There are now just two days to go until ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’ is finally unleashed. What will be included in the set list? Which songs from the album have made it into the 30th anniversary celebratory tour? What will Toyah look like? What will she be wearing?
It really is fantastic that Toyah is taking the time to, yet again, indulge her fans in this way. I’m sure everyone who is heading to Brighton for Saturday’s gig must be getting ridiculously excited.
The imagery created for ‘The Changeling’ album is not only some of the finest of Toyah’s many different looks and guises but also probably the best of any pop star’s visuals. Especially when you consider that they were achieved without digital trickery, airbrushing and photoshop. Astounding creativity and ideas. The two below are particularly beautiful and timeless.
Just a reminder that Celebrity Antiques Road Trip with Toyah and Tony Blackburn, which originally aired last October, is showing again this evening on BBC2.
The programme is airing simultaneously on BBC HD, and will be available to view, post-broadcast, for one week only at ‘BBC iPlayer’ here.
Celebrity Antiques Road Trip: BBC2
Thursday 12th April: 6.30pm Episode 4. Tony Blackburn and Toyah Willcox take to the road with antiques experts Charlie Ross and Charles Hanson. Their journey starts in the historic town of York and ends up with an auction in Stanstead, Essex.
It looks as though the DVD release of More Than 30 Years In The TARDIS has been delayed until 2013, the 50th anniversary year of Doctor Who.
The Doctor Who tv documentary Toyah participated in, filmed and televised in 1993, is to be released on DVD, as part of a set titled ‘The Legacy Box’.
The set will feature the incomplete 1979 Tom Baker story Shada (completed with animation), MTTYITT and a variety of exciting extras. There was no definite word that this would be released in 2012 but rumours were rife that it would be.
30 Years In The TARDIS originally aired on the BBC as part of the 30th anniversary celebration of Doctor Who in 1993. When an extended version was released on BBC Video in 1994, it was retitled More Than Thirty Years In The TARDIS.
The, vaguely strange, tv programme Toyah guested in back in December 2005 on E4, Rajan And His Evil Hypnotists, is repeated later this month for the first time in over six years.
Toyah is interviewed by someone who seems to think they are hypnotised, resulting in an amusing discussion. She has no idea the “interviewer” is hypnotised. Post interview, Toyah says: “I’ve just been interviewed by someone who didn’t seem to be completely giving me their attention.”
Rajan And His Evil Hypnotists: 4Music
Wed 25th April: 11.35pm/Mon 30th April : 11pm
Rajan and his evil team make a grown man petrified of Santa Claus, while 80s pop star Toyah has a most unusual chat show experience – with no idea that her host is a hypnotised member of the public. Other trance subjects drink vinegar, pour ice down their trousers, arrest the over-60s for underage drinking, and regress to being a three-year-old child in a supermarket.
A small, but perfectly proportioned, photo of Toyah, and a quote from her, on Jennifer Lopez’s booty (or its proportions to be more exact) is included on the “News” page of the April 2012 issue of ‘The Good Surgeon Guide’ magazine. (yes there is actually a magazine called “The Good Surgeon Guide”!!)
“Basically, whoever takes the mickey out of the size of Jennifer Lopez’s backside is completely out of touch, because a lot of girls want the size of that backside. It’s hugely attractive to men.”
Toyah Willcox
It’s content like this that makes me think the decision to start up this new site, in order to continue reporting Toyah news, was sooo sooo the correct one lol!
Kavanagh Q.C.: ITV3: Tuesday 24th April: 11.25am Kavanagh Q.C.: ITV3 +1: Tuesday 24th April: 12.25pm A Family Affair (1995). Kavanagh finds himself caught up in a bitter family feud when he represents a frustrated father who has kidnapped his son in a desperate attempt to win custody. On the home front, Kavanagh’s daughter wants to let her boyfriend stay overnight. Directed by Renny Rye. With John Thaw, Holly Aird, Robert Ashby, Toyah Willcox and Lisa Harrow. Also showing on ITV3 HD.
Toyah guested on Parkinson on BBC1 in October 1981. This was at a time when Michael Parkinson’s chat show was still considered the best of the “talk shows”. Toyah appeared alongside legendary comedian Dave Allen. She talks about her childhood and upbringing, time at The National Theatre, her imagery and hairstyles, music career and more.
A short excerpt from Toyah’s autobiography, published in August 2000, ‘Living Out Loud’.
Toyah talks about ‘The Changeling’, and some of the events of 1982: Winning ‘Best Female Singer’ at The British Rock & Pop Awards, sacking her manager, feeling that her images and hairstyles were becoming outdated etc.
Toyah also mentions the reasons why herself and Joel decided to record an album with much darker themes after the huge success of ‘Anthem’ the year before.
