A number of people have asked what would it sound like if Toyah and King Crimson’s music came together. In this week’s sunday lunch, it’s no longer a mystery.
NOW 80s’ mammoth 10-hour Who Won Wot? 1980 – 1989 aired yesterday, hosted by Mark Goodier. The first artist played from 1981 was Toyah, with the Thunder In The Mountains video. Mark said: “We begin 1981 with a 4ft 11 pop star who had the biggest hair of the entire decade, here’s the Most Fanciable (as voted by Smash Hits magazine readers) Toyah Willcox with Thunder In The Mountains“. Click on the screen caps to zoom.
Info from Saturday’s second Toyah At Home, which aired at Toyah’s official You Tube channel.
• Good Morning Universe: was the song of the morning, with Toyah explaining how it got its title. Joel Bogen wrote the music and as soon as Toyah heard the joyous track she wanted to call it Good Morning Universe.
• Good Morning Universe: Toyah performed a live version of the title song from Toyah’s third EP, and ninth single, released in November 1981. I’ve always loved this song, and all the others on the Four More From Toyah EP.
• Shirley Manson: Toyah mentioned the Garbage lead singer’s recent comments about Toyah being one of her early influences.
• Early Influences: Toyah talked about her own early influences, Dusty Springfield and Sandie Shaw in the 1960s, as well as Curved Air, Grace Slick, Roxy Music, Alice Cooper, Lou Reed and David Bowie in the 70s.
• Movies: To Be Someone will hopefully be showing later this year, with press and publicity happening soon. Toyah also mentioned Give Them Wings.
• Take The Leap!: Jolyon Dixon, the guitarist from Friday Forever and Toyah’s Take The Leap! band asked Toyah if she would be interested in a Leap! anniversary tour.
• Steve Strange: Toyah talked about the Visage frontman back in the days of her Mayhem warehouse and the Blitz Club and the last time she met him, at the V&A Club To Catwalk exhibition in 2013.
• Favourite Venues/Tours: Toyah reminisced about playing (the legendary) Glasgow Apollo. Her favourite venue is Wembley Arena, and she loves playing in churches because of their great acoustics. Toyah loved all of The Humans tours, and also the recent Thunder In The Highlands tour.
• Computer: Will this ever be played live? There are plans for some of the Safari album songs to be played live during Toyah At Home to coincide with the Cherry Red release of Toyah’s Safari back catalogue.
• Ophelia’s Shadow: Some of the songs are too studio layered to perform live but Lords Of The Never Known and Brilliant Day will be (Toyah mentioned the late Keith Tippett).
• Prostitute: Toyah talked about the possibility of the album being performed live as an art project with visuals. She also talked about performing the album during the FrippFripp tour in 1988, and about the legacy of the album and its meanings now as the world changes and evolves.
• Toyah also chatted about which song took the longest to write (Slow Descent by The Humans was mentioned), and the show ended with live footage of She’s Fast by The Humans from Trading Boundaries in East Sussex.
The Serbian Council of Great Britain held an online fundraising concert on Sunday 3rd May 2020 as a call to action during the COVID Crisis. Toyah supported the cause by performing It’s A Mystery.
• Click on the screen shots below to see/hear Toyah’s full performance (begins 11m into the clip). Visit the crowdfunding page here.
Carol Decker’s 30 Rock Chicks!: NOW 80s: Friday 8th May: 9pm
T’Pau’s Carol Decker brings a bit of Heart and Soul to a countdown of ’80s ladies who like to rock! With Joan Jett, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and Pat Benatar. (as well as Toyah via the Thunder In The Mountains video)
Carol Decker’s 30 Rock Chicks!: NOW 80s: Monday 24th February: 4am
T’Pau’s Carol Decker brings a bit of Heart and Soul to a countdown of ’80s ladies who like to rock! With Joan Jett, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and Pat Benatar. (as well as Toyah via the Thunder In The Mountains video)
Christmas 2016, and BBC Four aired a repeat Top Of The Pops, which was originally broadcast in October 1982 on BBC1, with Toyah’s studio performance of the single, Be Proud Be Loud (Be Heard). This site described it as “iconic, classic and utterly unforgettable“.
While the retro TOTP aired, BBC Four also tweeted: “In 1982, Toyah was so famous, she even had a lion-tailed macaque named after her on Animal Magic, and appeared on the show to meet it“.
Carol Decker’s 30 Rock Chicks!: NOW 80s: Thursday 12th December: 10pm
T’Pau’s Carol Decker brings a bit of Heart and Soul to a countdown of ’80s ladies who like to rock! With Joan Jett, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and Pat Benatar. (as well as Toyah via the Thunder In The Mountains video)
Toyah, performing a crowd-pleasing version of It’s A Mystery at Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham last Friday night at the first concert of the Let’s Rock Winter three-date tour. There are another two dates to be played later this month. See I Want To Be Free performed here. (Thanks to Darren)
Carol Decker’s 30 Rock Chicks!: NOW 80s: Thursday 5th December: 11am
T’Pau’s Carol Decker brings a bit of Heart and Soul to a countdown of ’80s ladies who like to rock! With Joan Jett, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and Pat Benatar. (as well as Toyah via the Thunder In The Mountains video)
The artwork for the digital release of Step Into The New World.
Carol Decker’s 30 Rock Chicks!: NOW 80s: Wednesday 9th October: 9pm
T’Pau’s Carol Decker brings a bit of Heart and Soul to a countdown of ’80s ladies who like to rock! With Joan Jett, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and Pat Benatar. (as well as Toyah via the Thunder In The Mountains video)
A great mini article on the Thunder In The Mountains single, just published by From The Stacks.
