Dreamscape | The Toyah Willcox Fansite

Press coverage for this week’s Sunday Lunch with Toyah and Robert (and Sidney Jake)!! (Image © Toyah Willcox)

• Brooklyn Vegan: Watch Toyah & Robert Fripp cover Eurythmic’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” – Continue reading…

• NME: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox share cover of Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ – Things get a little blurry for this week’s kitchen cover – Continue reading…

• Guitar.com: Robert Fripp and Toyah share video cover of Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by Eurythmics – The Kitchen Trio take on the 1983 synth-pop classic with electric guitars – Continue reading…

• Metal Sucks: King Crimson’s Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Cover “Sweet Dreams” – Continue reading…

• Metal Injection: Toyah Willcox & King Crimson’s Robert Fripp Cover “Sweet Dreams” – Continue reading…

• Consequence: Robert Fripp and a Pixelated Toyah Cover Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams”: Watch – The latest “Sunday Lunch” performance from the rock couple is apparently a bit risqué — by YouTube’s standards – Continue reading…

• Republic World: Robert Fripp & Toyah Surprise Fans With The Cover Of Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’; Watch – Robert Fripp and Toyah have returned with the latest episode of their Sunday Lunch series, this time covering Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams – Continue reading…

• The Brag Media: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox cover Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ – Robert Fripp and Toyah Wilcox have continued their Sunday Lunch series with a cover of Eurythmics’ signature hit ‘Sweet Dreams’ – Continue reading…

• JamBase: Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Cover Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’ – Continue reading…

• DGM Live: Toyah & Robert’s Weekend!: Toyah At Home, Agony Aunts, Toyah & Robert’s Sunday Lunch with Sidney Shake – Sweet Dreams… – Continue reading…

• Sidney Jake: In case you missed it – this was a LOT of fun!!! – Click the link for an “alternative” view of this week’s episode – Continue watching…

The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory will haunt you this Halloween

Kaleidoscope Film Distribution will release Director Steven M. Smith’s The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory this Halloween.

The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory is a supernatural horror based on terrifying true events: a hopeful paranormal investigator attempts to illuminate the truth behind Britain’s most haunted house, with chilling consequences.

Starring Julian Sands (A Room with a View, Arachnophobia), Colin Baker (Doctor Who), Toyah Willcox (Invasion Planet Earth), Christopher Ellison (We Still Kill the Old Way, Ransom), Toby Wynn-Davies (Nefarious), Leila Kotori (Human), and Reece Alexander-Putinas.

Directed by Steven M. Smith (The Haunting of Borley Rectory). Produced by Paul G. Andrews (Juliana & the Medicine Fish, Boogie Man), Steven M. Smith (The Haunting of Borley Rectory, Doll House), Louisa Warren (Vengeance of the Leprechaun, Virtual Death Match).

• Continue reading at Horror Screams Video Vault. Browse Dreamscape’s The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory news archive.

Press coverage for this week’s Sunday Lunch with Toyah and Robert (and Sidney Jake)!! (Image © Toyah Willcox)

• Brooklyn Vegan: Watch Toyah & Robert Fripp cover ZZ Top’s ” Sharp Dressed Man” – Continue reading…

• Rolling Stone: Toyah Willcox Dumbfounds Robert Fripp While Covering ZZ Top’s ‘Sharp Dressed Man’
Even a bare chest can’t keep the King Crimson guitarist from missing a note – Continue reading…

• NME: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox share cover of ZZ Top’s ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ – The kitchen crew get all dressed up for this week’s Sunday Lunch performance – Continue reading…

• Jam Base: Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Cover ZZ Top’s ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ – Continue reading…

• Louder: Toyah and Robert Fripp cover ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man and Fripp is “finally broken” – Another Sunday lunch at Willcox-Fripp Manor ends in chaos, as ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man is performed and Robert Fripp gets more than he bargained for – Continue reading…

