Marking tonight’s premiere concert of ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’ UK tour: Available for one day only, ‘CASTAWAYS: Four (live) from Toyah’ EP.
1. Dawn Chorus/Moonlight Dancing (6.55 Special)
2. Brave New World (Get Set For Summer)
3. Street Creature (Get Set For Summer)
4. Castaways (Get Set For Summer)
Click on the artwork to view the EP at ‘Soundcloud’ or listen via the player below.
These tracks are all already available online, in video, at ‘You Tube’. As the new tour opens I thought creating an EP from them, showcasing four great live performances from ‘The Changeling’ era, would be a fitting way to celebrate this great occasion. Click here for a larger version of the artwork. (UPDATE: This is no longer available)
Yet another exciting Changelingtweet from Toyah yesterday: “6 songs from The Changeling gone into new set for Resurrection tour. Can’t wait. Love toyah“.
There’s now just one, yes one, day to go until the first gig of ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’ tour.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of ‘The Changeling’, artist Mark Satchwill created this amazing Toyah art.
Mark said: “It’s 30 years since Toyah released The Changeling, and as she is touring the album I thought I would do a painting to mark the occasion. The painting is inspired by Toyah’s amazing and colourful image and the songs lyrics of the album. It was painted digitally in ArtRage 3.5 Pro.”
A fantastic, lasting tribute to the album, it’s lyrics, themes and imagery. Visit Mark’s official website, and his blog.
There are now just two days to go until ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’ is finally unleashed. What will be included in the set list? Which songs from the album have made it into the 30th anniversary celebratory tour? What will Toyah look like? What will she be wearing?
It really is fantastic that Toyah is taking the time to, yet again, indulge her fans in this way. I’m sure everyone who is heading to Brighton for Saturday’s gig must be getting ridiculously excited.
The imagery created for ‘The Changeling’ album is not only some of the finest of Toyah’s many different looks and guises but also probably the best of any pop star’s visuals. Especially when you consider that they were achieved without digital trickery, airbrushing and photoshop. Astounding creativity and ideas. The two below are particularly beautiful and timeless.
A short excerpt from Toyah’s autobiography, published in August 2000, ‘Living Out Loud’.
Toyah talks about ‘The Changeling’, and some of the events of 1982: Winning ‘Best Female Singer’ at The British Rock & Pop Awards, sacking her manager, feeling that her images and hairstyles were becoming outdated etc.
Toyah also mentions the reasons why herself and Joel decided to record an album with much darker themes after the huge success of ‘Anthem’ the year before.
• Listen to ‘The Changeling’ set of Toyah interviews and audio, at ‘Soundcloud’, here.
• A Tale Of Two Anthems: The ‘what’s new’ section of Spotify keeps displaying an album called Anthem by somebody called Desolation Angels, with a strangely familiar cover. It reminded me of something… View this interesting article at ‘Skuds’ Sister’s Brother’ blog.
• View a short article on Brum at the, quite brilliant, ‘Retro Rambling’ blog, “A joyride through our slightly ridiculous though memorable past”
• ‘The Telegraph’ included ‘Let’s Rock The Moor 2012’ in its “Top 100 Music Festivals: April – September 2012” on Monday: Not so much rockin’ the moor as inundating it with hits of the mid-Eighties. View here.
• Toyah is included in the ‘Heart’ Who’s On Heart: “Wrong Guesses – Women Pt 2” gallery. View here.
Toyah’s ‘Pop Star’, Alan Parsons’ ‘The Raven’ and Orson Welles? This shouldn’t work, but it does!
Tom Leon has uploaded to ‘house mixes.com’ two mash-ups he created in the mid-90’s:
1995: Long before mashups or bootlegs are gone to mainstream, I created a special mix….. really handmade with discs and effect-recording:
One of my first bootleg-mixes and I like it to this day! It is a fusion between Alan Parsons The Raven and the voice of Toyah Willcox. Hope U like it?
Listen to ‘Awake’n Dreams (On A Lost City Of Mars) [Shortplay Fusion Mix]’ here, and ‘Awake’n Dreams (On A Lost City Of Mars) [Smooth House Version]’, here.
The full Sky Trax Toyah Special. This aired in 1985 around the time of the release of ‘Don’t Fall In Love (I Said)’. It’s a great programme, hosted by one of Toyah’s biggest supporters in the 80s, Peter Powell. This was a one-hour show with Toyah talking about her career, including Glitter, Jubilee, Katharine Hepburn, Quadrophenia, the early live gigs, 1981 and a lot more. Sky Trax was a music show, with a variety of hosts including Radio 1 DJs, covering music from all over Europe. It aired on ‘Sky Channel’, Europe’s very first satellite channel (which began as a cable channel in 1982) and was renamed ‘Sky One’ in 1989. View larger caps here.
Yikes! Just four short days to go until the first concert of ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’.
‘The Changeling’ has been my, and many other Toyah fans’, favourite Toyah album for almost 30 years. When you consider Toyah’s best album releases: ‘Sheep Farming In Barnet’, ‘The Blue Meaning’, ‘Anthem’, ‘Love Is The Law’, ‘Desire’, ‘Prostitute’, ‘Ophelia’s Shadow’, ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Queen’… ‘The Changeling’ can only be described as “the best of the best”. Impressive!
Back in early 2007 I started building a feature for Dreamscape on ‘The Changeling’. I didn’t initially realise the feature would end up taking months to complete and would become one of the Toyah creations I’m most proud of. I’ve always felt Toyah’s 1982 studio album deserves to be celebrated, which is why I did so throughout Dreamscape’s 12 years and continue to on FTE. Rather than “pretentious twaddle” (who said that? :)) it’s a brilliant, and brilliantly dark ,’concept’ album that has grown in stature and reputation over the last 30 years!
