Dreamscape | The Toyah Willcox Fansite

Salvaged from eBay for your viewing/reading pleasure. An article from 1983 by ‘Disco 45’. Hardly mind blowing journalism but I thought I’d add it as it’s admirably positive.

Contrary to what a lot of people expected, Toyah Willcox has returned strongly to the charts after an absence from recording of nearly a whole year.

Yes, it’s been that long since ‘Be Proud Be Loud (Be Heard)’ was released and became Toyah’s seventh hit single, while around the same time her most recent album, ‘Warrior Rock (Toyah On Tour)’, also came out, and not unexpectedly hit the Top 20 on the day of release. That was her fifth consecutive hit LP, and at the end of last year things were looking very good for the Birmingham girl with the big voice and the huge fan following. At the start of this year she was voted Top Female Singer in both a national newspaper and one of our own music rags, and we all expected a new record to be released to capitalize on that acclaim. But busy Toyah had other ideas, because as every Toyah fan knows, she is highly talented at more than just singing in front of a rock band.

Read more…

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)

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’.

Let me run riot of colour, over you…

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)

This incredibly rare shot of Toyah, from the 1987 ‘Desire’ era photo shoot, has recently been listed on eBay.

The seller is a photographer who has taken photos of numerous pop stars and says of this one: From my own collection… A posed and gorgeous, stunning, different and rare, promo 35mm slide, a great posed close up. One of the best we ever had. Cool pic!

Great that an unseen photo should surface in the 25th anniversary year of ‘Desire’.

This great ‘Crimson Queen’ Toyah art by Cliff Matthews is definitely worth another look. It really captures Toyah’s “Crimson Queen” aura and would look amazing on a wall!

It’s available to buy: £285 (70x50cm, acrylics on box canvas), and Toyah herself has saw the painting and given it her seal of approval and trademark “Big Love” autograph.

View the painting here and Toyah with Cliff, here.

It would be good if the same could happen with Mark Satchwill’s amazing works of Toyah art.

Mark Satchwill’s amazing painting inspired by Toyah’s ‘The Changeling’ is now available to buy as an 8×10 print from Etsy.

As well as a print, small poster or postcard from Red Bubble. A great gift for any Toyah fan.

The latest painting of Toyah by artist Mark Satchwill.

Based on ‘The Changeling’ imagery and the song lyrics on the album, it’s a beautiful tribute in this 30th anniversary year.

It’s a digital work, painted in ArtRage and would be around 16 x 20 inches on canvas.

Mark has previously created ‘Four From Toyah’ and ‘The Blue Meaning’ Toyah art.

Please click on the photo to view a larger version and thanks to Mark for this. (Painting © Mark Satchwill)

• Visit ‘Mark Satchwill Art’, to view more of Mark’s work, here.

The first “Album Of The Month” and it has to be ‘Prostitute’. Not only for being a great album but also for including the song that this new Toyah Newsletter takes its name from.

Released in 1988, I think this album shocked every Toyah fan at the time. It was the successor to ‘Desire’ and couldn’t have been more different but also that title. Tame by today’s standards maybe, but in 1988 it was still a word that Toyah couldn’t even say when she guested on TVAM.

‘Prostitute’ is definitely Toyah’s most experimental album to date, and her least commercial. Using all manner of samples and noises to create a weird, yet addictively interesting, soundscape. It’s minimalist and raw and has Toyah sounding quite like Kate Bush in parts, Laurie Anderson in others. There’s an abundance of spoken and whispered vocals and Toyah’s unmistakable laugh and in comparison to its two predecessors; ‘Desire’ and ‘Minx’ is almost a return to the brashness of Toyah’s early Safari albums. Go on, give ‘Prostitute’ another listen… View more here.

This will possibly be a regular feature on ‘Falling To Earth’. Collecting together key images from a specific Toyah “era”. Starting us off… Various Toyah photos from the ‘Sheep Farming in Barnet’ days.

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 the first, ‘Latex Messiah’, live at Manchester Academy, here.

‘The-Rocker/Zeitgeist’, “an idiosyncratic collection of music news and reviews”, recently gave the thumbs-up to both ‘We Are The Humans’ and ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Queen’;

The Humans – We Are The Humans
The Humans are an odd little cove. A project that was first put together to perform new songs at a series of concerts in Estonia, they comprise Chris Wong, Bill Rieflin and one Toyah Willcox.

After the shows were completed, they went into the studio to record the material, before heading back to Estonia to perform them again. Which is a curious, yet perversely intriguing way of doing things.

Most of the music comprises dense, electronic landscapes, with the clipped, robotic voice of Toyah acting as an additional instrument. It’s certainly interesting, and bears more than a passing resemblance to solo David Sylvain. Which is a good thing. ‘Twisted Soul’ is probably the closest thing to anything conventional, and acts as a good entry point. Me? I liked it.

Toyah – In The Court Of The Crimson Queen
Listening to The Humans album reminded me that I had quite forgotten how good the last Toyah album was, the wittily titled “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen”.

Toyah is one of those people who only really became interesting to me after the hits dried up, and this album is a bit of a secret joy. There’s half a dozen songs here that deserved to be huge with the likes of ‘Sensational’, the bluesy (!) ‘Latex Messiah’ and ‘Legacy’, utter delights. However, it would be a brave man who listened to ‘Come’ and ‘Bad Man’ more than once.

You really ought to buy this, just so Toyah doesn’t have to slum it on the Vampires Rock tour again.

Happy Halloween to all Dreamscape’s visitors. The great news this October 31st is that Toyah’s Latex Messiah (Viva La Rebel In You)  is currently number 30 on the iTunes Plus Top 100 Downloads Chart, and, better still, number six in the iTunes Plus Rock chart. It is also no. 92 in the general iTunes Rock chart. Keep downloading!!