Post-Punk Monk

Torn Apart: Punk + New Wave Graphics, Fashion + Culture 1976-1986 @Orlando Museum Of Art

Posted on March 4, 2025 by postpunkmonk

A wall of posters that seemed like the doorway to infinite worlds

It was over a month ago when I found myself traveling to Orlando, Florida not for a roots check, but to visit the Orlando Museum of Art on the final [HELD OVER!] day of the third, and largest, exhibit of Punk and New Wave Graphics in America as taken from the Andrew Krivine collection. I’ve written about the collection before. It was the subject of a pair of books, the first covered here, and in a case of synchronicity, I was reading the second which was given to me on my birthday last year by a good friend when all of this happened.

Bettter still, this was an occasion where I got to spend time with such backbones of the PPM community as Mr. Ware [and his family] and the almighty Echorich. The last time we’d all been together was in 2018 at the Atlanta Simple Minds concert so this was a long time coming! I had first met up with Echorich at the 2013 Simple Minds concert that we attended [with chasinvictoria] in Washington D.C. and I was afraid that I might not be able to see the gent without Simple Minds present! But of course, Simple Minds were present by proxy, as we’ll see!

We first began the day with a proper breakfast, courtesy of the Wares. Echorich drove over from the Tampa Bay area and I had arrived the day before, overnighting with The Wares. Their son, The Warewolf, has his own music blog and he arrive on the scene to dine and accompany us. I have fond memories of shopping for records with a big pack of Mr. Ware’s and our friends as the youngster gave crate diving a chance and found that he liked it.

The museum opened by noon, and we headed over to the site where there was plentiful free parking and a senior citizen like myself could obtain admission for a scant $12.00! I was incredulous when I asked Mr. Ware about buying timed tickets in advance and he scoffed it all off! I’ve not been to a museum in 25 years at least [From The Louvre to my local…and all points in between] where this was not deemed necessary! Incredible.

The show featured hundreds of examples of Punk and New Wave print design [and more] as carefully curated by the forward thinking Andrew Krivine. Who stored all of this material [for decades] realizing that it was an incredible glimpse of a foundational era in music and art. That he’s managed to turn it into two hardcover volumes [so far] which are a steal at the price they’re going for means that he’s finally getting a little return on the investment that storing all of this represented over 40+ years.

That three museum shows have been mounted on the backs of those books [with another show preceding the publication of the first one] speaks to the vitality and breadth of the collection. Since I took over a hundred photos that I am [mostly] sharing in this post, we’ll have to use slideshows that break down the show’s thrusts by necessity. Also present was a sub-gallery focused on the photography of the legendary Sheila Rock, which was another big plus. Going into this I was definitely looking to buy the “Too fast To Live – Too Young To Die” first Krivine volume which I still needed, but as we;ll see, I got more than I bargained for as we exited through the gift shop.

The New Wave bucket will be holding the most of the materials here.

A high energy Midge Ure in this Rick Kids poster

Malcolm Garrett was deemed so crucial to the show that he was one of three designers singled out by name in the curation. I can never forget seeing the first Garrett cover art I’d ever seen with the brilliant and colorful Buzzcocks “Different Kind Of Tension” artwork.

US Buzzcocks “Different Kind Of Tension” poster.

Peter Saville was another designer given their own placement in the show. He was a classmate at Manchester Polytech of Malcolm Garrett and together they were the enfants terrible of the New Wave and Post-Punk era. Saville embraced Classicism while Garrett preferred Modernism.

This OMD Canadian “Dazzle Ships” poster was actually a Malcolm Garrett collaboration with Peter Saville.

The significance of synthesizers was called out as an important thread of the New Wave movement within the show.

The dystopian image of the first Human League Record; Yuri Gagarin getting a hero’s welcome.

The visual vitality of the New Romantic movement meant that this show paid a lot of attention to The Cult With No Name. The Visage and Ultravox images from the Saville section, could also be here.

A US Polydor poster selling the Visage debut album plus their dance mix EP.

The show also incorporated elements of fashion which were intrinsic to the era.

The inexpensive but striking DEVO hazmat suits were bought inexpensively from an industrial supplier, but the Aztec Energy Domes were custom made.

The Sheila Rock sub-gallery primarily showed her crucial photos from the New Romantic movement period on ’79-’81, and were in black + white. But the occasional color image was still there.

Looking back it’s hard to believe that Orlando was where all of this design had collected for public view. The records alone 45 years ago were hard enough to find! I managed to get a lot of these records in local store, but many was the time that the one copy I saw of something was something I snapped up to never see on sale again. When we hit the gift shop on the way out I was intending to purchase the first Krivine tome, now that I was reading the second one.And they duly had it there. $45 I was happy to spend. But they had more than that to buy!

