At the dawn of the 80's as new wave began to take
the front seat from punk in the U.K., there was a
female
who rose to prominence,first in the underground,
and then as a full blown pop star, and her name is
Toyah
Willcox.She is primarily known as Toyah,which also
served as the name of her band through the early
80's.
Visually,many of today's fashion styles and accents
come from the rainbow that was early 80's Toyah,and
she remains an active popular star in England and
Europe three decades later.
My problem? I've been a Toyah fan since 1980, here
in New York,and for whatever reasons, her records
were never released here.The UK label that she
recorded for,Safari Records, never secured a deal
in
America, rather strange since her album"Anthem"
dominated the charts in England for most of
1981,during
which time she enjoyed several Top ten Pop singles
(which is especially hard to do on an indie
label,which
Safari was.)
I went so far as to get two of her videos sent to
me by Safari, and,as a fan, paid out of my own
pocket
to have them converted to a U.S. viewing format.I
then presented them to the then "Acquistions
Manager " at MTV,
Roberta Kruger,and as it was early days there,
before MTV went all corporate and super successful,
they
actually added "Thunder In The Mountains" into
light rotation for about a month,and a short time
later
they did the same with "Rebel Run', which is quite
amazing since there was no affilation with A U.S.
label,
no promotion tie ins, nothing except me, my
enthusiasm, and Kruger recognizing Toyah to be a
strikingly
brilliant video star.
While there were no resulting record sales since
there were only imports in a handful of small U.S.
shops,
the MTV exposure nonetheless exposed thousands of
U.S. kids to Toyah, and a sub cult following was
born.
She eventually spilt from Safari in 1984,recorded a
totally different style album called "Minx" for CBS
U.K.(which
didn't get a U.S. release since her earlier work
hadn't been released here.) She married Robert
Fripp of King
Crimson fame in 1985(they're still married) and has
a strange, beautiful career right up to the present
moment.
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These days, being a recording artist and an actress
is almost a given, but in the 80's, Toyah got nasty
arrows
from the Brit press for being both an actress and
record star.You may have seen her as Mad in the
punk rock film
"Jubilee" from 1978,or as Monkey in the film
version of "Quadrophenia".She starred opposite
Katherine Hepburn
in the 80's remake of "The Corn Is Green",and she
acted opposite Sir Lawrence Olivier in "The Ebony
Tower".
She headlined the revival, on stage of
"Caberet",which came to America without her,and she
starred on stage
as a female wrestler in "Trafford Tanzi"(which came
to America in 1984 as "Teaneck Tanzi",with Debbie
Harry
taking over Toyah's original role.)
Through it all, we long suffering U.S. Toyah fans
have had to watch from a distance,but all of that
ends as her new
band, The Humans, finally come to America,as she
has aligned herself with Bill Rieflin(who has been
the drummer for R.E.M.'s
most recent projects in the last few years)and
Chris Wong. Their new album,'Sugar Rush"has been
released on a
label called The End Records,but hopefully this is
just the beginning for Toyah's '30 years later'
presence in America.
After a short U.S. Humans tour, she has told me
that she'd like to come back to do "Toyah"
material.I made her aware
of my many U.S. based Toyah efforts through the
years,and she was surprised to find out about the
MTV exposure back
in 1983.
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If you're not familiar with Toyah, you should visit
her official website at www.toyahwillcox.com as
well as the excellent
fan site www.toyah.net so you can catch up on all
you've been missing,and the first order of business
is bathing in
the excellence of "Sugar Rush" by The Humans,which
features guest guitar work on all the album's
tracks by the
previously mentioned Robert Fripp; you will be
amazed.Welcome,Toyah, finally, to America!
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