Shangri \u2013 La<\/a><\/p>\nUploaded today is the re-released 12\u2033 vinyl by Nightmares In Wax that was originally released as a 7\u2033 single on the Inevitable record label in 1979.<\/p>\n
I was originally attracted to the sleeve artwork when I purchased this 12\u2033 vinyl in the Ugly Child record shop in Hoe Street Walthamstow, east London around its release in 1985. Ugly Child Records was in the same location that Small Wonder Records had been only a couple of years previously.<\/p>\n
The Dead Or Alive angle did not bother me at the time as I was blissfully unaware that there was a Dead Or Alive angle! After repeated plays and asking around whether anyone had heard this 12\u2033 single I finally found out that there was an angle. I think it was my friend Simon, who is now known as Ossian that alerted me to the history of this record, unearthing to me the Dead Or Alive links.\u00a0 By that time though I was not particularly bothered as I liked this record on it\u2019s own merits.<\/p>\n
Although this KYPP post \u2018celebrates\u2019 Nightmares In Wax from Liverpool I have also placed up two essays written by Ted Polehemus and Steve Strange about the Covent Garden Blitz Club circa 1979 \u2013 1980. I have no idea if Nightmares In Wax performed at the Blitz Club or whether Rusty Egan played the 1979 version of this record for the punters in the Blitz Club disco to dance along to. But I figured it might just fit otherwise I would not really know where else to place these Blitz Club essays on KYPP which highlights another part of London\u2019s subculture in the late 1970\u2019s early 1980\u2019s. I do not think I actually own any \u2018Blitz Club\u2019 style records or cassettes apart from Roxy Music or Bowie of course (David Bowie\u2019s video of the 1980 single \u2018Ashes To Ashes\u2019 had a handful of Blitz Kids prominently featured on it) and possibly B Movie, a band I really liked at the time!<\/p>\n
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\u201cOh I am a young man fascinated by my profile in my mirror\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pete Burns\u2019 innovative style and creativity may have been in his genes. His mother, Eva, hailed originally from Austria and, according to Smash Hits magazine, learned her way around Liverpool by marking buildings with chalk for use as landmarks. She seemed to understand when Pete was having trouble in school because of his own uniqueness, and persuaded the authorities to let her educate him at home.<\/p>\n
Born August 5, 1959, to Frank and Eva Burns in Port Sunlight, near Liverpool, Peter Jozzeppi Burns was, by his own admission, a solitary child. He preferred drawing and painting to playing with other kids. When he neared adolescence, he gave up the pens and paintbrushes in favour of powder and panstick, and began experimenting with his own appearance. His gift for self-beautification did not sit well with his schoolmates or teachers, who reacted with derision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI dropped out of school,\u201d Pete recalled later, \u201cbecause it got to be too dangerous for somebody who looked a little different. At that time, I was experimenting with hair dyes and stuff like that and I was going to a particularly macho-oriented school and causing too much controversy.\u201d<\/p>\n
In retrospect, dropping out of school was a career move for Pete.<\/p>\n
Liverpool in the Sixties and Seventies was a place of high dreams and low employment. Inspired by the Beatles\u2019 phenomenal success, a lot of young people formed music bands to escape low wages or the dole. Pete initially took a string of casual, dead-end jobs, but at age eighteen found work at Probe Records. Probe Records illustrious client\u00e8le included Ian McCullough (Echo And The Bunnymen) and Julian Cope (the Teardrop Explodes). Pete Wylie, of the Mighty Wah! was a fellow shop worker at Probe. Surrounded daily by so much musical creativity, (and even MORE ambition), it was only a matter of time before Pete himself was bitten by the performing bug.<\/p>\n
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On November 4, 1977, an androgynous, amateurish new band opened for Sham 69 at Liverpool\u2019s famous Eric\u2019s Club. They called themselves the Mystery Girls, after a song by the New York Dolls. Regulars howled when they recognized Pete on vocals, backed up by Pete Wylie and Julian Cope. The three unlikely queens for the night bounced and bungled their way through a slew of cover versions and a few originals, and then vanished into posterity. The Mystery Girls were a one-night stand for all involved, and Pete did not perform again publicly for a year.<\/p>\n
