Toyah – The Blue Meaning
Expanded Edition (Cherry Red)
With the context of the passing of time, this is all brilliantly boundary-pushing music, and The Blue Meaning is an album which could astound the unprepared. Pure gold
The Cherry Red Toyah reissue programme continues with the second album, 1980’s The Blue Meaning, following on from the excellent reissue of the Sheep Farming In Barnet debut. As with its predecessor, The Blue Meaning is a very different proposition to the impression casual listeners tend to have of the pop-punk singer with the wild hair taking It’s A Mystery and I Want To Be Free to the upper reaches of the singles charts. In truth, that image was always a false one when the albums were listened to in their entirety, but even more in the case of these earliest records. In fact, the next studio album following this would be Anthem, the first big hit album which contained those two singles, but you would never guess that from the music contained here, which is dark, edgy and often brilliantly experimental. The Sheep Farming In Barnet album had contained a great mix of post-punk attitude with a sort of ‘difficult prog’ edge to it, but on this follow-up things got even more serious and uncompromising, both in terms of lyrical matter and musical content, and this three-disc reissue rounds it up with some tremendous extra material from the time to produce a definitive edition if ever there was one.
• Continue reading at Velvet Thunder.
Press coverage for this week’s Sunday Lunch with Toyah and Robert (and Sidney Jake)!! (Image © Toyah Willcox)
• Rolling Stone: Toyah Willcox Busts Out The Catsuit For Scorpions Cover With Robert Fripp – Continue reading…
• NME: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox take on Scorpions’ ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ – Continue reading…
• Guitar World: Here They Are: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox Tackle The Scorpions’ Rock You Like A Hurricane For Their Sunday Lunch… – Continue reading…
• Kerrang: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox add “feline twist” to Scorpions Cover – Continue reading…
• Louder: Toyah Dons Catwoman Outfit and Brandishes A Whip on Rock You Like A Hurricane – Continue reading…
• Consequence Of Sound: Toyah Goes Full Catwoman As She Covers “Rock You Like A Hurricane” with Robert Fripp. Watch … – Continue reading…
• Metal Sucks: King Crimson’s Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Cover “Rock You Like A Hurricane” – Continue reading…
• DGM Live: Toyah & Robert’s Complete Weekend: Toyah At Home, Agony Aunts, Sunday Lunch featuring Sidney Jake – Continue reading…
Toyah to play live in Neo-Classical style former church in East Sussex
Toyah will be hitting the road again next spring, when she will be performing an up close and personal show in East Sussex on Saturday 12th March 2022. The concert will take place within a grade II* listed former Church, which was constructed in the Neo-Classical style. The venue is known as St Marys In The Castle and is located in Hastings.
This will be a truly unique experience to watch and listen to an electric acoustic Toyah show, that will have a lively cinematic sound. The venue will be filled with Toyah’s vocals and storytelling along with keyboards and stand up bass.
It will include her much loved hit singles and classic songs, alongside recalling stories from her colourful, forty year career. Toyah will perform stunning arrangements of hits, ‘It’s A Mystery’, ‘Thunder In The Mountains’, ‘Good Morning Universe’, ‘I Want To Be Free’, alongside modern days classics ‘Sensational’ and ‘Dance In The Hurricane’.
• Continue reading at Brighton and Hove News.
A review of The Blue Meaning by We Are Cult.
Toyah: ‘The Blue Meaning’
“Cherry Red’s second re-release of Toyah’s early output, The Blue Meaning is full of lyrics that reflect her interest in sci fi, occultism and Nostradamus… Self-admittedly pretentious in a good way, Toyah’s lyrics and singing style often also seem to be influenced by Broken English-era Marianne Faithful and Patti Smith.”
1980 was a busy year for Toyah. Working as both an actress and a musician she was only 22 but had already appeared in films such as Quadrophenia, Derek Jarman’s Jubilee and The Tempest and George Cukor’s remake of The Corn Is Green with Katherine Hepburn and Patricia Hayes. As well as television work in Shoestring, Second City Firsts and the TV remake of Quatermass, Toyah had also already acted in productions at the National Theatre.
In this short one-year period Toyah starred in a Royal Court production of the controversial Nigel Williams play Sugar and Spice, filmed over the course of three months for an hour-long ATV documentary, appeared in the TV series A Question of Guilt and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and guest-hosted the talk show Friday Night, Saturday Morning in which she interviewed (and played Space Invaders with!) Steve Strange, Derek Jarman and Vivian Stanshall. The year was also the prelude to her chart success of 1981, which occasioned hit singles It’s A Mystery, I Want To Be Free and Thunder in the mountains and numerous Smash Hits and Look-In covers.
• Continue reading at We Are Cult.
