TRANSFORMERS

With big screen production Transformers 3D hitting the cinema this week, let’s take it back to where it all began…

Picture the scene. A school assembly circa 1986. One sentence is whispered across the hall.

“Megatron is dead.”

No.

You are joking.

But how? He’s too powerful! It CAN’T  be true.

But it was true. Megatron, evil leader of the Decepticons, had finally been defeated by his nemesis Optimus Prime.*

In the world of Transformers, this was like JR getting shot, Dirty Den divorcing Angie or Simon Groom leaving Blue Peter. In other words, it was MASSIVE. Continue reading “TRANSFORMERS” »

LEGWARMERS AND LYCRA/SPANDEX

Kate Moss could rock up in a bin bag with a banana peel for a broach and we’d still flock to the shops to imitate the look. It takes some extra-terrestrial beauty to take an item of clothing we wouldn’t usually be found dead in and turn it into the next season’s must-have.

Before Kate, there were the Spice Girls with their platform trainers, Madonna with her underwear as outerwear, and before that, there was Jane Fonda.

In a decade that was obsessed with hard bodies, health and exercise, Fonda was the reigning queen. Daughter of actor Henry Fonda, Jane started out as a model, but quickly won over audiences with her roles in films like Barbarella and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and quickly established herself as a sex symbol. Cashing in on her body and previous experience as a ballerina, Fonda released Jane Fonda Workout in 1982, which sold 17 million copies and was the first in a series of an impressive 23 videos, 5 books, and 13 audio programs, carving out a second, equally successful career.

Knowing we could never get anywhere near her angelic perfection, we conveniently settled for the next best thing: Jane’s body-hugging lycra leggings with contrasting thong leotard, waist-cinching belt, colourful headband and, last yet anything but least, leg warmers. And Fonda wasn’t the only poster child for this look back in the 80s, as actress/singer Olivia Newton John and 80′s breakfast television show TV.AM’s workout guru ‘Mad Lizzie’, aslo made it their own, with the video for Olivia’s hit record Physical giving her the perfect  excuse to get totally ‘lycra-ed’ up!

And with films like Fame, Flashdance and Footloose drawing huge audiences, leg warmers were the epitome of theatre school cool. We truly believed we were just a pair of thick-knitted ankle tubes away from breaking into a perfectly choreographed and harmonised song and dance in the school’s cafeteria. Of course, we soon discovered that a pair of leg warmers has no effect nor use to anyone not continually stretching and flexing, and despite a short resurgence mid-nineties, they have since been banned to fashion’s fancy dress section.

If leg warmers were the only trend coming out of the 80s’ aerobics craze, we would probably think back on that time with more fondness than shame. Unfortunately, the most unforgiving of all unforgiving fabrics – spandex – managed to creep into the limelight. Let me tell you, for once and for all, spandex only looks good on dancers with buns of steel and virile rockers in the prime of their life. If you’re not in one of those two exclusive categories, step away from the lycra. It is just not that into you.

Jane Fonda’s bottom was impeccable, and who doesn’t remember MC Hammer’s Can’t Touch This video in which three girls work their tight, spandex-clad booties choreographically bouncing bum bags? No wonder we all succumbed.

However 80s r&b star Bobby Brown’s bad decision to sport a pair of unflattering black cycling shorts, complete with red socks and black dress shoes, in the video for Every Little Step, is up there with the moment he figured taking drugs was a good idea! And let’s not get started on Mr Motivator!

A Marmite-like relic of our childhood, bicycle shorts made a very brief fashion comeback as an addition to flirty summer dresses two season’s ago, but nobody really fell for it. Even Jane Fonda knows better: in her 2010 comeback exercise video Prime Fit the now 72-year old still wears a tight-fitted top and her signature belt, but has traded the lycra for a pair of plain, black fitness trousers – without leg warmers. And when the trend-setting legend herself says it’s over, believe me, it is over.

By Janneke de Jong

FRAGGLE ROCK

THE GANG: (l-r) Wembley, Red, Gobo, Mokey and Boober

‘DANCE YOUR CARES AWAY, worries for another day, let the music play…

down in FRAGGLE ROCK!’

After the success of The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, it was only natural director/producer/puppeteer Jim Henson should take his knack for creating and bringing to life amazing puppet characters, and create yet another huge hit… cue FRAGGLE ROCK!

