Hoorah! A much-needed weekend hoves into view.
I'm off to John-John's tomorrow for a mammoth catch-up/binge-watch of the second series of Wednesday, and I can't wait for that...
...but meanwhile, let's don our gold skintight spandex jeans, grab a sparkly top, and boogie with La Belle Epoque!
Thank Disco It's Friday!
Have a great weekend, peeps!
Dame Angela's not the only beloved diva with a milestone anniversary today [see the Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp]!
There's also Señorita Carmen Sevilla, who would have been 95...
...and Miss Sugar Pie DeSanto, who would have been 90:
Diva overload!
Timeslip moment again, dear reader...
Our trusty TARDIS (in the capable hands of the newly-regenerated Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee) has materialised in an ancient, far-flung land - that of 1970 - the year the Beatles announced their break-up, of the Apollo 13 near-disaster, Prime Minister Edward Heath, the devastating Peruvian earthquake, Lord Laurence Olivier, Jesus Christ Superstar the album, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, The Banana Splits, Bernadette Devlin, UFO, Willy Brandt, the rabies scare, The Female Eunuch, Palestinian aeroplane hijackings, Ska, President Nixon, The Goodies, the Aswan High Dam, Wand'rin' Star, Thor Heyerdahl, The Railway Children, the Isle of Wight Festival, compensation for Thalidomide victims, Mungo Jerry, A Question of Sport, the East Pakistan cyclone disaster, Vietnam, the The Sun's Page Three girls, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Ian Paisley, The Six Wives of Henry VIII,, the Kent State massacre in the US, Northern Soul all-nighters, Dana All Kinds of Everything, Commonwealth Games, Tony Jacklin, and the disruption of the Miss World contest by Women's Libbers; it was the year Matt Damon, Naomi Campbell, Queen Latifah, Joseph Fiennes, Simon Pegg, Uma Thurman, Claudia Schiffer, Guyana, Armand Van Helden, NatWest bank, Virgin (Records), Christopher Nolan, Jason Orange, M. Night Shyamalan, Tonga, Neil Hannon, Andre Agassi, the Glastonbury Festival, River Phoenix, the Pascal programming language, Alexander Armstrong, the Range Rover, and the Gay Liberation Front in the UK were born; and the year Gypsy Rose Lee, E. M. Forster, Charles de Gaulle, President Nasser of Egypt, Bertrand Russell, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Tammi Terrell, "Jack Walker" in Coronation Street and the Half Crown coin all died.
In the headlines in October fifty-five years ago? BP struck oil in the North Sea, a Canadian government minister was kidnapped and murdered by Quebec separatists, the last sail-powered Thames barge and the last canal narrowboats to carry commercial cargo were decommissioned, Fiji gained its independence from the UK, the Cambodian civil war was raging, Anwar Sadat came to power in Egypt, and the new Austin Maxi and Ford Cortina were launched. In our cinemas: The Vampire Lovers; Catch-22; Tora! Tora! Tora! On telly: The Pink Panther Show; Play for Today...
...and Vision On, the kids' show aimed at deaf children, hosted by Pat Keysell and Tony Hart [whose centenary it is today].
Meanwhile, in our charts this week in October 1970? "Heavy metal" music had arrived with a vengeance, with both Deep Purple and Black Sabbath in the Top 5, jostling for places with Desmond Dekker and Bobby Bloom; the rest of the Top 10 included the Carpenters, Miss Ross, Tremeloes, Chairmen of the Board and the Poppy Family.
Dominating the lot however - in her 4th of six weeks in the top slot - was the most successful artist signed to Holland-Dozier-Holland's Invictus label [that they set up when they dramatically left Motown a year earlier] - and one who is happily still with us, at the venerable age of 83:
A classic!
Fifty-five years?! Fuck.