A great review of Give Them Wings:
Give Them Wings screens as part of the online London Independent Film Festival 2021.
Amidst the challenges of the recent pandemic, a shining light emerged in the form of centennial hero (and sadly recently departed) Captain Sir Tom Moore, whose mega-effort to raise millions through his walking laps around his garden made him the hero of the status quo and a legend of 2020.
Now, a new film from multi-hyphenate talent Sean Cronin celebrates the life of a disabled football fan called Paul Hodgson – and is pretty incredible on its’ own terms.
Adapted by Hodgson from his 2000 novel Flipper’s Side (with additional writing from Cronin, Ian Carter and Tony Waddington) Give Them Wings chronicles events starting in 1989, when Darlington fan Paul (Daniel Watson) , diagnosed with meningitis from ten months – and given two hopes – is using a wheelchair to move around. His mother, Alice (Toyah Willcox in a career-best appearance), is struggling to cope with struggling husband and Paul’s father, Norman (Bill Fellows) who has signed on again for the umpteenth time and prone to bouts of depressive laziness.
• Continue reading at Film And TV Now.
Weekend Press: NME: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox joined by horned guitarist for Iron Maiden cover; Louder: Toyah and Robert Fripp joined by ominous Satanic figure for Number Of The Beast; Kerrang!: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox cover The Number Of The Beast: “An Easter twist on this Maiden classic”; Consequence Of Sound: Robert Fripp and Toyah Celebrate Easter Sunday with Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast””. (Image © Toyah Willcox)
Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp’s 10 best lockdown covers – ranked!
Look, we’ve all been doing what we can to get by in the past 12 months, haven’t we?
When quarantine hit, many artists responded by covering songs that tried to reflect the solemnity of the situation. Gal Gadot put together an all-star tone-deaf Band Aid take on John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, which was about as welcome as a Winston Mumford’s Book Of The Month club.
So you have to admire pop star and actor Toyah Willcox, who channelled the Blitz (Kid) spirit, raided the dressing up box and persuaded her husband, King Crimson prog-rock totem Robert Fripp, into performing increasingly outlandish 90-second versions of classic hits such as Alice Cooper’s ‘Poison’ and Guns ‘N Roses‘ ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, accessorising with nurse outfits or dinosaur costumes for their weekly Sunday Lockdown Lunch series.
• Continue reading at the NME.
Toyah to headline village’s first-ever music festival
Punk princess Toyah Willcox is the Saturday night headliner at the first-ever music festival to be held in the village of Aston.
Astonbury will take place from Friday 20 to Sunday August 22.
There will be two stages, a full bar with real ale and cider, and food. Parking is free, and there will be free children’s activities with camping available near by.
Organisers, who are looking for volunteers, will be donating to Cancer Research, Aston and Cote Community Trust and MIND.
• Continue reading at the Oxford Mail.
Weekend Press: NME: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox share cover of ZZ Top’s ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’; Louder: Toyah and Robert Fripp add beards, scissors and mystery guitarist on maniacal ZZ Top cover; Guitar.Com: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox take on ZZ Top’s Gimme All Your Lovin’; Metal Sucks: King Crimson’s Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Cover ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’”; Consequence Of Sound: Robert Fripp and Toyah Slice Their Way Through ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’”. (Image © Toyah Willcox)
Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox on Their Viral Quarantine Videos: ‘We’re in This With You’
King Crimson’s guitarist and his pop-star wife on what inspired them to cover everything from “Enter Sandman” to “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and what everyone got wrong about their ‘Swan Lake’ tutu dance
“My wife is a force of nature and my wife leads the way,” Robert Fripp says of his partner and quarantine-video collaborator Toyah Willcox.
On April 5th, 2020, music fans stuck in their homes and cruising the web for diversions were greeted with one of the most unusual sights in a season filled with them: King Crimson auteur Robert Fripp and his wife, singer and actress Toyah Willcox, both elegantly dressed and dancing to Bill Haley and the Comets’ early rock anthem “Rock Around the Clock.”
Filmed on Willcox’s iPhone in the kitchen of the couple’s home near Birmingham, England, the head-scratching clip launched one of the year’s least likely and most talked-about viral series. Every Sunday since, “Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch” (sometimes called a “Lockdown Lunch”) has presented a new clip of the couple having quick, good-natured fun at home. The ever-upbeat Willcox sings and vamps (while wearing a variety of costumes, from workout suit to cheerleader costume) while a deadpan Fripp accompanies her on electric guitar.
