Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

An exclusive new photo book has been made available by Ilse Ruppert, featuring never before published, and frankly quite amazing, photos of Toyah. These photos were taken by llse whilst Toyah was on a German promotional trip to Hamburg for The Blue Meaning album in 1980.

You can buy the book online at blurb which also carries a preview of the full content.

• The book is only available via blurb and the link will only be available for a short period. (Info Source: Breaking Through)

The book marking the 35th anniversary of the release of the film, Quadrophenia: A Way Of Life – Inside The Making Of Britain’s Greatest Youth Film, by Simon Wells is published today.

It’s 35 years since the film Quadrophenia first hit the world’s cinema screens. Jimmy the Mod’s search for identity against the backdrop of the May Bank Holiday riots of the 1960′s, is regarded as the finest example of a British “youth” movie and a warmly remembered timepiece.

As the generation that first saw it now approach their fifties with teenagers of their own, Quadrophenia has become a glorious benchmark for their own youthful excesses, hopes, dreams and nostalgia. To critics, admirers and casual observers, it’s intriguing: what makes a 30 plus year-old film like Quadrophenia so appealing? And similarly, why do people return to it time and time again?

For the first time, QUADROPHENIA… A WAY OF LIFE explores the making of Britain’s finest youth film and its subsequent influence on popular culture. With interviews with principal cast members, director Franc Roddam, scriptwriter Martin Stellman and other involved in the creation of the film, this is the definitive account of Britain’s greatest cult movie.

• View further details and buy the book at Countdown Books.

• An Occasional Plug: I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan chronicles a slice of adolescent life from late 1979 to late 1986 and recalls the experience of being a pop music fan in the early eighties, evoking the feelings of a very different time before the internet, mobile phones or multi-channel TV put media at our fingertips.

• Strawberry Line Times: Sat 27 Apr. Theatre preview: ex punk Toyah teams up with Julie Coombe for a hormonal moment: The former pink haired punk rocker Toyah Willcox is appearing in Bristol next month in Hormonal Housewives. She stars in the show at the Bristol Hippodrome with Julie Coombe.

• Robert Fripp’s Diary: Lots of “behind-the-scenes” photos from the ‘At Home’ part of the forthcoming All Star Mr & Mrs programme. Robert says: “A four-hour visit for perhaps two minutes of screentime“. Looks like the adorable Willyfred was ready for his close up!

• Red Funnel: Jack Up The 80s: 10-11 August 2013. Don’t miss this great new 2 day 80’s music event featuring Heaven 17, Bad Manners, Katrina and the Waves, Bootleg Blondie and Toyah to name just a few.

• _Black_Acrylic: Derek Jarman – Jubilee: Jubilee is a 1978 cult film directed by Derek Jarman. It stars Jenny Runacre, Ian Charleson, and a host of punk rockers, including Adam Ant and Toyah. The title refers to the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 1977.

• The Quietus: Adam Ant On Fashion, Back-Carving & MJ: Interesting video interview with Adam in which he also talks about Jubilee.

• BBC America Doctor Who Specials: Three of the documentaries Toyah guested in last year, The Women Of Doctor Who, The Timey Wimey Of Doctor Who, The Destinations Of Doctor Who, have been released on R1 DVD. Although they are on a standalone disc with its own artwork (see photo) they can only be purchased as part of a huge, 41-disc, six-series spanning, box set. View more info on the BBC America DW specials here.

• Birmingham Music Heritage (Untold Stories 1965-1985): Below, Toyah Willcox, Fuzz Townshend of Pop Will Eat Itself, and former Black Sabbath manager Jim Simpson, along with Birmingham band manager and promoter, Barry Tomes talk about Birmingham’s venues of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

The excellent I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan is currently available in paperback from lulu.com for £5 + P&P. Use the coupon code SPARK to save a further 20% off the listed price. This represents the cheapest opportunity to buy the paperback since it was published in late 2011 (Offer ends 8th March 2013 at 11:59pm).

• View Dreamscape’s recent news on I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan.

