From the rubble and ashes of punk a new youth cult was emerging. Divinely inspired by Bowie, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk, a new tribe the press started labelling New Romantics, or Futurists, discarded punk’s old-hat claims towards authenticity and protest, in pursuit of glamour, make-up, dressing up and dancing. Their home was The Blitz Club, a tiny wine bar at the edge of Covent Garden and what went on there between 1979 and 1980 would genuinely change the world. The other name for this cult? Blitz Kids.
The music of London’s Blitz Club is celebrated with a new box set curated by Rusty Egan the man who, with Steve Strange, started the weekly club which sound tracked a transition from the gloom of the UK in the late 70s into the new decade of the 1980s with the sounds, sights and glamour to go with it.
The Blitz was birthing the next wave of British pop stars. A young Boy George ran the cloakroom, its host and doorman was a young Steve Strange, soon-to-be the frontman of Visage, Spandau Ballet played their first gig there and on a given night you might find yourself dancing next to a member of Ultravox. Fashion designers in Regency ballgowns mingled with secretaries in rubber, post boys dressed as Biggles danced next to art school kids dressed as Pierrot. David Bowie assembled his extras for the ‘Ashes To Ashes’ video from the Blitz kids. Mick Jagger was refused entry.
Strange would work the door/front of house, while Egan handled DJ duties in the club. The pair had originally met briefly backstage at an early 1978 gig, in Wales, with Rich Kids – the short-lived post-punk band put together by ex-Sex Pistol bassist Glen Matlock and featuring Egan on drums, Steve New on guitar and Midge Ure on vocals. The band split, and at 19 and 21 respectively, Strange and Egan started the club in a wine bar in Covent Garden called Blitz (having started out at Billy’s in Soho the year before).
“The ethos was that everybody in that club could be heroes, just for one day and my DJ set lists at the Blitz were designed to make YOU the star – on the dancefloor, at the bar or just standing there in your finest on a dreary Tuesday night,” remarks Egan of the innovative music he has compiled for this new box-set. “You could be whoever you wanted to be – your life was going to be great and the ‘80s were here. The late ‘70s had been so grey and drab and I wanted the music I played each week to instantly transport you somewhere else – maybe to Europe with a few film noir references or to Japan via some exciting new electronic sounds. Of course there were lots of robotic vocals sung in German, Russian, French and English too.”
The Blitz Club quickly became the place to be and be seen and would regularly host designers, artists, and especially musicians, or aspiring musicians. Many of what would soon to become British pop’s most innovative early Eighties exports would be there on a regular basis, including the Blitz Club’s cloakroom manager Boy George, Sade, Spandau Ballet, Billy Idol, Ultravox, Visage, Adam And The Ants, Bananarama, Marilyn, Gary Numan, Siouxsie and Sigue Sigue Sputnik.
Spandau Ballet actually played their first gig at the Blitz Club (the Christmas party!) in early December 1979. Gary Kemp recalls: “The Blitz Club, with Steve Strange’s curated ragamuffins and Rusty Egan’s electro soundtrack, was the engine room for the ‘80s. Spandau Ballet was forged from that heat. We were determined to make our own advances into the new culture we wanted to lead. Vinyl was just one of our mediums. Here are the tunes we danced to, planned over, posed and gazed to. Energy poured out of this backing track.”
As well as a host of electronic classics, this new “Rusty Egan Presents Blitzed!” box-set includes many hard to find extended remixes and edits from artists like Grace Jones, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk (a scarce promo edit of the Düsseldorf band’s seminal track ‘Radioactivity’ is included).
This release is available as a deluxe 4CD set (66 tracks) and across four vinyl LPs (36 tracks). Both including extensive sleeve notes by The Guardian’s chief rock & pop critic (and occasional SDE reviewer) Alexis Petridis as well as an introductory essay by Rusty Egan.
“Rusty Egan presents Blitzed!” will be released on 28 June 2024 via Demon Music.
The Fat Angel Sings 