I had missed the “Reasons To Be Cheerful” book on Barney Bubbles over a decade ago. Back when I still bought from Amazon it could be had for chump change, but there were always record to buy first. Then for the last decade, OOP copies were a solid three figures! Yet I found the latest [most complete] printing at the show with a completely new look [and title] for only $40, so I pounced on it.

And finally, I had been aware of the French Sheila Rock signed/numbered edition of “New Romantics.” It was not prohibitively expensive but the postage from France always dampened my enthusiasm. Imagine my glee as I saw copies on a shelf within my grasp! The book came with a set of postcards, bookmarks, and two posters tipped into the cover. I ended up spending almost $150 [after taxes] on books this day. And I have been selling off my library for years with new additions coming in at a snail’s pace. But not this day.

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Posted in Assorted Images, Badges, Core Collection, Designed By Peter Saville, graphic design, New Romantic | Tagged 2025, graphic design | 10 Comments

David Johansen: 1950-2025

Posted on March 3, 2025 by postpunkmonk

This was not a shock, but still a blow. We got the sad news that the mighty David Johansen died on Friday, the 28th following a terrible few months where he had fallen and broken his back in November. While being under care for the last five years for a brain tumor. On February 10th his daughter, Leah Hennessey made the news public due to the crowdfunding appeal his family had made that day due to the burden that his medical care was placing on his family.

A few days later, on Valentine’s Day, they posted a heart-warming response video shot at his hospital bed on the Sweet Relief page for Johansen that had him saying how he had learned from his wife that she’s been teaching him of the beauty of when your chips are down, asking for help. So the legion of Johansen fans came through enough for David to see the love before he died.

With that, the last living New York Doll danced backward in high heels off this mortal coil. Though it reddens my face to admit it, the venn diagram of The New York Dolls and Ye Olde Monk have no intersection. I spite of reading about The Dolls for 50 years, to this very day I have never heard them! Shameful, I know. In Florida in the mid 70s you couldn’t help some rock press on the band from leaking through into the state, but I’m here to tell you that the FM Rock stations had erected a serious firewall to prevent that sort of music from ever reaching public ears.

I didn’t hear David Johansen until his first solo album was released in 1978, when I managed to hear “Funky But Chic” a single time before the Program Director probably ripped some stripes from a DJ’s arm over that infraction. Still, having heard it once, I cannot to this day forget the serious double entendre of the “funky but…funky but” choral hook in my mind.

Things got a little more vivid the next year when the almighty “In Style” came out. With its electric Richard Avedon cover, Johansen looked every inch the rock star and the production between Johansen and the mighty Mick Ronson was proof that Ronson was obviously on fire with both of the best Rock albums of 1979 [see also: Ian Hunter’s “You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic”] under his wing.

The radio play was for two cuts. The driving, insistent “Melody” boasted a sweet Phil Spectoresque string section hook that was startling juxtaposed against the relentless rhythm section. Then the magnificent “Swaheto Woman,” was Johansen trying on Disco duds with no small panache. Especially the later song got stuck in my brain and I made a mental note to maybe buy a copy of this album. But that didn’t happen immediately.

Johansen didn’t really climb over the transom with me for a few years as his solo career never seemed to get the push it needed. 1982 probably brought a high water mark of sorts with his 4th solo album; the live “Live It Up!” album that featured primarily songs he hadn’t recorded before! Primary among them the single “Animals Medley” that segued “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place/Don’t Bring Me Down/It’s My Life” to strong effect. I wasn’t listening to commercial radio in 1982, but by fall of that year, I was soaking up MTV with a sponge, and the video channel was playing the heck out of this. In fact, the cover photo to the album itself was a shot from the very first MTV New year’s Ball which featured Johansen playing as the headliner.

Then following that period, Johansen’s profile went into ebb once more. It seems like he was one of those influential rockers who couldn’t manage to parlay his infamy into sales to any degree. This all changed when he started doing shows of a very different nature in the early 80s as an alter ego persona: Buster Poindexter with his Banshees Of Blue. Fans who had been paying attention might have recognized the name as the same as the singer’s publishing company on all of this previous solo albums. With Buster, he got to indulge in a penchant for Louis Prima styled showmanship complete with pompadour, sharp suits, and a full horn section performing the primarily cover tune songbook. Buster allowed Johansen to escape the long shadow of his reputation while indulging in something very different that couldn’t affect the “David Johansen” brand. But a what cost?