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Then, in February 1979, he formed Nightmares In Wax. The inspiration for this new project was a stolen keyboard that they had to do something with, and Pete described their aim as to be the worst group in history. \u201cWe were pure rubbish,\u201d he said, \u201cperforming one-note songs for ten minutes.\u201d Regardless, Nightmares In Wax did slowly gain a following, mainly comprising \u201creal loony\u2019s\u201d as the singer himself described them. Despite this self-denigrating philosophy and continual line-up changes, Nightmares In Wax were asked to record some tracks for Inevitable Records, run by the Eric\u2019s Club manager, Pete Fulwell. The band\u2019s line up still hadn\u2019t solidified. Burns was joined at the session by his former Mystery Girls\u2019 compatriot, drummer Phil Hurst, keyboardist Martin Healy, bassist Walter Ogden, and guitarist Mick Reid. The ensuing EP \u2018Birth of a Nation\u2019 opened with \u2018Black Leather\u2019, a roaring homage to homosexual leatherclad bikers and musically a tribute to Iggy Pop\u2019s \u2018Sister Midnight\u2019. The song also contained a hint of things to come, when halfway through, the group suddenly broke into K.C. And The Sunshine Band\u2019s \u2018That\u2019s The Way\u2019 subsequently revived by Burns for Dead Or Alive\u2019s first hit single.<\/p>\n
The EP was released in February 1980 and sold respectably, but \u2018Black Leather\u2019 was frowned on by the distributors as sexist, although Pete saw it as merely an offshoot of his dark humour.<\/p>\n
The line up had already splintered. Bassist Ogden was first to go, replaced by a new member named Ambrose, who subsequently followed his predecessor into Hollycaust, an early incarnation of Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Reid, left too, and filling in the now considerable gaps were ex-Upsets Sue James, the singularly named Mitch, and music veteran Joe Musker, formerly drummer with Merseybeat legends the Fourmost. Nightmares In Wax now continued to exist more as a concept than as a functioning band; still, in May 1980, the group was offered a local radio session. There, without warning and mere minutes before recording began, Burns decided to change the group\u2019s name to Dead Or Alive. This, he claimed, was because he didn\u2019t want to be associated with the arty bands now permeating the Liverpool scene: Echo And The Bunnymen, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Dalek I Love You, and so forth. Nightmares In Wax was dead, Dead Or Alive was born, and Pete Burn\u2019s rise to stardom was now beginning in earnest.<\/p>\n
Dead Or Alive\u2019s d\u00e9but single for Inevitable record \u2018I\u2019m Falling\u2019 was released in May 1980, and separated them even further from their peers. It was a new sound, something more spontaneous, melodramatic, and macabrely funny than anything else being recorded at the time. It drew attention to the band and more gigs resulted, including a spot on Granada TV\u2019s arts programme Celebration.<\/p>\n
The Granada TV appearance featured Dead Or Alive in a smokey studio set, performing \u2018Flowers\u2019 (the B-side to \u2018I\u2019m Falling\u2019). Pete\u2019s black hair had been crimped to an electric frizz, he wore a nose ring that touched his lip, and his make-up and clothes were garish. Some viewers reacted violently; the father of the band\u2019s bass player Sue James declared that \u201che should be shot!\u201d Pete responded to the outcry with calm egotism; \u201cI look like whatever I want to look like. I can\u2019t be different or I\u2019ll be unhappy\u201d.<\/p>\n
In August 1980, he married hairdresser Lynne Cortlett, who had been a customer at Probe Records. \u201cI was immediately attracted to Pete\u201d Lynne said later. \u201cHe was as outrageous as I was and we both had so much in common.\u201d She laughed when recalling her parents\u2019 reaction to the match. \u201cAt first (they) thought Pete was just a gay friend of mine. They thought he was sweet and nice. But they didn\u2019t like it when they found out we were serious. My dad always wanted a son-in-law he could watch football games with.\u201d<\/p>\n
By 1980, Pete was a cause celebre in Liverpool. His innovative clothing, make-up, and hairstyles aroused the envy of less creative associates and the wrath of everyone else. People jumped out of cars wanting to hit him, and occasionally an old lady would thump him with her handbag. Pete\u2019s razor wit, which later was a cornerstone in his celebrity, came into being out of necessity. \u201cAfter all,\u201d he explained later, \u201cwhen you\u2019ve got a gang of boys surrounding you with Stanley blade knives, you learn to be witty pretty fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
JO-ANN GREENE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i192.photobucket.com\/albums\/z149\/pengy1966\/KYPPBL_zpsa60ec6be.jpg\")
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Once upon a time \u2013 say last year \u2013 the world was populated by Normals and Punks.\u00a0 It was all very straightforward.\u00a0 Now, however, things have returned to a healthy state of confusion.\u00a0 Post-Punk is a term which some have grasped at in order to get a handle on this present situation.\u00a0 It sounds good, it\u2019s obviously true but it\u2019s also rather like calling the Renaissance the post-Medieval Period.<\/p>\n
Consider a typical post-Punk night in the Electro-Disko at Blitz, a wine bar in Covent Garden which revels in the low-tech decor of war-time austerity.\u00a0 On the dance floor a teen-age girl dressed like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany\u2019s is dancing with a boy in a jet-black plastic space suit with such baggy trousers that a couple of spacemen and a good-sized alien could live happily inside them.\u00a0 His hair is slicked back Valentino-style and hers is neatly permed.\u00a0 The music is German electronic pop with J G Ballard-ish lyrics about life in a crashed car.\u00a0 Their dancing style is jitterbug step but it is executed with the efficiency of robots.<\/p>\n