Fraggle Rock definitely goes down in TV history for the catchy theme tune, one you could often hear being chanted on the school playground. The little gem of a tune really could be attributed to playing almost as big a part in the success of the show as the mastery of Henson. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be involved in this magical world after dancing your cares away in just the few opening moments!?! In saying that you now probably won’t be as surprised as I was to learn that the song even hit the British music charts, making it to an impressive number 33. But then if you are reading this, you probably already know that!

Fraggle Rock was very nearly as big a hit as its forerunner The Muppet Show, airing 96 episodes across a total of five series’ in countries such as Canada, UK, USA and New Zealand.

Thankfully, it was also re-run again and again, as if it wasn’t for this I surely would have missed out on the Fraggles, the Doozers and those giant furry humanoids The Gorgs, as I was a bit too young to have caught it the first time round. (Yes I was born late in the 80s, I know, how sad for me missing out on in my opinion the greatest era of our time).

The main Fraggle characters were Gobo (leader of the gang, who entertains his friends with stories of his globe-trotting uncle ‘Traveling Matt’ from the post cards he sends to him), Mokey (who is a bit of a hippy who likes reciting poetry and keeps a diary with all her thoughts), Red (Ed says: ‘I was Red growing up!’ Red has big hair, worn in two orange puffy bunches, is competitive, fun and a bit insecure at times), Wembley (the youngest, cheerful and cute, wears a shirt with little bananas all over it) and Boober (worry-wart and hypochondriac).

They all live in ‘The Rock’, which is situated inside Doc’s (who the Fraggles deemed as a ‘silly creature’) walls! They also referred to the outside world as ‘Outer Space’ – something they learn from Uncle Traveling Matt’s Postcards, which Gobo has to risk his life to sneak from Doc’s dustbin each time.

Obviously, as would be the case in a show like this Doc doesn’t notice that these cute little souls are living there, despite Sprocket his beloved pet dog failed efforts to draw his attention to them.  However, at the end of the fifth and final series they do eventually become acquainted, becoming firm friends.

As for the Doozers, they were tiny (only six inches tall), quite plump and green, and are the second type of species that live on Fraggle Rock. (I especially love the little wellies that they wear!) The Doozers live for working and spend all their time building construction (for no real reason). The fact the Fraggles end up eating it all makes this exercise even more pointless (bastards)! They build this out of an edible sweet-tasting substance made from radishes.

The third species in the series (aside from Doc and Sprocket) were the Gorgs, a family of three huge furry troll-like beings, which consisted of a father, (Pa Gorg) mother (Ma Gorg) and son Junior Gorg). The family consider themselves as ‘rulers of the university, and dopey Junior is the heir to the ‘throne’. They live above Fraggle Rock.

Fraggle Rock also presented many other little songs sung by the Fraggles that are just as enjoyable. They despite the Fraggles as they keep surfacing to steal radishes from the Gorg’s garden – the Gorgs need the radishes as these stop them from turning invisible.

The theme for each show tended to revolve around the usual messages planted in kid’s TV shows – friendship, confidence, trust, honesty, blah, blah, blah! But one thing not so generic about the show was the way it was built as an international show from the start, this factor doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary until you consider all the scenes shot with humans were especially done for each particular market, so for the UK version of the show the entrance to ‘Outer Space’, which is what the Fraggles call the real world, leads to a lighthouse where lighthouse keeper ‘the Captain’ lives with his dog Sprocket.

In the US and German versions and in the German version of Fraggle Rock, the hole in the wall leads to the workshop of an mad-cap inventor called Doc (not quite the Back To The Future one, but close Lol!) AND in the French version it leads to a former bakery and new home of ‘Doc’, who this time is a chef, and his dog, who looks exactly like Sprocket, is called Croquette. So wherever you were watching it in the world, it appeared as if it was actually filmed it that country!

After the massive success of Fraggle Rock, a series of books followed, which I haven’t actually read myself but from catching up on the programme recently I should imagine that they are every inch as exciting as the program itself and each page filled with as much whimsical joy.

The DVD’s were also released later on in early 2000’s, proving its popularity as people were buying them 20/30 years after the show was originally aired, embracing the nostalgia of a favourite childhood show and perhaps introducing it to future, unknowing, generations.