He soon found out as the first single, the Soca cover “Hot! Hot! Hot!,” became a ubiquitous breakout hit, charting as high as 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 but peaking at 11 on the Dance Chart. And having a half life of the long decades since as anyone who attends wedding or karaoke events can attest. This ultimately led Johansen to admit on NPR that the song was the “bane of my existence.” Particularly since he didn’t write it and thus missed out on the injection of royalties all of that airplay engendered.

Buster became a decade-long gig for Johansen with four albums of what was mostly cover tunes, but the final album “Buster’s Spanish Rocketship,” was completely original material. Including an eponymous tribute to the Mega-Vedette herself, Iris Chacon. During this time, Johansen fleshed out his CV with acting gigs. His most visible role was probably one even I saw when he played the Ghost Of Christmas Past as an abrasive cabbie with a yellow cab that went anywhere in the Christmas satire “Scrooged.” On the basis of that film, David seemed to be gunning for the kind of parts that Tom Waits had been snagging.

With Buster played out, Mr. Johansen pivoted to traditional Blues with his band David Johansen and the Harry Smiths. He was two album into a vibe when against all odds, the former Smith and Dolls Fan Morrissey asked Johansen to reunite the New York Dolls for the Meltdown Festival he was curating in the UK in 2004. Finally back for a world that had caught up with their trash aesthetic, The New York Dolls with three of the four original members managed to play the festival just a month before bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane died of leukemia.

The revivified Dolls managed three new albums with Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain holding court with new blood filling the rhythm section. Even reuniting with Toss Rundgren, the producer of their eponymous debut album for 2o09’s “Cause I Said So.” Following The Dolls 2011 “Dancing Backward In High Heels,” that was the last hurrah for Johansen in teerms of albums.

In 2020, Rock fanboy Martin Scorsese was moved to see a Johansen solo set at the Café Carlyle that lit a fire under him to capture Johansen’s set in a documentary he released that year. Managing to film “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” just weeks before the pandemic put an end to Johansen’s live performances. What we didn’t know then was that Johansen had been living with cancer for five years previously, with it metastasizing in his brain in 2020. With his illness keeping him off stages even following the pandemic. That he lived for ten years with cancer before his back was broken a testament to his luck and New Yawk toughness. And now I should probably make a bee-line for “New York Dolls” and educate myself on his crucial roots that touched so many others that we know and love. How can I blabber on about music without having ever heard The New York Dolls??! Nevertheless, we send condolences to his friends and family who’ve lost more than just an influential rocker.

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Posted in obituary | Tagged 2025, Buster Poindexter, David Johansen, Mick Ronson, New York Dolls | 12 Comments

Blancmange and Midge Ure Join Up For North American Mini-Tour This May

Posted on February 28, 2025 by postpunkmonk

Neil Arthur of Blancmange and Midge Ure are parlaying their Cruel World show into a little something bigger

We’ve already written about the Cruel World Festival that brings a mixture of New Wave vets and contemporary Darkwave bands into a large pot and applies the heat. It’s a huge, fun show that often sees PPM royalty jetting over for a single day at the gig, but with the cost of a work visa, there’s value in trying to work further afield and catch some audience elsewhere. And to that end two artists we have lots of time for are both making a big splash at Cruel World 2025, but afterward, they are teaming up for a North American mini-tour. They being PPM favorite Midge Ure and…Blancmange!

Yow! Midge Ure has had no prior connection to Neil Arthur, who carries the Blancmange mantle currently, but I can’t think of any good reason not to do it! While I have well over a hundred Ure discs in the Record Cell, I have always been shamed by the very modest number of Blancmange discs…and for no good reason, I might add! I’ve enjoyed them since the days of their first album when “Living On The Ceiling” hit in such a tasty manner. I missed the “Irene + Mavis” EP back in the day and have never heard the “Some Bizzarre Album,” if you can believe that! Yes, I know. What you must think of me.

But both artists are strong singers with an electronic palette. Each have their share of pop hits and in the case of Blancmange, Neil Arthur has been burning up the studio with fifteen different releases [in addition to Fader albums with Benge!]. It’s sixteen if I count the “Expanded Mindset” album as well! I knew I was missing out on modern Blancmange, but this is ridiculous. Especially since he’s working with Benge so often. So if Neil Arthur is going to see the loving North American public, then we should do our best to meet him halfway! The last US tour I can see for Blancmange in The States [on setlist.fm] dates back to 1986 and a two week stint!

As for Midge Ure he’s gone all in on the “Band In A Box” samples/loops approach as it allows him to tour extensively with just Charlie Round-Turner playing keys and loops while Midge sings and plays guitar and synths. He’s been touring like this for a while now and if it means no more acoustic solo gigs, I’m more than down with that. Though I was just listening to his 1980 Tour show this week with the three piece Band Electronica and yow, that was some hot stuff. But If this was in easy distance, I’d definitely be attending. Heck, I’d go just for Blancmange!So what are those dates, anyway?