• Consequence: Toyah Flashes Robert Fripp in Couple’s Cover of ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man”: Watch – Plus, the mysterious Sidney Jake finally speaks: “Do your parents behave like this?” – Continue reading…

• Metal Sucks: King Crimson’s Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Cover ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” – Continue reading…

• Metal Injection: Toyah Willcox Offers A Flash For Cover Of “Sharp Dressed Man” With King Crimson’s Robert Fripp – Continue reading…

• DGM Live: T&R’S Weekend At Home (And Back On The Road!) – Toyah & Robert’s Sunday Lunch, with Sidney Jake: Sharp Dressed Man – Agony Aunts… (with Burning Guitars!) – Toyah At Home… (and back on the road!) – Continue reading…

• Sidney Jake: Sunday Lunch – Behind The Scenes – And this is the angle you don’t see!!! – Click the link for an “alternative” view of this week’s episode – Continue watching…

Press coverage for this week’s Sunday Lunch with Toyah and Robert (and Sidney Jake)!! (Image © Toyah Willcox)

• Rolling Stone: Watch Toyah and Robert Fripp Cover Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ – Continue reading…

• NME: Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox share cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ – Continue reading…

• Louder: Toyah and Robert Fripp cover Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and there are feathers everywhere – Continue reading…

• Metal Sucks: King Crimson’s Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Cover Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” – Continue reading…

• Metal Injection: King Crimson’s Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Cover Black Sabbath Classic “Paranoid” – Continue reading…

• Brooklyn Vegan: Watch Toyah & Robert Fripp cover Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” – Continue reading…

• DGM Live: Toyah & Robert’s Weekend!: Toyah At Home, Agony Aunts, Sunday Lunch with Sidney Jake – Continue reading…

• Sidney Jake: Right after Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch this week – Click the link for an “alternative” view of this week’s episode – Continue watching…

Toyah – The Blue Meaning (Expanded Deluxe Edition): Album Review

Dark, intense and disturbingly graphic – an early masterpiece by Toyah revisited

Release Date: 28th May 2021
Label: Cherry Red Records
Formats: 2CD + 1DVD, Limited Edition Coloured Vinyl

Cherry Red Records have done it yet again! This week’s lucky recipient of their deluxe reissue treatment is Toyah and the band’s second album, 1980’s The Blue Meaning. In fact, Cherry Red are working their way through Toyah’s Safari Records catalogue – the band’s debut album, Sheep Farming In Barnet, has already received the deluxe repackaging and the rest of the bunch, Anthem (1981) The Changeling (1982) and Love Is The Law (1983) will be along soon – a veritable treasure trove from the happiest, most productive and most creative period of Toyah’s career. Oh – and for clarity – at this stage in the career of Toyah Willcox, Toyah was the collective name for the band in which she featured – Joel Bogen on guitar, Charlie Francis on bass, Steve Bray on drums, Peter Bush on keyboards and Toyah herself on vocals (or verbals and unusual sounds, as the album’s excellent sleeve notes put it.)

• Continue reading at At The Barrier.

The Rolling Stones, Kate Bush, The Cure: Great albums’ cover stories revealed

From hiding film in Toyah’s knickers to combining Mondrian and The Rolling Stones, designer Bill Smith tells the cover stories of great albums.

The Rolling Stones, The Jam, Kate Bush, The Cure, Led Zeppelin – they’re not only among the most important musical artists of our time, they’re also some of the most visually striking. Bill Smith has designed album covers for all of them.

Bill Smith and his studio have been designing album covers since 1976. Across five decades they’ve worked with more than 200 bands and artists. They were even there at the start of the Now That’s What I Call Music juggernaut, designing the very first cover of the world-beating compilation album series.

Now Bill’s work has been collected into a suitably glossy, album-sized, 12-inch book, which also features the stories behind some of his classic album covers. He gave us a glimpse into the creative process behind some of his most famous works…

• Continue reading at bigissue.com.

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.