Craig Astley, Manager of The Official Toyah Willcox website, was featured in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, in an article on the People’s History Of Pop.
Craig Astley: 37, Communications Officer
Photo of himself, aged four, with Toyah Willcox, backstage at Newcastle City Hall, December 1983
“I latched on to music at a really young age. It was on TV shows like Swap Shop. I was drawn to how energetic and colourful Toyah was. My mother took me to the concert but I was so small I had to have cotton wool in my ears as it would have been too loud. It was near christmas and I’d taken a card to the gig. Our seats were close to the sound engineer and my mum asked him to give my card to Toyah. He said, ‘Why don’t you give it to her yourself?’ and let us backstage. I can remember that moment, burned in my memory. Years later I started running Toyah’s website. Now I look after her artwork and tour merchandise and manager her archive. She’s now a friend I see through the eyes of a fan.”
• Read more on the People’s History Of Pop. (Photo © Official Toyah – See a larger version of the article at Toyah’s Official Twitter page).
Available Now! Listen to the People’s History Of Pop, presented by Toyah, online at BBC iPlayer.
Stories include a fan of the Beatles who as a teenager collected as much memorabilia as she could – only to lose it all in a house fire.
A Madonna superfan, who’s even turned her downstairs loo into a shrine of the queen of pop. We’ll hear about the brilliance of David Bowie, playing to just 2000 people at Birmingham’s Que Club. And hear how a Smiths fan from Solihull has come to own a piece of Morrissey’s shirt.
Toyah presents People’s History Of Pop this Sunday on BBC WM 95.6. A one-hour special for the radio station, airing at Midday.
The programme will be available to listen to live online or post-broadcast at BBC iPlayer.
People’s History Of Pop: BBC WM:
Sunday 7th February: 12pm
Toyah Willcox presents a special show about listener’s music memories and memorabilia.
• Visit the BBC WM People’s History Of Pop webpage here. Browse all of Dreamscape’s People’s History Of Pop here. See Toyah’s tweet about recording the programme here. (Photo © Toyah Willcox)
BBC asks viewers to share their musical memorabilia to tell ‘The People’s History of Pop’
Do you treasure a ticket stub from David Bowie at Aylesbury Friars? Is there a glow-stick from an illegal rave in your attic? Does your teenage diary list every band you ever saw in painstaking detail?
Now the BBC is asking viewers to share their most cherished musical possessions to help tell The People’s History of Pop through a unique crowdsourcing appeal. An online archive is being created for a new BBC4 series which will tell the story of British rock & pop music from the 1950s to the noughties – but without the traditional narrative from chin-stroking “experts”.
Craig Astley uploaded a picture of himself, then aged 4, with his first pop idol, the punk singer Toyah after a concert in Newcastle. “Sixteen years later and I received a phone call from Toyah herself if I would be interested in running her website,” writes Astley, who now manages the singer’s archive. “Pop dreams can come true.”
• Continue reading at The Independent. View further info here.
Five decades of British rock and pop music, told by the people who loved it most – the fans.
The BBC is crowdsourcing photos and audio/video of your cherished music memorabilia – ticket stubs, diary entries, teen band recordings, wrist bands, rare footage and more – to tell the stories of British rock and pop music from the 1950s to the noughties. Whether you were into skiffle, punk, hip hop or anything in between, we want to see your stuff and hear your stories!
What was the first record you bought? Do you still have the ticket stub to your all-time favourite gig?
What was the first record you bought? Do you still have the ticket stub to your all-time favourite gig? Were you in a teen band and do you still have the recordings?
• Continue reading at BBC People’s History of Pop.
There’s a great new project from the BBC who are crowdsourcing the People’s History of Pop. They asked Craig Astley, who manages The Official Toyah Willcox website, if they could use the well known photo of him, aged five first meeting Toyah, as their main website banner. The site launched last Friday. The crowdsourced memories will form the backbone of a new four-part series for future broadcast on BBC Four.
• Visit People’s History of Pop/HistoryPin. (Thanks to Craig)