BLANCMANGE/MIDGE URE NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 2025

Sat. May 17 | Cruel World Festival 2025 | Pasadena, CA
Sun. May 18 | The Chapel | San Francisco, CA
Mon. May 19 | The Oriental Theater | Denver, CO
Wed. May 21 | Daryl’s House | Pawling, NY [Midge Ure only]
Thu. May 22 | Sony Hall | New York, NY
Fri. May 23 | City Winery | Philadelphia, PA [Midge Ure only]
Sat. May 24 | Classic Bowl | Mississauga, Canada [+ FourOneSix]

Tickets for the Cruel World Festival can be had for $249. A good deal considering the bands filling three stages, but the other shows are roughly between $40 and $60 for general admission tickets. A bargain for Midge Ure and Blancmange! If there were a date at driving distance, I’d be thinking seriously about it and if you find yourself nearby, DJ hit that button!

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Posted in Core Collection, New Romantic, Tourdates | Tagged 2025, Blancmange, Midge Ure | 10 Comments

Countess Of Fife Scorch Earth With Title Track Of Their New EP, “Call Me The Witch”

Posted on February 27, 2025 by postpunkmonk

Fay Fife’s Alt Country band, Countess of Fife, just had a successful Kickstarter campaign to pay for their second album coming in about a year from now, but in the interim she and her band are throwing fans a bone with a new EP coming out on March 28th on the very crucial Last Night From Glasgow label who seem to be serious about giving every one of my favorite artists a berth in their astonishing non-profit label.

And this EP will be available on the silver disc in physical form! Bucking the trend for technicolor records that I simply don’t have the time to play. Thankfully, Countess Of Fife are no strangers to the CD EP; having issued one early on in 2020 that sits in the Record Cell. Their oeuvre has seen fit to include formats from downloads to CDs and LPs…even lathe cut 7″ singles [more on that later…]. I like how they use different formats for different reasons without leaning heavily on the vinyl records to the exclusion of everything else. Life doesn’t have to be binary and we appreciate the chance to buy our music on CD when possible. But enough prattling…you might ask what’s the music like?

Last Night From Glasgow | SCOT | CD | 2025

Countess Of Fife: Call Me The Witch [Betwixt + Between] EP

Call Me The Witch
Hard Woman To Love
Dark Side Of The Night
Live Again

“Call Me The Witch” started off mildly enough, with acoustic and tremolo guitars but quickly a gritty Blues mien showed its face. Then the bold guitar vamps signaled drops in the music bed that allowed Fay Fife to bite into the lyric all by her lonesome; hanging slightly behind the beat for a boldly emphatic verve. The tight vocal harmonies with Kirsten Adamson elsewhere allowed the ladies to swagger through the underbrush of the song most vividly. Brian McFie’s guitar solo in the middle eight was gloriously scuzzy in a Joe Walsh sort of fashion. And the ladies cold ending with their voices a cappella in unison was where the smoldering stopped and the flames began.

“Hard Woman To Love” eased up on the paint blistering intensity to move closer to folk music territory. Willy Molleson’s soft brushed drums and Kirsten Adamson’s acoustic guitar set the easy pace here. Fully allowing the pleasures of the vocals and vocal arrangements to bring warm pleasures to our ears. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Fife sound better.

As brash as “Call Me The Witch” was, the secret, hidden payload on this EP was the closing ballad “Live Again.” It was just Fay with tremolo guitar and electric piano and her vocals front and center. The vibe here was bruised but unbowed, with a defiantly soulful thrust. She doubled her vocals on the middle eight for impact, but she really let her vocals rip on the song’s lofty climax.

My main takeaway from these four songs was that Ms. Fife has become a singer’s singer in pursuing a career apart from The Rezillos in the years she’s been making Countess of Fife releases. The Country music path has now given way to excursions into Folk, Blues, and Soul on this expansive EP which holds the promises of more pleasures to come on the upcoming “A Woman Of Certain Wisdom” album in about a year. Some of these songs may figure in that release in different forms, but we’d be crazy to pass up what they can offer in the here and now as this lady drives deeper into her art.

Fay Fife models the bespoke sleeve for “Hard Woman To Love”

This CD can be pre-ordered from Last Night in Glasgow for a tidy sum of $8.00. Eearlier this year Ms. Fife had also made 25 7″ lathe cut singles of the first two songs on this EP for collectors of bespoke singles who can get each one for £25.00. Her first lathe cut single [“Angel In My Pocket’] is sold out of its run, so these won’t be around forever. But you know me. That CD at Last Night From Glasgow is definitely my speed. DJs hit those buttons!