Just at the “idea” stage at the moment, but Paul of PAC Photography may possibly make Toyah: Photographing An Icon a reality if enough people are interested in a book of his wonderful Toyah photos. Please email your interest and I’ll let Paul know.

Behind The Sofa, the Doctor Who book in which Toyah contributes a memory, has finally been published and is now available to buy from Amazon and other online book stores.

Behind The Sofa is a collection of over 100 celebrity memories of Doctor Who, compiled in aid of Alzheimer’s Research UK.

• View a review of the book at Impact Online, a news report at Velvet Onion and a preview of some of the excellent content at Radio Times.

• I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan: The Kindle edition of “I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan” is available for just 80p at Amazon – A coming of age tale of Adolescent Misadventures in Eighties Pop. You don’t have to have a Kindle to read it – Kindle editions are also readable on iPhones, iPads, Macs, PCs and many more portable devices with the Kindle app. The paperback has been dropped to £5.99 + P&P on Lulu.

• Behind The Sofa: Celebrity Memories Of Doctor Who: In which Toyah contributes a memory, is now available to pre-order and goes on general release, in print and digitally, in late September: Behind The Sofa is a collection of over 100 celebrity memories of Doctor Who, compiled in aid of Alzheimer’s Research UK. Steve Berry decided to undertake this project in memory of his mother Janet, who suffered from Alzheimer’s in her final years and passed away in 2009. The book has taken more than four years to put together and its publication has been “crowd-funded” by the pre-orders of an enthusiastic Whovian community. More details at Troubador and Amazon.

A small preview of all of the photos of Toyah included in ‘Herb Schulz, Capturing The New Romantics’ digital book, including rare shots from the famous 1981 session that have never been published before. If you’re a fan of Toyah’s early 80s imagery, or the New Romantics in general, this book is a must! Buy the book here. It may be available in other formats, including hard-copy, at some point in the future. (Thanks again to Andi | Photos © Herb Schulz)

Herb Schulz, an acclaimed advertising and fashion photographer of the time took these portraits of the ‘Blitz Kids’ in his studio. Unlike other images documenting from this period, Schulz decided to capture these creations in a sterile environment, removing them from the clubs or drab streets of 1980s London, imbuing them with a sense of hyper-reality. These images, like no other of the era, capture with a heightened sense of intimacy the characters behind the facades. Photos include Steve Strange, Boy George, Toyah Willcox, Siouxsie Sioux and many never before seen images from the earlier time of the New Romantic movement.

Amazing Melissa Caplan outfits from ‘Herb Schulz, Capturing The New Romantics’, along with the, slightly different. original cover. These are from the same collection as Melissa’s famous Toyah outfit, The Wedding Dress. Buy the book here. (Thanks to Andi | Photos © Herb Schulz)

‘Herb Schulz, Capturing The New Romantics’, by Herb Schulz & Timothy Nies, is available to buy as a digital photo book for the bargainesque £4.99/$6.99. Featuring stunning photos of Toyah, Siouxsie, Steve Strange, Boy George, Marilyn and many others. View more info at Facebook and buy the iBook at iTunes. (Thanks to Andi | Photos © Herb Schulz))

The New Romantic movement was an explosion of style, styling, androgyny and fashion. Formed in London in the late 1970s it was as a defiant answer to punk. It represented a flirtation with artifice and beauty through a new form of music, fashion and performance. ‘The Blitz Club’ became the London stage on which certain members of the scene played.

• Something to look forward to: It looks likely that Toyah’s 1987 album ‘Desire’ will be reissued, on download, later this year. Toyah’s Official Facebook said on Sunday: “There are no plans for a CD reissue of Desire. Plans for a digital release later in 2012 however.”

• Thanks for the feedback on Stevie Bray’s interview, and to everyone who has visited the feature so far.

• ‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan’ has now been available for over six months. The Kindle version, from Amazon, can be bought for the very bargainesque 80p. You don’t even need a Kindle to read it! View all of our IWATTF news here.