• Listen to ‘The Changeling’ set of Toyah interviews and audio, at ‘Soundcloud’, here.
• A Tale Of Two Anthems: The ‘what’s new’ section of Spotify keeps displaying an album called Anthem by somebody called Desolation Angels, with a strangely familiar cover. It reminded me of something… View this interesting article at ‘Skuds’ Sister’s Brother’ blog.
• View a short article on Brum at the, quite brilliant, ‘Retro Rambling’ blog, “A joyride through our slightly ridiculous though memorable past”
• ‘The Telegraph’ included ‘Let’s Rock The Moor 2012’ in its “Top 100 Music Festivals: April – September 2012” on Monday: Not so much rockin’ the moor as inundating it with hits of the mid-Eighties. View here.
• Toyah is included in the ‘Heart’ Who’s On Heart: “Wrong Guesses – Women Pt 2” gallery. View here.
Toyah’s ‘Pop Star’, Alan Parsons’ ‘The Raven’ and Orson Welles? This shouldn’t work, but it does!
Tom Leon has uploaded to ‘house mixes.com’ two mash-ups he created in the mid-90’s:
1995: Long before mashups or bootlegs are gone to mainstream, I created a special mix….. really handmade with discs and effect-recording:
One of my first bootleg-mixes and I like it to this day! It is a fusion between Alan Parsons The Raven and the voice of Toyah Willcox. Hope U like it?
Listen to ‘Awake’n Dreams (On A Lost City Of Mars) [Shortplay Fusion Mix]’ here, and ‘Awake’n Dreams (On A Lost City Of Mars) [Smooth House Version]’, here.
They have played some of the biggest venues in the world, sold millions of albums and had countless chart hits. And in July, some of the best known stars of the 1980s will take the stage in Glasgow Green for their only Scottish date.
The line-up includes Rick Astley, whose Never Gonna Give You was the UK’s top selling single of 1987. He will be joined by former Go-Go’s lead singer Belinda Carlisle, “Wherever I Lay My Hat” singer Paul Young, Toyah Willcox, Curiosity Killed the Cat, T’Pau and The Real Thing, who scored a No.1 in 1976 with You To Me Are Everything.
The gig, on Saturday July 21, co-incides with the hugely popular Glasgow Show and will round off a top weekend of music.
Not exactly “breaking news”, but I just very recently discovered that one of the shots of Toyah from the 1979 Simon Fowler photo shoot is included in this book. The cover boasts it contains “over 400 x-rated photos”. The photo of Toyah can hardly be classed as x-rated and, especially, by today’s standards is relatively conservative.
‘Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll’ by Chris Charlesworth was published by Omnibus Press in 1993 and again in July 2009. It includes photos of Madonna, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Elvis and numerous others.
This is a bumper collection of photographs, mostly of rock and pop stars in situations where in hindsight, they would probably have preferred the cameramen to be elsewhere at the time. It is also a collection of shots in which sex has been used to sell the artist, or their records, or both, in the days before sexism was a political issue. Apart from the album sleeves themselves, these pictures have not been touched up or airbrushed. Neither were the negatives consigned to the darkroom bin or locked away in safety deposit boxes.
The full Sky Trax Toyah Special. This aired in 1985 around the time of the release of ‘Don’t Fall In Love (I Said)’. It’s a great programme, hosted by one of Toyah’s biggest supporters in the 80s, Peter Powell. This was a one-hour show with Toyah talking about her career, including Glitter, Jubilee, Katharine Hepburn, Quadrophenia, the early live gigs, 1981 and a lot more. Sky Trax was a music show, with a variety of hosts including Radio 1 DJs, covering music from all over Europe. It aired on ‘Sky Channel’, Europe’s very first satellite channel (which began as a cable channel in 1982) and was renamed ‘Sky One’ in 1989. View larger caps here.
Yikes! Just four short days to go until the first concert of ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’.
‘The Changeling’ has been my, and many other Toyah fans’, favourite Toyah album for almost 30 years. When you consider Toyah’s best album releases: ‘Sheep Farming In Barnet’, ‘The Blue Meaning’, ‘Anthem’, ‘Love Is The Law’, ‘Desire’, ‘Prostitute’, ‘Ophelia’s Shadow’, ‘In The Court Of The Crimson Queen’… ‘The Changeling’ can only be described as “the best of the best”. Impressive!
Back in early 2007 I started building a feature for Dreamscape on ‘The Changeling’. I didn’t initially realise the feature would end up taking months to complete and would become one of the Toyah creations I’m most proud of. I’ve always felt Toyah’s 1982 studio album deserves to be celebrated, which is why I did so throughout Dreamscape’s 12 years and continue to on FTE. Rather than “pretentious twaddle” (who said that? :)) it’s a brilliant, and brilliantly dark ,’concept’ album that has grown in stature and reputation over the last 30 years!