From The Stacks: Toyah, “Thunder In the Mountains” (Picture Disc)
Toyah never made a dent in the American charts, but lead singer Toyah Willcox left a big impression on the new wave kids. Willcox had it all: Big hair, beauty, and that “new wave diva” vocal style shared by so many early ’80s Brit artists. She was an art school kid’s dream.
And speaking of art school dreams, the video for “Thunder in the Mountains” is a Mad Max meets Spartacus fever dream:
Willcox is still getting things done, both as an actress and a musician. Her latest release is an extended version of In the Court of the Crimson Queen, featuring a guest appearance by her husband, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp.
As for this beautiful “Thunder in the Mountains” 7-inch: Expect to pay about three bucks, and just imagine how cool it will look hanging behind your turntable. Happy hunting.
• Continue reading at From The Stacks by clicking below on the Thunder In The Mountains collage I created circa 2012 (which, much like a lot of the other Toyah imagery I’ve created over the past 20 years, has been posted all over the internet/Facebook/Pinterest etc but never with any sort of link back to this website or design credit).
A belated Happy Anniversary/Birthday to an incredibly important single/AP/EP!
Not only is it one of the most important but also one of the best – all six songs are amazing and all stand the test of time, still sounding fresh, vibrant and way ahead of anything else that was released in 79!
Toyah’s second single, the Sheep Farming In Barnet (EP/AP) – following the debut single, Victims Of The Riddle, a few months earlier – was released in July 1979. The traditional EP contained four songs, Toyah’s record label wanted to differentiate from that format and decided to release SIX songs on one single (a mini album really). This was the first, and last, AP release. Tracks were: A. Neon Womb, Indecision, Waiting; B. Our Movie, Danced, Last Goodbye.
The band members were Pete Bush: Keyboards, Mark Henry: Bass, Joel Bogen: Guitar, Steve Bray: Drums, Toyah Willcox: Verbals. As with the debut single, this was a huge hit on the UK indie chart, and also increased the band’s, already growing, popularity in other parts of Europe. The, now iconic, cover shot for the single was taken at the RAF Fylingdales radar station near Whitby in Yorkshire. Unfortunately, the “golf balls” were demolished in the mid 1980′s.
• Continue the celebration – See Official Toyah’s Sheep Farming in Barnet collage/info post at Instagram (part of the Crimson Queen Tour countdown). Visit the SFIB AP page at the Toyah Discography. You can also check out our Toyah 40 Archive.
There’s a repeat airing of the Toyah Special of Video Killed The Radio Star on Sky Arts early next month. This is its first repeat since premiering in August 2018.
Video Killed The Radio Star: Sky Arts: Tuesday 2nd July: 7pm
Toyah Willcox. (Series 7, Episode 6) An insight into the making of videos by Toyah Willcox, whose hits included It’s A Mystery, Thunder in the Mountains and I Want To Be Free.
Carol Decker’s 30 Rock Chicks!: NOW 80s: Wednesday 19th June: 6pm
T’Pau’s Carol Decker brings a bit of Heart and Soul to a countdown of ’80s ladies who like to rock! With Joan Jett, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and Pat Benatar. (as well as Toyah via the Thunder In The Mountains video)
There’s another chance to catch Toyah’s Sack The Stylist?! Top 30. It airs again this Wednesday, at 12pm, on NOW 80s
Here’s the show’s full playlist: 30. Love and Pride – King, 29. Fade To Grey – Visage, 28. Bad Boys – Wham!, 27. The Slightest Touch – Five Star, 26. Synchronicity II – The Police, 25. You Think You’re A Man – Divine, 24. I Found Someone – Cher, 23. The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow) – The Jam, 22. Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye – Bananarama, 21. What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For? – Shakin’ Stevens, 20. Touch Me (I Want Your Body) – Samantha Fox, 19. You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) – Dead Or Alive, 18. Things Can Only Get Better – Howard Jones, 17. Lucky Star – Madonna, 16. Just Say No – Grange Hill Cast, 15. London Town – Bucks Fizz, 14. The Look Of Love – ABC, 13. More Than This – Roxy Music, 12. Open Your Heart – The Human League, 11. Just Can’t Get Enough – Depeche Mode, 10. Blue Jean – David Bowie, 9. Ant Rap – Adam & The Ants, 8. Starting Together – Su Pollard, 7. The War Song – Culture Club, 6. Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You) – A Flock Of Seagulls, 5. Thunder In The Mountains – Toyah, 4. Too Shy – Kajagoogoo, 3. The Wild Boys – Duran Duran, 2. Wired For Sound – Cliff Richard, 1. I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You) – Grace Jones. Bonus Track: Sensational – Toyah
“Well, I’ve been taking an affectionate look at fellow pop stars and their styles so I had to balance things out with that. My hair, make-up and outfit on Thunder In The Mountains was pretty crazy. But I loved it!”
Carol Decker’s 30 Rock Chicks!: NOW 80s: Sunday 28th April: 9pm
T’Pau’s Carol Decker brings a bit of Heart and Soul to a countdown of ’80s ladies who like to rock! With Joan Jett, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and Pat Benatar. (as well as Toyah via the Thunder In The Mountains video)
It’s the 1981 Gallery! It’s Anthem, it’s I Want To Be Free, it’s Thunder In The Mountains, it’s At The Rainbow, it’s Good Morning Universe, it’s the College Tour, it’s The Old Grey Whistle Test, and yes… It’s A Mystery!
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.
