The Blitz Club where the Eighties were invented.
 
Punk was boring. Punk was dead. Punk stopped being interesting when it became chart music. In its place came New Wave—which was really just more of the same played with jangly guitars by bands with a taste for Sixties music. The next really big thing was the utter antithesis of punk. Elitist, pretentious, preening, vain, camp yet utterly inventive.

It was called “the cult with no name”—because nobody knew what to call it. It didn’t fit any easy categorization. There were soul boys, punks, rockabillies, with a taste for dance music and electronica all in the mix. It was the press who eventually pitched up with the tag New Romantics which stuck.

I was never quite sure what was supposed to be romantic about the New Romantics. They weren’t starving in garrets or brokenhearted, writing poetry, indulging in absinthe or committing suicide by the dozen. They were all dolled-up to the nines, flaunting it out on the streets—demanding to be seen.

It had all started with Rusty Egan and Steve Strange running a club night playing Bowie, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk at a venue called Billy’s in 1978.

Egan was a drummer and DJ. He was in a band with ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock called Rich Kids which featured Midge Ure on vocals.
       
Strange had been inspired to move to London and form a punk band after he saw the Sex Pistols in concert. He moved out of Wales and formed The Moors Murderers. The band included punk icon Soo Catwoman, guitarist Chrissie Hynde and Clash drummer Topper Headon. Together they recorded one notorious single “Free Hindley.”

The same year, Egan, Strange and Ure formed Visage—which was to become a catalyst for the New Romantics in 1980 with their hit single “Fade to Grey.”
 

Visage: Steve Strange, Midge Ure and Rusty Egan in 1978.
 
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s be kind and rewind.

1978: Egan and Strange move their club night to a wine bar-cum-restaurant-cum-dance-club called the Blitz. Egan was the DJ. Strange was on the door. Strange has a strict door policy. No one gets in unless they dressed like superstars.

More after the jump…

 
Mark Moore is the producer/prime mover behind S’Express, creators of the cult classic “Theme From S’Express,” and one of the most influential figures in British dance music history.

Lynchpin of acid house he may be, but Moore recently uploaded this brilliant compilation of film soundtrack music to his Mixcloud page, inspired by his nights haunting the seedy Scala cinema in London. The 30-track mix features some brilliant music from the cult classics Akira, Brazil, Eraserhead, Klute, Rosemary’s Baby, Rollerball, American Gigolo, Halloween, Emmanuelle, Taxi Driver, The Ipcress File, and lots more.

Moore writes:

Perhaps you need to be a movie fanatic to enjoy this mix. I don’t know - you tell me. I actually think all these tracks stand up on their own as listening masterpieces. Even the strange, scary ones.

Inspired by my teenage nights at The Scala Cinema near Goodge Street, where you would end up after the clubs shut. I remember nights coming down from speed unable to take the usual uplifting delights of Pasolini and sipping coffee with Jah Wobble. Watching the mayhem as the Carburton Street Squat rabble came down: Boy George, Marilyn, Steve Strange and Philip Sallon hurling bitchy comments at all the straight boy post-punkers. I saw Throbbing Gristle, 23 Skidoo, Spandau Ballet and Modern Romance play there! I got my movie education there.

There’s nothing better than watching Eraserhead or Female Trouble with a packed house full of clubland’s finest dressed up to the nines. I even wrote a song about the Scala, ‘Twinkle (Step Into My Mind)’.

In loving memory of late night Scala. x

 
The full track listing for this mix can be found on Mixcloud.

 
Out of the ashes of Punk came the New Romantics, rising like a painted phoenix over London’s club scene. From clubs like Billy’s and Blitz, where Steve Strange and Rusty Egan played Bowie, the Velvets and T.Rex, and Boy George was the coat-check guy, came the New Romantics. Clubbers known as the Blitz Kids, who were made-up and beautiful, and knew imagination was more important than money when it came to having fun. 

The Blitz Kids were Steve Strange (Visage), Rusty Egan (The Rich Kids), Boy George (Culture Club), Tony Hadley, Martin Kemp, Gary Kemp, John Keeble, Steve Norman (Spandau Ballet), Tony James, James Degville (Sigue Sigue Sputnik), Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama), Marilyn, Princess Julia, Isabella Blow, Stephen Jones and Michael Clarke, and together they were the generation of New Romantics.

Last year, in the Guardian, Priya Elan talked to some of the “movers and shakers behind the scene that spawned the New Romantics.”

STEVE STRANGE, BLITZ CLUB HOST, VISAGE FRONTMAN: By 1977 I’d gotten very bored by punk. It’d become very violent. The skinheads and the National Front had moved in.

RUSTY EGAN, BLITZ DJ, VISAGE MEMBER: The punk venues got invaded by football hooligans wearing Le Coq Sportif clothes. They’d call us “poofs” because we weren’t dressed in a normal way. Hence why we formed the club. It was for those ex-punks who liked Lou Reed, Bowie and Iggy.

SS: It was about being creative, we wanted to start something that didn’t have anything to do with punk.

RE: It was a horrible time of recession. Covent Garden was isolated and badly lit. But then you’d walk into the club and it was like “Ta-da!” Everyone was drinking and taking poppers. The atmosphere was like Studio 54.

SIOBHAN FAHEY, BLITZ CLUBBER AND BANANARAMA MEMBER: We’d spend the whole week preparing our outfits for the club. We’d go and buy fabrics, customise our leather jackets, make cummerbunds, find old military things and throw them together in a mix of glam, military and strangeness. It was all DIY because we didn’t really have any money to properly eat. We lived off coffee and cigarettes, really.

RE: The song that became the anthem of the club was Heroes by Bowie. “Just for one day” you could dress up and be more than what Britain had to offer you.

 
Previously on DM

‘The Chemical Generation’: Boy George’s documentary on British Rave Culture

 
Part 2 of Boy George’s Top 10 plus more memories from the Blitz Kids, after the jump…