Once upon a time in the dark days of black & white London, the Blitz club arrived and brought us colour.

And people rode the tube looking like this:
 

and this:

Which was quite challenging on a Friday night on your way back from school.

The club was a scene, and you only got in if you were in it.

And the scene spewed forth a whole bunch of creative stars including Boy George, Marilyn, Leigh Bowery, Steve Strange, Philip Salon, Martin Degville, Michael Clark, Stephen Jones, John Galliano, Princess Julia and of course house band Spandau Ballet.

Which was nice and they made some great records and started a sound called “new romantic”.

And they influenced the last great phase of David Bowie so much that Blitz Kids fill the (extraordinary) video he made for Ashes To Ashes.
 

But before they all made records the club’s soundtrack was provided by legendary DJ Rusty Egan (that’s on the right)

Who cooked up a combination of icy electronic music from Europe, and some sound pioneers from the UK, to make a soundtrack that was very different and became beyond influential, and ushered in a new age of “electronic music”.

So this Friday here’s a bit of a Rusty Egan/ Blitz playlist to shake your shoes to.

It’s a sort of strange place where coldish machine music meets meet soul all around Bowie’s Young Americans and Berlin phases,

Somehow we feel this is where dance music started (and without it maybe there’d be no electro, and no Depeche Mode/New Order??)
 

Spandau Ballet have reunited as the original gang to launch a new single, a new compilation of all their many hits and to promote their brilliant retrospective film “Soul Boys Of The Western World”

 -TH