CD EP

LATHE CUT “HARD WOMAN TO LOVE”

LATHE CUT “CALL ME THE WITCH”

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Posted in Core Collection, Record Review, Scots Rock | Tagged 2025, CD, EP, Fay Fife, Last Night From Glasgow, The Countess of Fife | Leave a comment

Upcoming Simple Minds Live Album Has An Almost Perfect Setlist; This Fan Says “Huzzah!”

Posted on February 26, 2025 by postpunkmonk

I wasn’t aware that they were working on a trilogy…

Last Friday we got a surprise notice from the Simple Minds mothership that…stop the presses… a new Simple Minds live album was being prepped for release in April. Gloryoski! Simple Minds sure have a lot of live albums. Maybe not as many as Gary Numan, but certainly a lot! I count eleven, if I fudge the numbers and blend all of those single show “instant bootlegs” from certain tours into one release. I don’t have all of these, but I pick and choose the ones that make sense for me.

Because I love live albums, and when this group is on their game, there are none better on a stage. Where their live albums live or die for me, is down to the setlists that comprise them. For example, their first official live album was “Live In The City Of Light. ” An album notorious for containing only a single track that was an absolutely live performance. But the era that they picked to make their live debut was basically the tour I’ve been trying to forget for 40 years! My copy of this CD is now on the chopping block in my massive collection sell-off cull that will happen one [soon, I hope].

My favorite Simple Minds live recording are the bootlegs I’ve managed to get from the ’80-’84 era. Actually live recordings where the band were really going to exciting realms onstage at a time when they had zero middling to poor material in their songbook. Following those, I have to say that the ultimate Simple Minds live album was the “5×5 Live” set that the band recorded during their “why-on-earth-did-I-not-attend-this” amazing 5×5 tour from 2012 where only their first five [okay…six] albums comprised the material the played!

simple minds - live in the city of angels 4xCD cover

Then the “Live In The City Of Angels” deluxe 4xCD set from 2019 was another superb Los Angeles show from the “Walk Between Worlds” tour with the deluxe edition being mandatory for the inclusion of soundcheck recordings on two bonus CDs of every song they rehearsed for the entire tour! With many cuts given excellent new arrangements! What they did with “I Travel,” my favorite of their songs, was just astonishing.

And just two years ago their “New Gold Dream [81, 82, 83. 84] Live From Paisley Abbey” was a great run through their crucial album that made them stars. Now the notion was that to complete the “Live in the City of…” thread into an actual trilogy, the band had recorded their set at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam last year on April 6th. This time it being “Live In The City Of Diamonds.” At this juncture I can legitimately ask: Does the world need one more Simple Minds live album?

At this juncture I can legitimately ask: Does the world need one more Simple Minds live album?
Post-Punk Monk

Simple Minds: Live In the City Of Diamonds – UK – 2xCD [2025]

CD1

Waterfront
Love Song
Sons And Fascination
Sweat In Bullet
This Fear Of Gods
Let There Be Love
She’s A River
Once Upon A Time
Glittering Prize
New Gold Dream
Promised You A Miracle
Belfast Child

CD2

Someone Somewhere (In Summertime)
See The Lights
Book Of Brilliant Things
Don’t You (Forget About Me)
Alive And Kicking
Sanctify Yourself
Vision Thing
The American
Solstice Kiss
Premonition
Hunter And The Hunted
Colours Fly And Catherine Wheel

Wow! If I were to see that show I would have been talking about it. Non-stop. It’s gratifying to see that they’re still pulling the awesome “This Fear Of Gods” out of their bag of tricks! I sort of felt that we got extremely lucky to see the band just a year after the 5×5 tour where they played it for the first time in decades. I’m here to tell you that it lost none of its incredible power for sitting neglected for that time. The balance of the rest of the main set is nearly flawless. To make this a perfect album I’d only swap out the egregious “Belfast Child” for …”I Travel” and I daresay I’d have a bulletproof Simple Minds live album. I won’t begrudge them their trilogy of solid gold mid-80s hits used to close their set no matter how tired I am of hearing them.

The only possible weakness of the set list is that the main live set from that night neglects all of the strong material that the band have managed to write and record past 1995! Fortunately, a pair of excellent modern tracks are in the six CD-only bonus tracks [in red] that were presumably from other shows or sound checks. No word yet on their provenance. And then we also got the powerful sauce that “The American” or especially “Premonition” brought to the table?!!

