This docco was on last weekend. I’ve only seen half of it, but well worth a watch. Repeated this Friday 19th, 11pm-1am on Freeview channel 11.
I’ve just finished Dylan Jones’ book covering 1975-1985 (has it been reviewed on here?) and it was excellent. At 650+ pages, it could easily have been longer.
I remember Covent Garden at the end of the 70s – rubbish in the streets, tube station closed at weekends, prostitutes and dealers going about their trade. I was a bit too young, and badly dressed, to attend the Blitz club.
Almost everyone who went there went on to be something in the arts. There was a lot more to the early 80s than monophonic wasp-in-a-jar synths.
Yeah, it was a fascinating period, and an interesting counterpoint to the punk aesthethic – rather than wallow in the squalor of the times, the prime movers were somehow able to conjure and project glamour, very much in keeping with the escapist impulse of previous straitened times.
Oh excellent, thanks Steve. I thought I’d recorded this on Saturday but it turns out I didn’t.
I thought at the time that it was rather self-indulgent and empty-headed and I’m still pretty much of the same opinion. “Let’s put on makeup, dress silly and get off our faces!”
As for the music, the same mix as before of good stuff (10%), mediocre stuff (30%) and shite (60%).
This is correct, and I say this as someone who went to the “new romantic” night at the Blitz on at least one occasion. I used to go there at weekends too. It was just posing without any substance. Bands that the Blitz can arguably take credit for are, from memory, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, Marilyn, Haysi Fantayzee and Animal Nightlife, which is quite a few successful bands for a club which only held about 200 people. Your breakdown of good, mediocre and shite applies perfectly here.
I prefer posing with substance. It’s New Order’s best album etc
Sade did pretty well for herself, too.
The Portland Arms is about that size, and half the bands who play there aren’t even famous in Cambridge.
I haven’t seen it yet @fentonsteve but thanks for the reminder… My lthoughts on this era are fairly well known…. As a point of debate though I was following a Blow Monkeys Listening Party for “She Was Only A Grocers Daughter” recently. It was later, 1986, but clearly influenced by The Blitz period. Anyway Dr Robert stated that he has always been a bit embarrassed by the tinny sound on the album. It was pointed out that he was just using the production and equipment of the day and a actually as a time capsule piece it captured the era perfectly. It remains a brilliant album regardless. To my point, isn’t that the case with that early 80s era? They were pioneers, trialling sounds and looks to create something different and escapist. It was an extraordinary period of invention after 20 years of guitar, drum, male voice, yawn…. I’ll always defend it because of that. Would McCartney or Dylan have ignored the options around them had that period been their time? I doubt it. Back in my box now….
You are quite right, but once a narrative gets established “horrible production, bad clothes/hair, synths everywhere” and so on, it is hard to break out of.
There’s a fair bit of synthy stuff on McCartney II, if I recall.
One point the Dylan Jones book makes well is the protagonists of 1979-1985 music had mostly been art-school weirdos in 75-76, early punks, and moved away from punk once the zips, mohicans, and violence arrived at punk gigs. Some went off to make post-punk and some made synth-pop. By 1985 it was all over for them in a blur of band splits and/or hard drugs.
McCartney and Dylan embraced it at the time, or their producers did, in the process delivering their worst albums ever (Press to Play and Empire Burlesque)
I’ll have to give them a listen….
Also from the same time, Mick Jagger’s Primitive Cool – it, and not Dirty Work, is the low point of The Stones.
I liked some of the music and style (it was basically 80s art school/ aspirational glam), but it’s affected cool was annoying; I would go, done up by girlfriends, to clubs and gigs, whizzing off my mammary glands, and found many people there lacked conversation and wit as their look was EVERYTHING. The very camp scene that it was mostly lacked the irony it needed, and which glam epitomised. Boy George had it, of course, bless him.
That “too cool to be seen enjoying myself” thing continued long after New Romantics, easily into the early 90s. I was relieved of that burden by seeing Bjorn Again.
What fascinates me is the relatively short gap between the new romantics and the 60s psychedelic scene. If you were the type of person who was always searching out the new thing,
you might feasibly have gone to UFO and the Blitz. I know Gary Kemp is fond of making this point: that Spandau came from a similarly bohemian underground scene as the Pink Floyd.
Good point. It’s roughly similar periods of time between Psych (67-68), New Pop (79-81) and Acid House (88-90). What a time to be alive!
Rock n roll (56), Grunge/Britpop (95) …
Grunge was way earlier than 95. Nirvana and Pearl Jam broke in 91
Yeah I thought I might be a bit out there.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse Ragged Glory 1990!
Wombles (73 -76)
Any affection I might have had for the RYAWHM is now compromised by my adult knowledge of what a twerp Mike Batt is.
… and now Gary Kemp is a member of Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets. Small world, innit?
In response to the O.P I’d have loved to have gone to Blitz too but my Wranglers and Krokus T shirt might have been problematic. (I might be a year bit two out on dates but you get my drift.)
“Almost everyone who went there went on to be something in the arts” …Well unfortunately I became a hotel manager and then accountant! But I get your drift.
I went to The Blitz a few times, firstly in my last year at school with school mates and after that The Beat Route in Greek Street (mentioned in The Ballet’s Chant #1 lyrics) became our weekend club of choice for some time. They were good days a lifetime ago.
I wasn’t a clubber but I do remember going to Le Beat Route in the mid 80’s. I think I was really really drunk after a night out – about 19 years old. I saw it, chanced my arm, and somehow got in. Sat down in a quietish bit and drank even more beer well after closing time. . Some people joined me and we got chatting. Got the milk train home at about 3am and I was at work again at 9am. I was a completely different person then. I would never do anything like that now.
Our paths may well have crossed. As per The Spands, Friday night Beat Route was the go-to place for this, um mobile knife, late ’81 and early ’82.
Being 17 going on 18 back then, and having just moved to London, I loved so much of the slightly post-Blitz stuff: The Great Gear Market on The King’s Road, Heaven on a Tuesday night, Kensington Market (Hyper Hyper over the road opened slightly later), Le Beat Route, Dial Nine For Dolphins. Here’s a Beat Route fave…
I remember watching all the fuss from the sidelines: clubbing was, and still is, an odd idea of a night out for me. But, watching this, given I was there in that London at the time, I wish I had had the nerve to turn up. II’d have been refused entry, mind……
There was a docco about the Go-Go’s this weekend, repeated late this coming Friday.
I had no idea they were so massive Stateside. I bought Our Lips Are Sealed on 7″ and the breakup Talk Show LP. Jane Wiedlin is a pop genius and sounds like she breathes helium.
The one takeaway from the 2-hour show: don’t do coke or heroin.
Turns out she didn’t want that kind of rush hour.
PS. what a boss tune that is.
Yep. Give me Jane over Belinda anyday. So to speak.
What an image.
(several hours pass)
Yes, what an image.
This ⬆️ Is very funny!
I don’t even know I’m doing it half the time, I type a perfectly reasonable comment and it comes out on the page as smut for Moosey to riff off. I should report myself to the Men & Women thread for re-education.
I refer you to the bloke who said he was a fucking hypocrite.
*shuffles off to write grovelling apology to all of the Go-Gos individually, asking many previous misdemeanours to be taken into consideration*
I’ve had 51 years practice of doubling my entendres. It’s going to be hard switching that off.