A short message from the inimitable Toyah Willcox – Willcox and Robert Fripp about how their performance on ‘Relax’ came to be. Listen to the track here. Click below for the video clip.
On this day in music history… In 1955 Bill Haley and his Comets, entered the UK chart for the first time with “Rock Around The Clock”, who will be rocking up to be our No.1 this week? In this week’s show, our artists include The Rolling Stones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Owen Paul, Carla Olson, Deniece Pearson, Allan Clarke & Laurence Juber, The Korgis, The Jive Aces, Classix Nouveaux & Phil Hendriks. And from the Heritage New Year charts of 2021, 2022 & 2023 Toyah, Paul Weller & Bruce Foxton & Russell Hastings. (• Browse previous Sensational news… )
A quirky update, from Phil Jupitus’ Instagram, and Official Toyah even replies!
These three women were key to the post punk era in music. All innovators in their spheres. And all still gigging.
(Toyah Willcox once sang ‘Secret Love’ from ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ to me. I remember a skinhead girl shouting for ‘Say When’ at The Lyceum and Lene looking down and saying quite sternly “Not yet.” Chrissie Hynde was on the pop quiz and was utterly delightful. The Pretenders debut album is one of those where I can’t dip in and out. It has to be the whole thing beginning to end. I would love to see her singing ‘Precious’ live, just once.)
Thanks Phil! ❤️🔥 (Secret Love is from Calamity Jane) 😘 x (reply from Toyah!)
The Official Charts website has had a major revamp/makeover recently. You can now browse Toyah’s chart history across numerous charts, rather than just the previously available Singles and Albums. Almost every album, box set and vinyl Toyah release over the past six years has entered numerous charts compiled by Official Charts. See all of these as well as Toyah’s “classic” chart entries by clicking below.
Toyah’s bio/artist page at Imagine Cruising…
There’s a rhythm – and bubbles – at The Official Toyah Willcox website…
The Toyah Willcox Interview Archive has had a substantial update recently. Lots of new radio and TV interviews have been transcribed with accompanying visuals.
These include ITV Unscripted, Evelyn Glennie Podcast, Tammy Gooding, BBC Hereford & Worcester, RTE Arena, BBC Radio Two Steve Wright In The Afternoon and more. There’s also the latest Toyah interview from Classic Pop magazine.
• Click to visit the archive. Find links to all of the new, and previous, transcripts on the right hand sidebar of the blog/website.
A new website for the forthcoming SohoCreate festival is now online. Toyah will be participating and is included in the website’s “All Speakers” section. Click below to visit.
Great news! ‘Sheep Farming in Barnet’ is included in Slicing Up Eyeballs‘ Top 100 Albums Of 1980 poll, announced online yesterday. The respected and influential music website – named after a lyric in the song ‘Debaser’ by the amazing PIXIES – is running a year-long “Best of the 80s” feature – an ambitious, year-by-year poll to determine just what were the best albums of each year of the 1980s.
‘Sheep Farming in Barnet’ places at #92 and is in the company of some truly incredible albums. Slicing Up Eyeballs’ poll for 1981 opens next week – Surely ‘Anthem’, with some support from Toyah’s online fans, will also figure?
• Coincidentally, I put together a ‘Sheep Farming in Barnet’ image earlier this week before I knew about the Slicing Up Eyeballs poll, Click above to view a larger version.
Coming soon to the Information Superhighway (ooooh I haven’t heard anyone call the internet that for years – retrotastic!) a shiny new Toyah-related website: IN THE FAIRGROUND | Andrew York’s Arternative Universe… Can anyone hear me out there?
LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule has a page labelled “?” in the Games section of its website, which plays Toyah’s ‘It’s A Mystery’ when accessed.
This is now being reported on games websites and forums all over the internet, including Game Informer: There’s A Media Molecule Mystery Afoot, Only SP: Media Molecule Teasing Unannounced Title, VG24/7: Media Molecule website teases secret new project.
• Visit the Media Molecule ‘Mystery’ page, and the LittleBigPlanet website.