5. Stations Of The Crass – Crass
4. Toyah! Toyah! Toyah! – Toyah
3. Closer – Joy Division
2. Dirk Wears White Sox – Adam and the Ants
1. He Who Dares Wins – Theatre Of Hate
What an amazing top five. Every one of those albums still sound good in 2012. View the full and original ATV documentary TOYAH that includes music from ‘Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!’.
Six days to go… Another audio interview that’s been available at Dreamscape and The Changeling 30 sites but good to have it here too in this countdown week to the launch of ‘The Changeling Resurrection’ tour.
This is the only audio that exists from 1982 with Toyah discussing ‘The Changeling’ in any detail.
Toyah guests on Rock On on ‘BBC Radio 1’, talking to Mark Ellen about the album, aliens, fairies, changelings, critics, the ‘Brave New World’ image and much more.
Mark Ellen sounds quite bemused but it’s fair to say that in 1982 he would probably have been far happier interviewing Bruce Springsteen or REO Speedwagon.
• There’s also a full transcript of this interview, at ‘The TW Interview Archive’, here.
• ‘The Blue Meaning’ is one of the choices at the Naim Audio forum’s “What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol.VIII)”.
• Toyah, 1979 is included in a gallery of great art by Gary Thomas in ‘My Art’ at Pinterest.
• Uploaded to ‘You Tube’ on Friday, this ‘ITV Night-Time Junction 1996’ advert includes a brief clip of Toyah presenting The Good Sex Guide Late: “Sex, sex and more sex! That’s what you’ll be getting from me for the next hour!!” View here.
‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’, Toyah’s highly-anticipated new tour, opens in a week’s time in Brighton. Toyah will be playing songs live that she hasn’t performed for 30 years!
Counting down to the first gig of ‘The Changeling Resurrection’… To mark the build-up to this exciting tour, and the first date, I’ll be bringing you something Changeling related each day…
Seven days to go and first up, let’s marvel, once more, at some of Andrew York’s incredible Changeling art. Click on these to view more.
This has been available on Dreamscape for a few years but I thought I’d add it here in case anyone hasn’t heard it or wants to listen again. It’s a really interesting interview with Toyah in mid 1980, discussing details about her career up to that point. (Thanks to Giddy Gavin)
Toyah discusses the origins of her name, The Tempest and playing Miranda, how she was “discovered”, Jubilee, Quadrophenia, the forming of the first Toyah band, her career to date, future plans and more. (The sound is quite low so please crank up your volume)
• Read a full transcript of this interview, at ‘The TW Interview Archive’, here. (Thanks to Min)
The second monthly online live track has been added to Toyah’s official website. It’s the majestic ‘Pop Star’, recorded live at The Regal, Oxford on 2nd July 2011.
Toyah’s official website will be offering visitors exclusive live tracks each month as Toyah’s Changeling Tour and summer festival/concert dates approach. At the beginning of each month an exclusive live track recorded from Toyah’s extensive 2011 tour dates will feature on the Gigs page.
The live tracks will be available to listen to for a limited time only with a new track replacing it each month. These live tracks are a taster for a special live album release planned for digital release in autumn/winter of 2012.
• Listen to ‘Pop Star’, live at Oxford’s The Regal, here.
Two brief excerpts from last night’s ‘BBC Radio Shropshire/Stoke/etc’ interview, with Toyah talking about ‘The Changeling’ and ‘The Changeling Resurrection’. See below for info on how to hear the full interview. (Apologies for the noises, they are included in iPlayer’s recording)
More ‘Changeling’ related tweets from Toyah yesterday: “Fab day plugging in2 The Changeling. Started to really like the songs again. Can c beyond the stresses at the time.”, and this morning: “Pop Star (Live) is online 4 ur pleasure. toyahwillcox.com/gigs. Only 13 days till 1st concert. Can’t wait. The devil in me is excited.”
Welcome to the month of ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’… It’s going to be wild (child)!
From Toyah’s Official Facebook today: Welcome to April…the month of THE CHANGELING RESURRECTION 2012 tour which kicks off in Brighton on 14 April. Full details of the 7 tour dates plus lots of additions to Toyah’s gig diary are now online along with a new exclusive live track….. ONLY at www.toyahwillcox.com/gigs
2012 is a significant anniversary year for two of Toyah’s albums: It is, of course, the 30th since the release of ‘The Changeling’ (1982) and also the 25th since ‘Desire’ (1987).
Aside from this vague connection there’s a more explicit link for the two albums, the songs ‘Dawn Chorus’ and ‘Moonlight Dancing’. In 1982 Toyah performed the former on BBC1’s 6.55 Special (think The One Show with the added bonus of Sally James) and towards the close of the song added new lyrics that weren’t included on the album version. This “alternative” version of ‘Dawn Chorus’ was never performed again, and it wasn’t until the release of ‘Desire’ five years later that ‘Moonlight Dancing’, which the new lyrics were an excerpt from, was heard again.
‘Moonlight Dancing’ probably didn’t even exist as a fully formed song at this point in time, though both were written by Toyah and Joel Bogen. It’s interesting, though, that these few extra lines from 1982 went on to become part of one of Toyah’s finest singles and forged an ever lasting link between two very different Toyah albums…
All the best things come boxed, right? Check out the great “themed” packaging Andi has created for the ‘Anthem’ Toyah doll. You can almost imagine this sitting on a toy shop (or Woolworths’) shelf, Christmas 1981. Click below to view a larger photo. (Thanks to Andi)
Marking tonight’s premiere concert of ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’ UK tour: Available for one day only, ‘CASTAWAYS: Four (live) from Toyah’ EP.