At this point I’m saying “how much?!” I can’t wait to hear this album. The only thing that could make it better would be a third disc cherry picking from the cream of “Neapolis,” “Cry,” “Black + White 050505,” “Graffiti Soul,” “Big Music,” and “Walk Between Worlds” albums. But maybe we’ll have to wait for the 5×6 or “Regeneration” tour in 2031 where they only play from the 1998-2018 albums! In the meantime, this will be here on April 25th in three physical formats. The 2xCD is in the Simple Minds webstore for a priced-to-move £16.99/€20.99/$21.99. All in a nice 24 page mediabook package. It’s the first time I’ll get to hear the band with Erik Ljungggren on keys, so count me in.

RECORD FORMATS

BMG | UK | 2 x clear – glitter LP | 2025

Simple Minds: Live In the City Of Diamonds – UK – 2x clear-glitter LP [2025]

Waterfront
Love Song
Sons And Fascination
Sweat In Bullet
This Fear Of Gods
Let There Be Love
She’s A River
Once Upon A Time
Glittering Prize
New Gold Dream
Promised You A Miracle
Belfast Child
Someone Somewhere (In Summertime)
See The Lights
Book Of Brilliant Things
Don’t You (Forget About Me)
Alive And Kicking
Sanctify Yourself

The fans of 12″ records will have two formats to choose from. There’s a black vinyl and clear with glitter 2x LP set. Each housed in a gatefold sleeve. The latter is only available in indie shops or the band’s webstore. But be prepared for some sonic defects on the glitter-infused wax! There’s no delicate way to put things.

Black 2xLP – £32.99/€39.99/$41.99
Clear vinyl w/glitter 2xLP – £37.99/€45.99/$47.99

The band’s webstore also contains granular bundles of everything. If you need it all, it can be yours at $100.99 for some decent savings. I’ve also looked around to see that our friends at Rough Trade US have the LPs for substantial discounts while they are selling the CD for a little more than the band’s store. Obviously, our mileage will vary. If you want the official store, then DJ hit that button! Join us later for a mingling of thoughts on the issue.

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Posted in Core Collection, Live Music, New Romantic, Scots Rock, Want List | Tagged 2025, live album, Simple Minds | 2 Comments

America’s In His Head: Peter Godwin Joins Expanded Lost 80s Live North American Tour

Posted on February 25, 2025 by postpunkmonk

Peter Godwin brings his songs to his North American fans in a big way this year

Stop the presses! Now that we’re out of the Steve Strange rabbit hole [we had to do it] there are a lot of new happenings that demand our attention, and this one was number one with a bullet: the mysterious “TBA” artist not revealed up front on the Lost 80s Live tour we discussed earlier is the great Peter Godwin! The negotiations were positive and now Mr. Godwin is making a huge trek across the North American continent this summer. Probably his biggest tour on this side of the Atlantic ever. And now we have the chance to eliminate another highly treasured artist from the “Ones Who Got Away” list.

So now we will have the opportunity to hear Peter Godwin sing the sublime “Images Of Heaven” right before our eyes. For a profound “we are not worthy” bowing and scraping moment such as to make the “Waynes World” cast seem like amateurs. I’ve always held that song in the uppermost echelons of New Wave singles that I can never tire of. It’s teflon coated, bulletproof New Romantic Pop that has already paid out embarrassing dividends in the last…43 years, and it’s not about to stop giving.

And then there will be the rest of Godwin’s set. I’m confident we’ll get the equally splendid “Baby’s In The Mountains” but where he goes from there will only be an embarrassment of riches from his quiver of fantastic songs. Metro’s “Criminal World?” “Young Pleasure?” “Gemini?” Perhaps some newer material like the excellent “Sky Falls,” or “You!”

As if adding Peter Godwin weren’t enough, the scope of the tour just big much bigger with eight more dates added to take in Canada, Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida. And Northern California got some love as well. Added dates are in bold in the list below. I was already all-in on this one, but now it’s a no-brainer. Frankly, to see a Peter Godwin set, I’d even put up with acts I didn’t like, and there’s none of those on the roster.

