Last weekend’s Saturday Song was a 1982 vintage TV clip of Ieya filmed for Pebble Mill. This performance features on the 2CD+DVD Edition of the remastered reissue of The Changeling, out 29 September on Cherry Red Records.
• Pre-order The Changeling Super Deluxe Box Set & other formats.
Tomorrow’s Toyah At Home, airing on Toyah’s official You Tube channel and Facebook page, sees Toyah explore the history of, the classic, Ieya. There’s rare archive footage and an unseen performance of probably Toyah’s most iconic song (give or take an It’s A Mystery or Thunder In The Mountains). There’s also an exclusive news announcement from Toyah about a forthcoming release. Toyah At Home airs at 11am (UK time) tomorrow!
Now That’s What I Call…. Toyah!
Four classic Toyah singles appear on four CD album release from the legendary Now compilation brand. Brave New World features on the 84-track 4CD Now Yearbook ‘82 out on 4 February.
Ieya features on Now That’s What I Call Punk & New Wave, a 89-track 4CD, released on 21 January.
Already available, Rebel Run features on Now Yearbook ‘83 and The Vow features on Now Yearbook ‘83 Extra alongside hits from The Police, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, The Human League, The Cure, Eurythmics, Genesis and more.
• All CDs can be ordered from Amazon and HMV. (News Source: Official Toyah)
Song of the week, on Episode Nine of Toyah At Home, was, the mighty, and mightily iconic, Ieya.
This was the first At Home hosted by Toyah outside in the garden. Click below to watch the episode, which ended with an archive acoustic performance of, the sublime, Jungles Of Jupiter.
Ieya, Toyah’s fourth single, was released in June 1980. The song has become one of the cornerstones of Toyah’s music career. Ieya began its extraordinary life as a soundcheck jam:
A lot of my band were Jewish, and we all found it particularly offensive that the NF would recruit at concerts – they’d go around the audience intimidating the youngest, the smallest, the scrawniest boys into joining the NF By the end of this concert in Bath, the NF were chanting ‘Sieg heil’ at the back. Charlie Francis, our bass-player, found this intolerable, and Joel kept taking his guitar off to go and beat them up, which we all had to stop him from doing. Instead we just shouted back ‘Nazi scum’ and got the audience to chant ‘Nazi scum’. For the fourth encore, all we could think of doing was something that had started as a jam in the sound-check that day, which was ‘IEYA’. It was a sequence of chords that grew, so every verse had more chords added to it, and it had a fantastically simple chorus, a chant, ‘IEYA’. ‘IEYA, I am solar, IEYA I’m the beast.’
Ieya was re-recorded and re-released as a single in 1982. The song is almost always played during a Toyah gig, often during the encore. Ieya was written by Willcox/Bogen/Bush. Browse the full history of the song at Wikipedia.
Toyah’s legendary Ieya is included on the new compilation CD/Download Extend The 80s Alternative.
Essential 12″ and Extended Mixes of 80s Alternative Tracks.
The 30-track album is released by BMG tomorrow and also includes extended versions of:
Club Country, and Party Fears Two by The Associates, The More You Live The More You Love by A Flock Of Seagulls, No Mercy by The Stranglers, Can’t Get Used To Losing You by The Beat, She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby, Waiting For A Train by Flash & The Pan, Absolutely Immune by Act, Going Left Right by Department S, Amour Amour by The Mobiles, Duel by Propaganda, Terry by Kirsty MacColl and many more.
• Further info at Amazon.
Toyah Willcox and her band stop by Guildford’s Bonaparte Records shop
Take a trip back to the 1980s, when record shops were 10 a penny, and post-punk visited Guildford
Post-punk singer and actress Toyah Willcox and her band members paid a visit to the Bonaparte Records shop in Phoenix Court, Guildford, prior to playing a gig at the Civic Hall later that night, on May 29 1980.
Toyah, who was only 22 at the time, was signing copies of the band’s new single Ieya, from the album The Blue Meaning.
The shop was crowded with fans of post-punk, who who were pushing towards the counter, where Toyah and her band were signing albums and singles. Later, the band posed for photos outside, before heading off to sound check at the Civic Hall, where they were to play that night.
• Continue reading at Get Surrey.
• East Of The M60: Less Remembered 1980s Children’s Programmes #1: Hold Tight: This new article on Hold Tight confirms the dates the editions Toyah guested on aired on ITV – 20 September, 1982: Toyah, Ieya; 13 September, 1983: Big Country, Chance/Toyah, Rebel Run – Visit the site here…
• Roy Wood Official: T.V. Shows: Roy recently co hosted a Christmas TV programme called A Very Vintage Christmas, together with Toyah Willcox. They introduced clips from popular Christmas videos – Visit Roy’s site here…
• Steven Wilson: According to ‘Classic Rock Magazine’ Toyah and Robert attended Steven Wilson’s gig at the Royal Albert Hall, London on Sunday night. Visit his Official Website…
• ACM Plymouth: Toyah, in her role as a Keynote Speaker, appeared in Plymouth last Thursday at a WI event.
• RFTK Promotions: Toyah This Friday: A post on Toyah in the run up to the first LITL & More gig in Newcastle last week – View here…
The All-Star Request issue (January 6 – 19 1983) of Smash Hits magazine was published 30 years ago today. This included ‘Ieya’ by Toyah and many other songword favourites. The complete issue has just been uploaded to the Smash Hits Archive.
Possibly Toyah’s most iconic song? ‘Ieya’ was, of course, originally released as a single on Safari Records in 1980 and included on the album ‘The Blue Meaning’. It was also re-recorded and released again, as ‘Ieya ’82’, in the Summer of 1982, with Toyah performing it on various TV shows, including Hold Tight and the 6.55 Special. The single even charted. Here’s to the 30th (and 32nd!) anniversary of an absolute classic… Ieeeeeeeeeeyyaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