Wishing a very Happy Birthday to Sugar Rush: The Humans Fansite. The site is one-year-old today – All the best to Paul, and congratulations. Here’s to future Humans days!
There’s now a King’s Heath Walk Of Fame website, with some great Toyah content.
The site has a couple of pages on Toyah. including videos from last year’s Hare & Hounds gig, which took place after Toyah was awarded her ‘Walk Of Fame’ star, plus a photo of Toyah receiving her star from Bev Bevan (in the “About Us” page).
There’s also updates on future recipients of stars and other related news.
• Visit the website. View all of Dreamscape’s ‘Walk Of Fame’ news here.
The ‘Cast’ pages at the Hormonal Housewives website have been added, including one for Toyah.
I was born on May 18th 1958; a birth date I share with Pope John Paul II. How could two people sharing the same birthday be so radically different? I bet he has never scoffed Mars Bars at 3’o clock in the morning whilst crying over Love Story. As far as I can remember I have always been hormonal, and I can remember being in my pram…
• Continue reading at hormonalhousewives.co.uk (Photo © Hormonal Housewives)
The ‘Let’s Rock The Moor 2012’ website has been given a colourful 80stastic makeover! Toyah plays “The Family Friendly 80’s Festival” in Cookham, Berkshire a week tomorrow.
‘PAC Photography’, who will be at The Robin, Wolverhampton this Saturday to photograph Toyah’s ‘Changeling Resurrection’ gig, have an excellent selection of archive photos of Toyah and The Humans at their website.
The website includes photos of Toyah from the ‘From Sheep Farming To Anthem’ gig at the Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton last October and photos from two of The Humans concerts, at The Public, West Bromwich and HMV Institute, Birmingham, both also from last October. (access via: View your pictures – Live Music)
There are also photos taken at The Power of Three film premiere at the Everyman Theatre in Hampstead, London in November last year. (access via: View your pictures – events)
• Visit ‘PAC Photography’ here.
That photo seems to have a life of its own!
The latest sighting is at the, excellent, ’80s Actual’ website, in an article from Saturday. The article is a look back on a July 1982 press report on the rise of compact discs, but also included in the ‘The Sun/Bizarre’ scan is the Simon Fowler photo accompanying news about the book ‘Toyah’ by Mike West (again!)
Toyah Can’t Bare It: This is pop star Toyah as she hoped her fans would never see her. The bare-breasted portrait was taken by photographer Simon Fowler for Mike West’s new biography of the singer published by Omnibus at £2.95. (Typically ‘The Sun’ is incorrect. The photo was taken in 1979 as Toyah details in the Sounds interview from 1982)
The ultimate celebration of, the mighty, ‘The Changeling’! Are you sitting comfortably?
• The ‘Moon In The Gutter’ blog uploaded a collection of screen shots from Jubilee on Tuesday: Operation Screenshot (Films of the Seventies): Derek Jarman’s Jubilee (1978). The “revival” of all things Jubilee continues… View here.
• Evening Times: Heaven is a place on Glasgow Green… Toyah is mentioned in this article today. View here. (NB. Toyah isn’t officially confirmed as playing this concert)
• Heard of Ghost Loft? Described as having “a heavy dash of the Cocteau Twins and a little bit of early Toyah”.
• Toyah’s ‘Warrior Rock: Toyah On Tour’ album was mentioned in Tuesday night’s Alex Lester Show on BBC Radio 2. (Thanks to Luke)
• Toyah received a namecheck in the, brilliantly titled, ‘Life Like Butter Sculptures’ blog yesterday: “This morning, the random music selector fed me Toyah Willcox’s “Mein Herr”. It was exactly what I needed. I’ll go find some Joan Jett next, I think.”
One of Toyah’s quotes on him is used in yesterday’s post about David Bowie at the ‘Vitiworks’ blog.
“Bowie set a standard. Within weeks every boy under the age of twenty had that haircut.” – Toyah Willcox
• View more of Toyah’s thoughts on Bowie, his influence on her and her memories of ‘The Jean Genie’, from last month’s My Vintage, on ‘Vintage TV’, here.
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.