• Stylish Elegance: Toyah Willcox is 54 today…

The free PDF magazine “The Mick”, from Mick Mercer, this month contains his review of ‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan’ as well as over 100 pages of music reviews and ruminations from 2011… Well worth a download.

(News Source: I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan Facebook)

• View all of FTE’s ‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan’ news.

In the run up to the final date of the Changeling Resurrection tour at Bishops Stortford, there will be another Amazon promotion involving I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan.  The Kindle edition (normally £1.96) will once more be available free from 8.00am on Friday 4 May for 48 hours.

This promotion expires at 8.00am on the morning of Sunday 6 May and is the last occasion on which the Kindle edition will be available for no charge, although as ever the first chapter will remain downloadable gratis on Amazon on a try-before-you-buy basis.

Of course many of you will already have the book by now, but this is an ideal opportunity to spread the word to your Kindle-owning friends!

(News Source: I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan Facebook)

A new article, by Chris Limb, on his memoir ‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan’.

After a while the novelty of there being an Amazon page for my book began to wear off.  It was no longer enough for me to browse to it and look adoringly at a page on which the spaces in the dynamic web template were filled by my own creation’s meta-data. So I had self-published. How was I going to promote it? Even though it was now available in paperback and ebook, the thing wasn’t going to sell itself.

• Continue reading, at ‘Catmachine’, here.

‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan’ in paperback is now available at Amazon Germany, France, Spain and Italy, priced €12.99. The book was already on sale at Amazon.com and .co.uk, and is also available in a Kindle edition. Further info here.

Not exactly “breaking news”, but I just very recently discovered that one of the shots of Toyah from the 1979 Simon Fowler photo shoot is included in this book. The cover boasts it contains “over 400 x-rated photos”. The photo of Toyah can hardly be classed as x-rated and, especially, by today’s standards is relatively conservative.

‘Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll’ by Chris Charlesworth was published by Omnibus Press in 1993 and again in July 2009. It includes photos of Madonna, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Elvis and numerous others.

This is a bumper collection of photographs, mostly of rock and pop stars in situations where in hindsight, they would probably have preferred the cameramen to be elsewhere at the time. It is also a collection of shots in which sex has been used to sell the artist, or their records, or both, in the days before sexism was a political issue. Apart from the album sleeves themselves, these pictures have not been touched up or airbrushed. Neither were the negatives consigned to the darkroom bin or locked away in safety deposit boxes.

Last month’s I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan Amazon Kindle promotion was a big success for the book.

A Facebook update on this today, with a screenshot of the Amazon chart: Last months chart showing during the Amazon KDP Select promotion (it actually went a few places higher but this was the only screen shot I got).

View a larger version of the screenshot. Congratulations to Chris.

I’ve periodically thought about a Toyah photo book for many years. If anyone is worthy or entitled to a photographic celebration of their imagery it surely is, the visual genius, Toyah? Sadly, I doubt it will ever happen. The copyright issues, sourcing high quality versions of photos, finding the owners/photographers, the cost involved… etc, but I still like to dream…

A post at ‘Catmachine’, by Chris Limb, on Thursday’s free kindle version of ‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan’.

The experiment of making the Kindle edition of my book I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan available free for 24 hours under Amazon’s KDP Select scheme was an interesting one and seems to have been a success in its own way – in 24 hours it was downloaded just shy of 700 times and peaked at number 50 in the Kindle chart.

Whether this translates into a greater visibility of the book in the long run is another matter (I would hope so) but even if it doesn’t one thing I can say is that hundreds more people will have read my book than before. And that, after all, is what it is all about.

• Continue reading, at ‘Catmachine’, here.

Great News! An update this morning, on yesterday’s promotion, from ‘I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan’ Facebook: “The Amazon promotion making the Kindle edition of the book free for a day yesterday went well – just shy of 700 downloads in 24 hours with the book peaking at number 50 in the Kindle charts.”

An actual physical copy is something special though, and a great addition to a book (or Toyah) collection. Visit the I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan website for details on how to buy the book.

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.