• Continue reading at Rolling Stone. (Photo © Toyah Willcox)
Toyah – Sheep Farming In Barnet
Expanded Edition (Cherry Red)
Any time is a good time to have Toyah’s often-overlooked early ’80s albums revisited, but in this case there seems to be no more expedient occasion to have this album back in the public eye, in its most impressive form yet. Toyah has come to prominence very much on social media during the Covid pandemic and associated lockdowns, appearing in a series of light-hearted and very amusing videos with her husband, Robert Fripp. Now, many of those in the ‘prog rock’ fraternity – who may have passed over Toyah’s output with little more than a cursory glance at the hit singles – have been fond of expressing their surprise at the union of the ultra-serious King Crimson frontman, with his almost ‘Prog Godfather’ reputation, and the woman often looked back on as a kind of ‘post-punk pixie’ with wild hair and a handful of hits. This album comes out just at the right time to remind people that, in truth, the relative musical outputs of both parties at the dawn of the 1980s really weren’t as far apart as you may think. This isn’t punk, and it certainly isn’t pop-punk. If you want to give it a name at all, art-punk is closer, as what is found among the 41 tracks here is a brilliantly adventurous mix of the post-punk approach of bands like Magazine or Wire, combined with an art-rock influence in the music itself, which is astonishingly mature considering these were 20 year olds at the time.
• Continue reading at Velvet Thunder.
Toyah has announced that she will be putting on a lively and energetic concert with her full live electric band at The Factory Live, located at Unit 9A, Ivy Arch Road, Worthing, BN14 8BX on Thursday 29th July 2021.
Toyah and her chums will be performing her hit singles including ‘Good Morning Universe‘, ‘Thunder In The Mountains‘, ‘Brave New World‘, ‘I Want To Be Free‘ and ‘It’s A Mystery‘ alongside modern days classics ‘Sensational’ and ‘Dance In The Hurricane‘ from her 2019 charting album ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Queen‘.
The band will be: Toyah Willcox (vocals), Chris Wong (guitar), Andy Doble (keyboards), Mike Nichols (bass) and John Humphrey (drums). Purchase your Toyah tickets here. Further information on Toyah here.
• Continue reading at Brighton and Hove News.
Watch Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox cover Motörhead classic
The latest episode of Sunday Lockdown Lunch is here
King Crimson’s Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox have shared another cover in their weekly lockdown series, this time tackling a Motörhead classic. The pair began the Sunday Lockdown Lunch covers series last year and have shared their own takes on tracks by the likes of Nirvana, Guns N’ Roses, Alice Cooper, Foo Fighters and more.
For this week’s video, Willcox dressed in a maid’s outfit and dealt cards into the gust of a fan. Fripp, meanwhile, sat to her side playing the guitar as she sang.
• Continue reading at the NME. See also Classic Rock/Louder, Kerrang and Metal Sucks.
This week, X Factor’s Sean Smith, Two brothers who are too sexy for their shirts, An 80s Special and I’m A Celeb is back
That Was Then… This Is Now!
Super excited for this, and the countdown is ON!
The first episode will be on Thursday 5th November at 7pm and features Chesney Hawkes, The Fizz and Toyah – check out the website for tickets: www.thisisnow.tv
It was a pleasure to be part of this, and can’t wait for you to see and enjoy it with us.
• Continue reading at The Revive Mag. Buy tickets for Episode One of That Was Then… This Is Now!, featuring Toyah, at This Is Now.
Is this Black Sabbath cover by King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and his wife Toyah the oddest tribute of 2020?
The duo perform Paranoid… in a prison
Robert Fripp… visionary, eccentric, King Crimson mastermind and now performer of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on his Fernandes Custom Gold guitar in a prison while wearing fake tattoos.
And his wife of 34 years, musician / actress / author Toyah Willcox, is singing it while behind bars. It’s the latest instalment of the couple’s wonderfully imaginative lockdown videos that have also included Fripp playing Deep Purple’s ubiquitous Smoke On The Water next to a lake while Wilcox dances dressed as a cheerleader (see below).
We say bring it on, it’s not like 2020 isn’t bizarre enough already.
• Continue reading at Music Radar. See also Guitar World.
King Crimson’s Robert Fripp Performs Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” as Wife Toyah Sings and Dances Behind Bars:
The King Crimson founder and his wife cover Sabbath’s classic song in bizarre fashion
This year has seen its fair share of unexpected and bizarre phenomena, and King Crimson founder Robert Fripp and his singer wife Toyah Willcox have come to embrace it. The musical duo have spent quarantine making performance art videos, but their latest idea for Halloween might be their most absurd yet.
Donned in henna-like tattoos that cover his face and arms, Fripp starts playing Black Sabbath’s iconic song “Paranoid” on his Les Paul. Behind him, Willcox is locked behind bars — in what’s either an old prison cell or an underground bank vault — and starts dancing when the songs begins. When it comes time for the verses, she starts singing the metal classic.