LOST 80S LIVE 2025 LINEUP

A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS
BELOUIS SOME
BIG COUNTRY
CHINA CRISIS
JOSIE COTTON
GENERAL PUBLIC
PETER GODWIN
ICICLE WORKS
THE POLECATS
THE VAPORS
RICHARD BLADE – MC

LOST 80s LIVE – EXPANDED DATES

July 31 | Westville Music Bowl | New Haven, CT
Aug. 01 | Boch Center – Wang Theatre | Boston. MA
Aug. 02 | The Rooftop at Pier 17 | New York, NY
Aug. 03 | Koka booth Amphitheatre | Cary, NC
Aug. 06 | MGM Northfield Park | Northfield, OH
Aug. 08 | Ogl Stage at Fallsview Casino Resort | Niagara Falls, ONTARIO
Aug. 09 | Elmwood Park Amphitheater | Roanoke, VA
Aug. 10 | Atrium Health Amphitheater | Macon, GA
Aug. 12 | Duke Energy Center Mahaffey Theater | St. Petersburg, FL
Aug. 14 | Saenger Theatre | New Orleans, LA
Aug. 15 | Smart Financial Centre | Sugar Land, IX
Aug. 16 | The Espee | San Antonio, TX
Aug. 17 | The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory | Irving, TX
Aug. 20 | Arizona Financial Theatre | Phoenix, AZ
Aug. 21 | Cal Coast Credit Union Amphitheater | San Diego, CA
Aug. 24 | The Greek Theatre | Los Angeles, CA
Aug. 28 | Toyota Arena | Ontario, CA
Aug. 29 | Vina Robles Amphitheater | Paso Robles, CA
Aug. 30 | Mountain Winery Concerts | Saratoga, CA
Aug. 31 | The Venue At Thunder Alley Casino Resort | Lincoln, CA

So if anyone was sitting on the fence you’d better get off of it before those pickets leave a mark! DJs…hit that button!

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Posted in Core Collection, New Romantic, Tourdates | Tagged 2025, Lost 80s Live, Peter Godwin | 3 Comments

Ten Years Ago, The World Became A Little Less STRANGE [pt. 7]

Posted on February 24, 2025 by postpunkmonk

[…continued from last post]

The seeds of the “Orcherstral” album were planted by the date that Visage played in the Czech Republic at the Ski Flying World Championships. The Prague Philharmonic orchestra played live with the band and producer John Bryan; having a penchant for strings, clearly thought that this needed to happen in a studio as well. Resulting in the “Orchestral” album being issued in December to wrap up 2014 with an ornate bow. Also including the new song “The Silence” which only appeared there. Visage wrapped up their live “Hearts + Knives” tour with some dates in Japan as the year wound down.

Then came the startling news that Steve Strange had died of heart failure while visiting Egypt on February 12, of 2015. Which hit with a shock even though Steve had clearly borne the brunt of his lifestyle rather fully. Just looking at photos of him showed that he was certainly diminished by his exploits. At the time there was reportage on the follow up album to “Hearts + Knives” and I had hoped that Steve had been recorded to the point where the band could finish the follow up album.

Then there was the matter of the Steve Strange solo album that the singer had been talking about in the press period surrounding “Hearts + Knives.” With his penchant for hyping, I never knew how to take Strange’s pronouncements; with a grain of salt or not? He seemed to be recording his own project with Steve Barnacle concurrently with the new Visage material and we would have to just wait and see on that one.

By November of 2015, the album had been finished and was released sporting a cover photographed by old rival Boy George. The band had recorded over half of the 15 songs written and these formed the new release. These songs sounded more cohesive than the album that preceded it. I put that down to the band actually functioning as a live unit on their year of touring before finishing the album. With Steve gone, the decision was made to bypass any singles since how could they promote them without the ace face himself?

Since there had been so many modern Visage remixes on the “Hearts + Knives” singles, I was a little sad that we would not be getting the same treatment on “Demons To Diamonds,” but in early 2016 the “Darkness To Diamonds” remix album dropped, with remixes and alternate versions of every song on the album plus a bonus Visage remix of the James Grant “Heartbleed” track.

Meanwhile, I began investigating what members of Team Visage were doing following the end of the band. It was at the time of the final album that I first noticed the duo of Steven Jones + Logan Sky. With Logan being a member of the band who played on the last two Visage albums as well as playing the synths on their live shows. Interest in their output gave me huge paybacks as they became some of my favorite modern music thanks to Logan’s analog synths and Mr. Jones’ moody vocals and intriguing lyrics.

visage wild life set — Visage: The Wild Life – the full seven disc monty

December of 2016 brought forth a clearing of the decks with what felt like every last variant of tracks that were still in the tape cupboard withe the “Wild Life” extended release set. The initial disc was the only Visage compilation that ran the gamut of all five albums across various labels in the band’s history. With some Polydor era tracks being released on CD here for the first time. But also available was a 7xCD set with that disc plus re-recorded versions the last phase band recorded for streaming and download. I presume that the license was for only physical copies of the Polydor tracks on CD with any streaming or downloads being of the newly recorded tracks.