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They are not smiling.\u00a0 No one is \u2013 especially not Mr Steve Strange who is furtively glancing out the door to decide who\u2019s got the style and can enter, and who will be doomed to wait outside.<\/p>\n
Watching Strange scan the crowd it\u2019s difficult to believe that, like St Peter, he was once a mere mortal.<\/p>\n
Back in the primordial period Before Punk, Steve Strange was called something else and lived a frustrated life in South Wales. With the advent of punkdom Steve became less frustrated but Stranger and moved to London where he, like countless others, found the elbow room for experimenting in style and music.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it wasn\u2019t long before the great punk ice age set in with rigid uniforms and fixed attitudes.\u00a0 Individual style was put down as \u201cposing\u201d and Steve and friends took the hint and left the fold.<\/p>\n
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They started hanging out in a soul club in Soho called Billy\u2019s.\u00a0 Eventually they asked the boss if they could run a \u2018David Bowie Night\u2019 every Tuesday.\u00a0 It was a great success, and there in lay its demise.\u00a0 The management let in hordes of unstylish types who had heard about it from the gossip columns and who thought it would be cheaper than going to the zoo.\u00a0 Hideous photographers came in bus loads from the tabloids.\u00a0 It was horrible! One week the whole crowd switched to Blitz which offered Steve control of the door and the last that was heard of Billy\u2019s was that true-blue punks had moved in and preached anarchy by busting up the toilets.<\/p>\n
At Blitz the \u2018Bowie Night\u2019 label was dropped, but his influence continues to linger on.\u00a0 It was, of course, Bowie who had insisted on giving style equal billing with music \u2013 something which the punks, like the hippies before them, have now come to see a anathema.\u00a0 This tradition has been carried on in Steve Strange\u2019s own band Visage, on the genetic (soon to be christened \u2018New Romantic) label, and the postures, dance ability and even what you choose to drink.\u00a0 This gives not only a post-punk, but actually an anti-Punk tone to the proceedings.\u00a0 It comes as quite a shock to discover that the vast majority of these kids sipping their cocktails and taking care not to mess their hairdos were once pogoing punks throwing beer at each other.\u00a0 This is the flipside.<\/p>\n
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Some of this crowd are New Mods, but to reduce this pot-pourri of extravagant styles to that of any other easy label is a mistake. Except for dressing in a stereotyped punk or hippy style anything goes \u2013 as long as it\u2019s extreme.\u00a0 Steve and his crowd are attempting to tap our image resources.\u00a0 They\u2019re digging into Top Hat and Barbarella, Thunderbirds and Stingray,\u00a0 Modesty Blaise and Dan Dare,\u00a0 not to mention of Fredericks\u2019 of Hollywood catalogues and re-vamped versions of classic outfits of Mods, Teddy-boys and even cowboys (no Indian yet ).\u00a0 They are a tribe without a name and even if I could think of one, I\u2019d hope to keep it to myself.<\/p>\n
With or without a name, however, they are being noticed.\u00a0 Gossip columnists have pointed them out, established fashion designers like Zandra Rhodes and the Howies are checking them out and music moguls wait to hear them out.\u00a0 But meanwhile Steve Strange peers out of the window looking upon those who would enter his post-punk kingdom of heaven and hell.\u00a0 Many knock, few enter.\u00a0 He maintains that even Mick Jagger had to queue up, pass inspection and pay his money if he wanted to gain access.\u00a0 Like Steve Rubell of New York\u2019s Studio 54, Steve Strange knows that the secret of his impresario\u2019s craft is to judge a book by its cover.<\/p>\n
TED POLEHEMUS \u2013 THE OTHER SOCIAL PAGE \u2013 TATLER MAGAZINE 1979<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i192.photobucket.com\/albums\/z149\/pengy1966\/KYPPBL10_zps5d11a685.jpg\")
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On 6, February, 1979,\u00a0 \u2018Bowie Night\u2019 moved to a much bigger club on the other side of Covent Garden.\u00a0 Blitz was a wine bar on Great Queen Street, near Holborn Tube Station, decorated with images of World War Two, such as murals of St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral under fire and war planes flying overhead.\u00a0 The \u2018Bowie Night\u2019 name was soon dropped as the club developed a unique identity of its own.\u00a0 Every Tuesday, 350 of the most creative, individualistic young people in London would cram into the club.\u00a0 Many were ex-punks, fed up with a scene that had burnt brightly, but all too quickly turned in on itself.\u00a0 Others were young fashion students from the nearby St. Martin\u2019s College on Charing Cross Road turning the place into a personal catwalk.<\/p>\n
Queues were soon forming around the block again, and I was busy all night on the door.\u00a0 I had lots of enemies by trying to make the club look good.\u00a0 Barely a night would go by when I wasn\u2019t spat at least once.\u00a0 An evening would not be complete without someone threatening to punch me out.<\/p>\n