‘Simply Eighties’ featured ‘Thunder In The Mountains’ in their “Songs of The 80s” yesterday, and Toyah on the cover of ‘Smash Hits’, May/June 1982 issue, on their “80s Heaven’ page at tumblr.
Wow! You can really feel the energy coming from this new wave track by Toyah. Very original, alternative music and having not heard it for such a long time it sounds so fresh, even though this is from the early 80s! Plus, you get meaningful lyrics. This puts much of today’s music to shame.
Thunder In The Mountains reached #4 in the UK singles chart during October 1981, making this the third consecutive Top Ten hit for the band fronted by Toyah Willcox. It was the band’s eighth single release overall.
A selection of iconic 80’s popstars will headline the opening night of Lytham Proms Festival Weekend 2012 on Friday 3rd August 2012. “Here and Now, The Very Best of the 80’s” will feature stars: Bananarama, Rick Astley, The Real Thing, Belinda Carlisle, Toyah, Curiosity Killed the Cat and T’Pau in what is dubbed as being the Fylde Coast’s biggest party EVER!
• Continue reading, at the ‘Lythams Proms Festival Weekend 2012’ website, here.
• There’s an excellent selection of screen caps from Tomorrow Calling, the 1993 short film Toyah appeared in, at ‘William Gibson aleph’. Tomorrow Calling aired on Channel 4, premiering in December 1994 (part of the ‘Short & Curlies’ season), and was also presented at the British Film Festival in October 1996. View here. Take a look here too :)
• Toyah is mentioned in the ‘Scotsman’ obituary of Andrew Currie who passed away on 28th March: In the 1990s one of his visitors was the singer Toyah Willcox who, as part of a television series, made a trip to Skye to see eagles and talk to Currie, the local expert on the subject.
• Toyah is namecked in this ‘Herts & Essex Observer’ news article on Hazel O’Connor.
• A couple of great Toyah photos (including one of Andi’s Toyah wallpapers, which seem to pop up all over the internet) in the “Make Up” gallery at ‘Pinterest’. View here.
• Rainbow Messengers: It’s A Mystery, It’s A Mystery… View here.
5. Stations Of The Crass – Crass
4. Toyah! Toyah! Toyah! – Toyah
3. Closer – Joy Division
2. Dirk Wears White Sox – Adam and the Ants
1. He Who Dares Wins – Theatre Of Hate
What an amazing top five. Every one of those albums still sound good in 2012. View the full and original ATV documentary TOYAH that includes music from ‘Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!’.
The official website for the Workington ‘Decades Festival 2012’ has been launched today. Toyah plays a live PA at the festival on Saturday 26th May, at Club Ice.
Decades Weekend May 25/26/27
The Fortunes, The Fourmost, Billy Walker, The Quireboys, New Amen Corner, Toyah Willcox, David Van Day and Ed Tuderpole. Line Up, Gallery and Ticket pages coming soon. Lets get Workington rocking.
• Visit the site. Click below to view the official ‘Decades’ flyer. Visit their Facebook page here.
Decades is a festival with something for everyone. After watching trade slowly go down publicans in Workington decided to create a festival for all with the expertise of Maryport Festivals and bring the town back to life. We will have music genres such as pop, blues, rock, indie, seventies sixties and eighties.
If you cant find something you like then your not looking. Take a trip down memory lane and remember the days of the old school yard, you know you want to. With some old favourites such as The Fortunes, The Fourmost, Billy Walker, The Quireboys and New Amen Corner on the pub trail it will be hard to beat. Then in Club Ice for Toyah Willcox, David Van Day and Ed Tuderpole in the main venue you will be spoiled for choice.
A Facebook update on this today, with a screenshot of the Amazon chart: Last months chart showing during the Amazon KDP Select promotion (it actually went a few places higher but this was the only screen shot I got).
View a larger version of the screenshot. Congratulations to Chris.
There are now just two days to go until ‘The Changeling Resurrection 2012’ is finally unleashed. What will be included in the set list? Which songs from the album have made it into the 30th anniversary celebratory tour? What will Toyah look like? What will she be wearing?
It looks as though the DVD release of More Than 30 Years In The TARDIS has been delayed until 2013, the 50th anniversary year of Doctor Who.
The, vaguely strange, tv programme Toyah guested in back in December 2005 on E4, Rajan And His Evil Hypnotists, is repeated later this month for the first time in over six years.
A small, but perfectly proportioned, photo of Toyah, and a quote from her, on Jennifer Lopez’s booty (or its proportions to be more exact) is included on the “News” page of the April 2012 issue of ‘The Good Surgeon Guide’ magazine. (yes there is actually a magazine called “The Good Surgeon Guide”!!)