Anyone with a job is likely to have witnessed managers gushing about AI then quietly ditching the idea. See where your employer is in the cycle of AI hype.1. Insane enthusiasm
Every aspect of our lives will be transformed by AI and you’re going to be on the cutting edge, your boss assures you. This is based on seeing some moderately realistic pictures of kittens having a birthday party.2. The first bold steps
You attend meetings about how AI will ‘supercharge’ your business. Enthusiasm is high, and you feel a bit Silicon Valley. You start taking an interest in AI generally and read articles by credulous journalists who don’t appear to realise Elon Musk is a pathological liar. There are undertones of being in a cult, but people forget cults give you a lovely sense of belonging. You love AI.3. No one can think of anything for AI to actually do
It turns out AI doesn’t have any obvious uses for your company. Apparently a kitchen worktop supplier in Reading doesn’t need a real-time global translation service like Microsoft. Your boss responds by finding unnecessary projects for AI to do in a classic case of ‘technology looking for an application’. At least your clients will be getting video Christmas cards this year with Avatar-standard graphics.4. Doubts creep in
Heretical thoughts begin. Are companies just pumping their share price with AI? Did anyone ever decide what AI was actually going to be for? Are tech bros full of shit? You note that Zuckerberg thinks we’re going to wear AI glasses bombarding us with trivia that wankers will just use to try to chat up women, eg. ‘Did you know we’re 365.55 million kilometres from Mars, Emma? Makes you think, eh?’5. AI plans get downscaled
Eventually your company decides to use AI to process invoices a bit faster, so you won’t be conversing with Deep Thought every day or getting a cool robot buddy like K-2SO. It’s good that AI will be helping the company, but it’s a kick in the nuts when you thought Joi from Blade Runner 2049 would be waiting for you lovingly at your desk every morning.6. You grow to hate AI
Your new AI tools have teething troubles, requiring endless tweaks and forcing you to redo things. Combined with incessant AI bullshit in the media you start to hate the whole thing. You long to work in a low-tech office of the 1950s where the only technology you’re expected to engage with is a pencil sharpener and it’s fine to have lurid yellow teeth from smoking.7. AI is quietly dropped
Suddenly AI is never spoken of, like a deformed child in the basement, and your company gets on with doing things the way you’ve always done them, on Windows Vista. That’s not to say AI hasn’t profoundly affected your business; you’re still spending countless man hours asking ChatGPT ‘Write me funny jokes about cocks’ and making hilarious images of your colleague Gavin as a xenomorph.
Of course.
Sometimes fates collide on a Tacky Music Monday, and something perfect just pops into view to cheer us up... like yesterday's "birthday girl", Miss Susan Anton!
The living embodiment of a "Barbie Doll" (that hair doesn't move!), she was one of those typical pretty blondes who was "famous for being famous" - the inheritor of the mantle of the likes of Zsa Zsa Gabor, or Mamie Van Doren, perhaps.
Her career was hardly luminous nor memorable - she appeared in some commercials, and in some barrel-scraping films (Goldengirl, anyone? How about Cannonball Run II? She was nominated "Worst Supporting Actress" in the Golden Raspberry Awards for that one.) She was even in a relationship with Dudley Moore in the early 1980s (he seemed to get through a succession of blondes).
And she had her own television show! It lasted exactly four weeks. Here, perhaps to illustrate why, she gives it her heart and soul on a Make Someone Happy medley...
Have a good week, dear reader.
PS
Speaking of blondes...
Today marks the centenary of the birth of Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS, née Roberts (13th October 1925 – 8th April 2013), the longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 20th century
To revisit my post on the occasion of her death [with a quote somewhat echoed by Rusty Egan in yesterday's post]:
As Andrew Marr said in his marvellous History of Modern Britain TV series:[Hers was]...the most extraordinary and nation-changing Prime Ministership in British history.
Margaret Thatcher was a woman who made mistakes, who could be harsh, who bullied people - close to her, and people she'd never met. But she took a country that had lost faith in itself, and she gave it a long and repeated slapping, and left it stronger, richer and more self-confident than when she came in.