The club was a platform for new talent.\u00a0 Apart from the fashion crowd, there was journalist Robert Elms, who wrote\u00a0 about the scene, and photographers Gabor Scott and David Johnson who recorded the visuals for posterity. Ben Kelly, who went on to design the Hacienda in Manchester, was part of the crowd. The brilliant thing was that everyone involved had a role.<\/p>\n
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George was in the cloakroom in his white-faced kabuki made-up and kimono, Rusty, in his fifties suits, played the records, and I was on the door in my high hair and high heels, carrying a silver-topped cane.\u00a0 I only every tried DJ\u2019ing once, on a night when I tried to set up a kind of cafe society, playing Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield,\u00a0 Frank Sinatra and escalator background music.\u00a0 But I only dabbled, because I was always needed on the door. I didn\u2019t trust anyone else to do the door until one day a Blitz regular called Rosemary Turner asked if she could do it. She watched me to learn my techniques and then she was ready to do it herself.<\/p>\n
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My door policy was always very strict.\u00a0 Membership was two pounds, entry was one pound and everyone had to pay\u00a0 even the regular faces and the people who would become Spandau Ballet.\u00a0 If people didn\u2019t want to pay, and thought they were above it, I\u2019d say \u201cwho the fuck are you?\u201d<\/p>\n
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Look back at the pictures of Blitz or the documentaries and you\u2019d think it was a poseur\u2019s paradise, the home of the beautiful people, but it wasn\u2019t always like that.\u00a0 People were often either speeding or drunk, or both.\u00a0 There was plenty of glamour, but it was also very debauched.\u00a0 There was always someone falling over. The men were always in the ladies toilets putting their make-up on because it had the best mirrors.\u00a0 Sometimes you\u2019d walk into the toilets and the scent of hairspray would almost knock you out.\u00a0 But one thing you can say about Blitz is that there were no barriers.\u00a0 The women didn\u2019t feel threatened at all by men using their toilets.<\/p>\n
Gradually the media started to pick up on the success of blitz.\u00a0 Boy George was becoming known in his own right, but I was the one who was initially singled out and courted by the press because of my striking appearance, and because I was one with the power to allow people in.<\/p>\n
Everything was going well at Blitz, George and I were being seen at parties, and a day later it would be in a gossip column as the national newspapers tried to give a name to the movement. The Face and i-D had started and they were reporting on the scene as well, dubbing it the \u2018Cult With No Name\u2019, \u2018The Blitz Kids\u2019 and the \u2018Now Crowd\u2019.<\/p>\n
Pick up the Evening Standard, and there was my stark, white face, scarlet lipstick, jet black, spiky hair 12 inches high, steamed and crimped with steel steamers, staring out at you.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t get any coverage in the NME or Melody Maker because that sort of paper liked to think that they had discovered you, make you their darlings, build you up, and then knock you down. We didn\u2019t care; we were making it without their support, having gone straight into the mainstream.<\/p>\n
It was just my luck that a quite drunk Mick Jagger turned up at the door with his entourage.\u00a0 It has always been said that I held a mirror up to his wrinkly face, as I did with a lot of potential customers, and said, \u201cwould you let yourself in? \u201c\u00a0 Although I did refuse entry to people who didn\u2019t have the right look, sadly that\u2019s not what happened at all. I explained \u201cwe were over capacity what what would the fire officer say\u201d to Mick\u2019s friends, who were more sober. \u00a0Meanwhile Mick was getting annoyed, saying, \u201cDon\u2019t you know who I am?\u201d I tried to be polite and his friends tried to calm him down as he went off in search of night life elsewhere.\u00a0 But it just happened that a tabloid journalist was there at the time.\u00a0 By the following day, the story had to out, with typical press embellishment, and the legend of Blitz being the ultra-exclusive club for the new young elite was established.<\/p>\n
STEVE STRANGE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Black Leather Shangri \u2013 La Uploaded today is the re-released 12\u2033 vinyl by Nightmares In Wax that was originally released as a 7\u2033 single on the Inevitable record label in 1979. I was originally attracted to the sleeve artwork when I purchased this 12\u2033 vinyl in the Ugly Child record shop in Hoe Street Walthamstow, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-downloads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7200"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8247,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7200\/revisions\/8247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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