+ 2 - 5 | § ¶Retrofest '80s Festival - Tickets Still Available
Retrofest, the UK's first all-80s music festival has announced that there will be tickets on sale at the site over the weekend of September 1 and 2.Anyone who has been holding off to see what the weather will be like (current forecast: overcast but dry) can come down and buy a day, weekend or family ticket at the site's box office at Culzean Castle. However these tickets will be cash only. No credit cards will be accepted.
Note: There is the possibility of roadworks on the main road to Maybole, reducing the road to single lane for both directions and those travelling to Retrofest are advised to take that under consideration when setting off. Bear in mind there will also be extra traffic because of the 20,000 expected at Retrofest.
Some nearby B&Bs and hotels have places left - check the Retrofest website at www.retrofest.co.uk for more details.
+ 5 - 1 | § ¶80s Empire On MySpace
Yup, the Empire continues to grow...
Come over to MySpace and join us there: http://www.myspace.com/80sempire
+ 1 - 5 | § ¶The 1980s Are Back Again
(or: The Times They Are A-Changin’...?)“They may have been acceptable in the Eighties, but do the likes of Bananarama, Curiosity Killed the Cat, Howard Jones and the Human League pass muster with the pop pickers of today?”asks The Times newspaper.
In an article all about the forthcoming ’80s-themed Retrofest concert (in which, perversely, none of the above performers will appear), The Times goes all nostalgic about the ‘80s music scene. But it ain’t all nostalgia...
And the Eighties revival isn’t all retro festivals. Alongside the main-stream marketing of nostalgia there’s a growing underground club scene that harks back to the age of gender-benders and electric dreams in more creative ways. Clubs such as Duckie, Horse Meat Disco and Pop-starz have been playing Eighties records for years, while others – Foreign, Nag Nag Nag and Trailer Trash – have spawned a new generation of club kids not unlike the Blitz kids of the early Eighties.
Read the article
+ 6 - 0 | § ¶Flexipop! and the Cult of the Flexi Disc
Forget iPods and DVDs, for real honest-to-goodness nostalgic disposable pop records, there’s nothing to beat the flexi disc. Thin, transparent bits of plastic in a range of gaudy colours, one of these discs used to appear stuck to the cover of each month’s Flexipop! magazine back in the early ‘80s. I was a regular writer for Flexipop! in those days and I assumed that the discs, like my interviews, would be here today, gone tomorrow.Not so. It turns out that both the magazine and the discs on its cover are now collectors’ items (ah, if only I’d saved more of them....!)
Recently, Stylus Magazine published an article all about the cult of the flexi-disc and they interviewed me as part of it.
Here's a snippet...
Besides its free flexi disc, the magazine—founded by a pair of ex-Record Mirror scribes, Barry Cain and Tim Lott—was notable for its rather impetuous approach to journalism. Collingbourne remembered a while-the-cats-are-away-type incident in 1982, where he and art editor Mark Manning (later to embark on a music career under the pseudonym Zodiac Mindwarp) turned a feature-and-photo spread on the Meteors into a Mad Max style cannibal holocaust. “The trouble was, the cover of the magazine showed clean-living kids Haircut 100,” Collingbourne said, “while the flexi disc was supposed to be mums’ favorites, Bucks Fizz. When the editors got back from holiday, they quickly realized the problems Mark and I had got them into, and replaced the Bucks Fizz disc with a Marc Almond one in the hope that would stop young kids or their mums from buying it.” The ensuing backlash garnered even more attention for the publication: a grandmother claimed the spread encouraged cannibalism among readers, which led to the issue being seized by police, and Flexipop! being banned by British newspaper and stationery distributor W H Smith.
Shit-stirring ledes and provocative layouts were all certainly bewitching, but it was the flexi discs that kept readers returning. “A really good flexi would make the magazine fly off the newsstands,” Collingbourne said, citing the popularity of the February of 1981 issue, which included a flexi of Adam and the Ants cutting a version of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A” named “A.N.T.S.”
Read the full article: Disposable Pop: A History Of The Flexi Disc.
Sadly, I can’t find a video of Adam and the Ants singing A.N.T.S. (in all probability, there isn’t one...) so here’s Kings Of The Wild Frontier instead...
Johnnie Depp, eat yer heart out!
+ 4 - 4 | § ¶Wham! Breaks The Sound Barrier
Thanks to the BBC for this story..."A Wham! fan who infuriated neighbours by blasting out their hit Last Christmas all night has been prosecuted by council officials. Brian Turner, of Doncaster Road, Newcastle, repeatedly played the festive favourite at full volume one night in May. Now he has become the first noise nuisance to be prosecuted by Newcastle City Council's Night Watch team. Magistrates fined Turner £200 and ordered him to pay £215 costs."
Could have been worse, I guess. I mean, he might have been a Joe Dolce fan...
+ 6 - 2 | § ¶Whatever Happened to Zola Budd...?
Today in 1984...“The South African-born British athlete, Zola Budd, is again the centre of controversy following a disastrous accident during the women's 3,000m final at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. During the race she appears to have tangled with top American runner Mary Decker, putting Decker out of the race. The crowd's hostile reaction so unnerved the 18-year-old runner that she could only finish seventh.”According to the BBC, “Zola Budd has now largely given up running competitively, although she still runs for pleasure near her home in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three children.”