In many ways she defines the country we still live in today. We're none of us, regardless of our ages, Harold Wilson's children. Or Edward Heath's children. Or John Major's. Or Tony Blair's. We are all, like it or not, rebel or not, the children of Margaret Thatcher.
Indeed.
From an article by Mark Holgate in Vogue:
It’s hard to imagine, but Blitz (the bar), with its Dig for Victory World War II posters, kitschy red gingham tablecloths, and wooden bar sticky from spilt beer - faithfully recreated for the exhibition - wasn’t the most obvious place for a fashion revolution to happen, yet this sartorial Winter Palace, reimagined as Blitz (the club night) changed everything. If punk was a gob in the face, then New Romanticism was putting on a tiara and forgetting you were penniless. Its favoured look - theatrical, historical, bending your gender to whatever you wanted it to be, with the absolute emphasis on individualism - still resonates today.
It certainly does!
And so it was that Hils, John-John and I - "80s Kids", all - trolled off yesterday (Saturday) for swanky High Street Kensington to the Design Museum to see its new flagship exhibition, Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s.
Oh, the memories flooded in...
Among the hundreds of fascinating, and carefully-curated, items on show - including many from personal and private collections, never usually on display - were some fabulous outfits belonging to the original club-goers, such as leather garments owned by Steve Strange, a blue tartan suit designed and worn by Chris Sullivan, an outfit designed by David Holah (the co-founder of Bodymap) for Lesley Chilkes, and ensembles created and worn by Fiona Dealey (a major contributor to the exhibition):
There were cases full of flyers, scrapbooks, photos and memorabilia of that formative era - not least Gary Kemp's handwritten lyrics for the club's "house band" Spandau Ballet's To Cut A Long Story Short [see here for that!], as well as individual focus on some of the influential style magazines - including first editions - that emerged out of this uniquely stylish era, such as The Face, i:D, New Sounds New Styles and the rest.
Back to the fashions... A selection of the fantabulosa hats created for Blitz regulars by a fellow patron, milliner Stephen Jones were prominently displayed alongside photos of their inimitable wearers:
Darla Jane Gilroy's outfit from when she joined Steve Strange and fellow regulars Judi Frankland and Elise Brazier in David Bowie's Ashes to Ashes video was among my faves on show - and we had gasps at seeing the covers of some of the most familiar LP and 7" singles that made the early '80s so special on display on one bookshelf! [How many do you recognise/did you own, dear reader? I still have a number in my collection to this day...]
The recreation of the club itself - with some cleverly-done animation from original photos that made it appear as if the familiar punters were actually dancing to the music played by a similarly-AI-generated Rusty Egan in the DJ booth - was brilliantly executed, and some of our most-treasured classics of the day were playing, here and in the audio-visual area of the exhibition.
Here are just a few of the tracks that were playing yesterday, as they were back on the dancefloor at the Blitz:
Also featured was a rather faboo excerpt of a film that brings together many of the key players from the Blitz club - including Boy George, Marilyn, Gary Kemp, Midge Ure, Andy Polaris, Robert Elms, Princess Julia, Stephen Jones, Darla-Jane Gilroy and Michele Clapton - to talk about their own recollections, which I found fascinating:
[NB you can view the whole thing here]And the last word, of course, goes to Rusty Egan:
“I don’t think Blitz invented the 80s.That was Margaret Thatcher. She was the one who created Del Boy with his Filofax. What I did was to put together a soundtrack, where everything fell into place.”
Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s is on at the Design Museum until 29th March 2026. Don't miss it!
Watch the promotional trailer:
More Blitz Kids/New Romantics here, here, here and here and here - and our visit to a similar exhibition from the early 80s club scene, Leigh Bowery's Taboo here.
It's another snippets post, dear reader:
[click to embiggen]
Mohammed Rafi - Jaan Pehchaan Ho from Gumnaam
A Lamb Bhuna, pilau rice and some naan bread, please...