This often happens in music due to licensing rights and at least here, the option was to have everything if you wanted to buy-in for it. And at £49.00 this was a fairly lowball price for such a package. I hope you bought yours early. A mint copy of the seven disc set last sold on Discogs for $318.00 six months ago.

steve jones + logan sky corrupt state — Etrangers Musique | UK | CD-R | 2017 | EM010-CD1

Then in 2017 we got another hit of Steve Strange just when we needed it with a posthumous release of a song he was working with Logan Sky on as the title track of their “Corrupt State” album of that year. A rare instance of Steve applying his aesthetic to the post-Snowdon realities of the 21st century.

all 3 visage CDs from Rubellan Remasters — The first three Rubellan Remasters Visage CDs

From 2018 to 2022, significant parts of the Visage catalog got the love and attention that fans had been waiting on for decades. The tasteful and obsessive Rubellan Remasters label saw fit to grace our personal Record Cells with deluxe remasters of the first two Visage albums; each laden with rare mixes and B-sides. Many of which were never on CD format, much less mastered with the care that label head Scott Davies lavished on them.

We were overjoyed at this happening and then he really pulled out the stops and in 2020 he remastered the “Fade To Grey: The Singles Collection Dance Mix” album to the silver disc! And this just two years after I did the duty myself from my own LP version of this very obscure tributary of the mighty river Visage. I was flabbergasted that anyone would have done this, and he did it again in 2022, when he licensed and remastered the even more obscure “Beat Boy Dance Mix Cassette” version of that album!

And yes, once more he did this a few years after I had digitized one of the fragile cassettes hanging around for nearly 40 years that a Visage superfan had sent to me so I could make a CD-R from it. Three of these Rubellan Visage discs are out of print and will set you back three figures each in the aftermarket, but as of today, there are still copies of the fourth Visage CD [“Beat Boy Dance Mix Cassette Version”] in the Rubellan Store for the tiny sum of $9.99 as he’s shut down operations and is moving them out.

In 2022 a new Visage “Fade To Grey” remix appeared in stores online and once I remembered to buy it I was disappointed to hear that the “Lecomte de Bregéot + Violet Chachki mix]” Actually featured Violet Chachki on the vocals instead of Steve Strange. And then it was radio silence until last Fall and the announcement of the unexpected but long desired Visage “Live” CD from their 2014 tour. Better still, the buyers who bought the CD from the Visage Webstore could get a bonus album of the Prague Sessions with the Synthosmphonica orchestral arrangements. And finally, the capper was a DL single of “Before You Win,” the planned but abandoned single from the “Demons To Diamonds” album of 2015. In 2025, we can truly ask ourselves if there’s anything else out there to filter out and surprise us?

Well, the Visage underground has been waiting for three late projects to reach hungry ears. There are three non-Visage projects that the Steve Strange estate could eventually see to market.

Unnamed Steve Strange solo project I
Unnamed Steve Strange project II
Detroit Starzz album

The first project was the solo album that Steve was concurrently recording with his partner Steve Barnacle. I’ve read interviews with Mr. Barnacle where he muses that one day it would get a release. The second project was the solo album that Strange had started with Logan Sky along with Robin Simon and fashion maven turned recording artist Daphne Guinness. And finally, there’s the Detroit Starrzz project that Steve recorded with Lauren Duvall and Rachel Ellektra who played and produced. There’s allegedly a version of “Halo” with Steve singing on it and I have to admit, as dodgy as the lyrics were to “Phone Sex” were, the vibe really hit hard where I want to hear Steve go. So we might not yet be ready to consign the memory of Steve Strange to the dusty libraries where the New Romantic movement is studied by future generations of club kids just yet.

Steve Strange was a paradox. An artist who by his own admission was not the best of singers. Who relied on being surrounded with top flight musical talent to make the records that continue to beguile us. But an artist who acted as a curatorial lens through which the musical collective around him could focus and amplify their efforts. A music element capable of catalyzing fascinating chain reactions around them. And then he knew how to promote the hell out of the finished product. Using his extroversion and fashion savvy to the nth degree to attract publicity. This alone was a valuable asset for a studio project built upon players already committed to other bands who couldn’t be relied upon to do any promotional heavy lifting.

The personal difficulties he had to endure were prodigious and well documented. That he was able to eventually produce two more Visage albums that were as compelling as they were was pretty astonishing. For the last dozen years I’ve pointed to “Hearts + Knives” as a textbook perfect “comeback” record and this has not yet been surpassed by my reckoning. I actually prefer that album to any earlier part of the group’s legacy. And I really love the first two Visage albums! This band have had me looking at the “miscellaneous V” sections of every record store I’ve ever been in and until I get everything, this is not likely to change. Hats off to Mr. Harrington for all he managed to accomplish in too brief of a life, and respect for all of his musical collaborators.