnie Darko came out, which I sat through. It’s a pretty hard film to sit through, and then ‘Mad World’ came up at the end, and it was so potent and powerful. Suddenly that song was everywhere, and it had relevance and meaning…”
• Read the full transcript of the reasons for this song choice here.
A post from ‘Vintage TV’ Facebook yesterday: ATTENTION one and all. There are only 4 days left to enter our competition to win a pair of tickets to one of Toyah’s 6 April tour dates. Don’t miss out. Go here.
Toyah guested on BBC1’s Ask Aspel on 16th June 1981, talking music, songwriting, acting, presenting and answering viewer’s questions. Includes clips from the ATV docu and The Tempest. Not great quality but interesting all the same.
There are two opportunities to catch Toyah’s “classic” Tales Of The Unexpected episode, ‘Blue Marigold’, on UK television today. Set your recorders as you will most likely be at work/asleep.
The episode, from the fifth series of the much-loved 70s/80s drama, is airing at 1pm and 1am on Sky Arts 2 (Sky Ch 130, Virgin Media Ch 283).
It’s almost exactly 30 years since this first aired on ITV.
Tales Of The Unexpected: Sky Arts 2: Tuesday 27th March: 1.00pm Tales Of The Unexpected: Sky Arts 2: Wednesday 28th March: 1.15am Blue Marigold. Series 5, Episode 1. Dropped by her agency for her diva-like behaviour, supermodel Marigold’s mental health deteriorates. Years later, she plots a comeback. Director: Giles Foster. Starring: Toyah Willcox, Ralph Bates, Sharon Duce, Helen Fraser, Billy Hamon, Edward Jewesbury.
The official ‘Rock & Bike Festival’ website has Toyah listed as playing this year’s four-day festival in July.
This will be the third consecutive year Toyah has appeared at the Derbyshire event.
As with all gigs it’s advisable not to book until Toyah is officially confirmed.
The Rock & Bike Fest ’12: Thursday 12th – Saturday 14th July 2012 Elvaston Castle Showground, Borrowash Road, Derby
If you’re into Rock Music and Bikes or just festivals in general then this is for you. The Rock & Bike Fest moves to a new home at Elvaston Castle Showground, in Derby, and will happen from 12th until 14th of July 2012.
The first acts confirmed for the two stages are: Saturday night headliners The Sweet, plus Toyah Willcox, x-UFO, Killerz, Guns N Roses Experience, Rammlied, Sack Sabbath, OC/DC, Jilted Generation, Evilscarecrow, Jester, Stage Fright, Gatecrasher, Faithealer/Junction, Hell On High Heelz + more to follow including Friday night headliners.
Glitterbug, Derek Jarman’s final film, from 1994 includes brief Toyah footage from filming Jubilee in 1977. View a great article on it at Dangerous Minds.
…a prelude to Jubilee, a young flame-haired Toyah Willcox, The Sex Pistols, Jordan and a dress rehearsal for what will become The Last of England, as she pirouettes around a burning Union Jack, Adam Ant, hair-cutting, the Silver Jubilee.
Glitterbug Derek Jarman’s Super 8 films, with Andrew Logan, Duggie Fields, Tilda Swinton, Michael Clark, Adam Ant, Toyah Willcox, William Burroughs and Genesis P. Orridge. Music by Brian Eno, specially commissioned for this film.
I hope to occasionally bring you some rare Toyah footage. Here’s Toyah performing ‘Danced’ live on Friday Night Saturday Morning in 1980. The also performed ‘Mummies’.
• Kylie channels her inner Toyah: Kylie Minogue is celebrating the 25th anniversary of her music career this year, “K25”. I’m not sure how recent this photo is, though it does have the anniversary logo on it. There’s definitely a Toyah, circa 1981, influence going on. The ‘TITM’ swirls & hairpiece, the ‘GMU’ braids, the forehead make-up :)
• Toyah fan (and my friend since the beginning of Dreamscape) Sabine Bode from Germany has started her own comedy show. Sabine takes to the stage to the sound of Toyah’s ‘Sensational’ from 2008’s ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Queen’.
• Toyah on TV (in Sweden): Toyah’s edition of Celebrity Fantasy Homes airs on BBC Lifestyle, Friday 6th April at 11.45am.
Another recent, and interesting, article on Jubilee, the film that becomes more celebrated by the month. This one by ‘Network Awesome’.
After the release of Derek Jarman’s Jubilee in 1978, Vivienne Westwood, outraged at what she saw as a misrepresentation of punk, took to her then preferred medium, the t-shirt, to express her displeasure. The “Open T-Shirt to Derek Jarman,” with its wordy scrawl, is a rather confusing cultural artifact in that it now seems rather counterproductive. For starters, punk certainly had more important enemies in 1978 than a queer experimental filmmaker and visual artist, a fellow member of the counterculture whether she liked it or not…
You wait 25 years and then, not one but, two very rare photos of Toyah from 1987 (a year I prefer to refer to as “the ‘Desire’ era”) surface.
This one is from an official EG print, and, as with all of the fantastic ‘Desire’ promotional photography, is likely to have been taken by Carrie Branovan.
If I was wealthy I would definitely publish a Toyah Photo Book: ‘Visions’. Full sessions, rare photos, outtakes… Every coffee table would want one! Toyah’s amazing visual imagery, both past and present, really should be captured for posterity. Anyway, back to reality! (Thanks to Michael for this great photo)
The full edition of Tonight with Jonathan Ross, which originally aired on Channel 4 in January 1991, with Toyah guesting is available to watch at ‘You Tube’. Watch here and click below to view larger versions of the caps.
Audley End Concerts 2012