The effect of the video is pretty uncomfortable but morbidly entertaining. Perhaps the use of “Paranoid” and dancing in a cage is a metaphor for quarantine? Or maybe it’s just Fripp and Willcox’s idea of a Halloween joke.
• Continue reading at Consequence Of Sound.
Watch a tattooed Robert Fripp play Black Sabbath in a prison cell while Toyah dances
You heard us right: Watch a tattooed Robert Fripp play Black Sabbath’s Paranoid in a prison cell while Toyah dances
Imagine: you wake up from a coma in November 2020. You’ve been asleep since Christmas, so you’re entirely unaware of the year’s contents. You don’t know about the virus, or the lockdowns, or that Liverpool are champions and that everything’s been cancelled.
You grab your smartphone, and you log into Facebook to check out what’s been happening in your absence. And the first thing you see is a video of a heavily tattooed Robert Fripp. The King Crimson mastermind is alone sitting in a prison cell, playing Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on a Les Paul. In the background stands his wife of 34 years, the adventurous pop star Toyah Willcox. She dances, and at the point where Ozzy Osbourne would normally start singing, she sings.
• Continue reading at Louder.
Some of the biggest pop stars of the ’80s will take part in a brand new online weekly series with an innovative business model that helps touring artists affected by the current lack of live shows to generate income.
That Was Then… This Is Now! will arrive next month in a pay per view format hosted online, allowing for artists to share equally in the revenue. For full details on the broadcast visit www.thisisnow.tv.
The series, consisting of five editions, will be broadcast live at 7pm on Thursday evenings, a nod to the classic Top Of The Pops timeslot.
It aims to provide a modern twist on the quintessential living room comfort watch of popular music television that has been missing from screens for generations.
Each episode of the series will feature multi-artist line-ups… The first series of the show will feature artists such as Paul Young, Kim & Marty Wilde, Toyah, Steve Harley, Chesney Hawkes, The Fizz and many more.
That Was Then… This Is Now! will be broadcast online via pay-per-view live streaming service TicketCo.TV. Its full HD quality and crystal-clear sound can be enjoyed by viewers on any device.
• Further info/book a ticket at This Is Now. View a print article, featuring Toyah, by the Knaresborough Post. Browse our That Was Then… This Is Now! news archive.
Fangs for the memory! Are you in Ipswich Regent Vampires Rock photos in Days Gone By?
Do you love putting on a ghostly or ghoulish costume to watch Vampires Rock at the Ipswich Regent?
The cult show has visited Ipswich many times over the years – and today we’re looking back at some of the amazing costumes worn by members of the audience.
The concert series is masterminded by Steve Steinman, alias Baron von Rockula. Laced with pyrotechnics, it pays a spectacular tribute to Meat Loaf, AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses, and more.
It’s all very light hearted, and the perfect way to celebrate Halloween. There have been various different twists to the show over the years, and Toyah Willcox took part in 2009.
Steve Steinman is due to bring his Meat Loaf tribute show, Anything For Love, to the Regent in November next year.
• Continue reading at the Ipswich Star. (NB. Toyah also starred in Vampires Rock, as the Devil Queen, through most of 2008 – Browse lots of news on those tours at our news archive)
Film London Jarman Award announces new Patrons in run up to 2020 Award
Film London has announced eight Patrons of the Film London Jarman Award, honouring and showcasing artist moving image practice, with one month to go until the 2020 virtual Award Winner announcement. Spanning actors, artists, screenwriters and musicians, the Patrons’ work and support will be vital in the development and success of the Award.
The Film London Jarman Award Patrons are: John Akomfrah, Terence Davies, Rupert Everett, Dexter Fletcher, Hetain Patel, Tony Peake, Tilda Swinton, Toyah Willcox.
The Patrons’ expertise, industry knowledge and connection to Derek Jarman in either a professional or a personal capacity will help to introduce artist filmmaking to a wider audience. They will promote and sustain the legacy of Jarman, whose inventiveness and bold ambition is seen in the work of artists practising today and those shortlisted for the Award.
• Continue reading at Film London. (Photo Collage by Film London)
RF: Bobby Willcox was invited to rock out with Toyah and Simon Darlow for their new album. So, sprayed some burning guitar over a remorseless stomper that got the guitarist bouncing…
RF: There have been some online simperings of approval for the slippers worn by Bobby Willcox at yesterday’s session for Toyah & Simon Darlow’s new album. Regrettably, for one keen to suck up all appreciative comments even and especially where underserved, these colourful accessories for any session player’s calceamental turnout were provided by Studio Darlow, in a manner simply understood by anyone who has entered a Japanese home.
• Continue reading at DGM Live. (Photo © Toyah Willcox/Robert Fripp/DGM Live)