By Nichola Blake

NIRVANA

Firstly, I want to make it clear: I’m not writing this as a critic, or a music connoisseur, and neither am I writing as the wise adult I should be on my way to becoming.

I’m writing this as someone who grew up with Nirvana, despite coming across their music a good seven years after Kurt Cobain’s death: I still can sing almost each and every line of their songs by heart and their bitterness, angst and anger have never ceased to be a part of me. Continue reading “NIRVANA” »

NWA

‘Straight outta Compton… A crazy mutherf***** named Ice Cube, from a gang called N**** Wit Attitude!’ Blam!

When I first thought about writing this post, I questioned why my 11-year-old self was so excited to hear these opening lyrics blasting out of the speakers of my older brother’s record player for the first time. It could have been  hearing a couple of ‘rude’ words so blatantly on record that made my ears perk up ? Maybe that was part of it, but truth be told I wasn’t getting hyped over swearing at that stage… After all similar language was being shouted out in my school playground near enough everyday.

Nope, from what I can recall, it was more a combination of that hardcore pulsating beat and the pure passion and sense of urgency in the voice of the speaker. It all made my head spin – but in a good way… Nah, scratch that, in a great way! At the time I didn’t know that said voice belonged to O’Shea ‘Ice Cube’ Jackson, who at the age of 17, was not much older than me. We even shared a hairstyle in the much-popular 80s do the ‘Jheri Curl’, neither of our finest moments I’m now thinking. But unlike me, Cube can be forgiven because of what came with it.

NWA, N****z with Attitude, everything from their name to their lyrics came with a ‘I don’t give a fuck’ swag firmly attached! YESSSS! *light bulb moment* That’s what it was – I heard that from the very first time! I was a young girl growing up in north west London, Kensal Green by way of Harlesden, while NWA, a group which also consisted of Andre ‘Dr Dre’ Young, Eric ‘Eazy E’ Wright, MC Ren and DJ Yella were, as the song unapologetically, announced ‘Straight Outta Compton…

NWA’s official debut album of the same name (1988) hit hard! How could it not with lyrics like that? They weren’t pretty, that’s for sure – a lot of it was damn right wrong.  When someone is proclaiming… ‘So what about the bitch who got shot? Fuck her! You think I give a damn about a bitch? I ain’t a sucker!’ as Eazy did on the track, you gotta know that isn’t something you actually want to agree with. And of course I didn’t. But it was still music to me, ‘my music’ and I couldn’t help LOVING it, not the meaning of every lyric that was spat, often with more venom than a truck filled with poisonous snakes, but how it made me feel, which wasn’t violent or angry, just kinda free.

Of course it wasn’t my world or my story. I’d never even heard of Compton (in Los Angeles, USA) up until that point, but I could certainly relate to being strong, being passionate and being black and proud. That was what was inspiring to me.

Interwoven between the obscenities, there was a clear message of empowerment and standing up for yourself against those who try and bring you down. In the case of NWA, the police were a huge focus for their anger. Album cuts such as F*** Tha Police blasting police brutality and racial profiling, made NWA extremely significant in giving a large chunk of young African American men, namely those living in US ghettos across the country, a voice. They could relate. Heck a young black kid from Nottingham who had been stopped and searched by the police for no reason other than the colour of his skin could relate. I had an older brother, uncles, cousins and a dad who could directly relate.

Like a lot of hip hop music in the 80s and today, NWA also appealed to white male teens (many of them from middle-class homes). It was anthemic, the beats were addictive, the lyrics were charged and everybody wanted to be in NWA.  They wore bomber jacket, shell-toe Adidas, baseball caps, neck-breaking gold rope chains and walked around like they owned the world! Well, everybody apart from moral group,  politicians and the of course parents who didn’t want their kids listening to ‘that mess’. The FBI even tried to shut them down, and they were labelled ‘the world’s most dangerous group’!

NWA also spoke to young middle class females, judging by the appearance of actress Gwyneth Paltrow on the Graham Norton Show earlier this year (below).

The group’s audience was strong and this was reflective in the sales of Straight Outta Compton, which went platinum, as did their follow-up EP, Five Miles and Runnin’, which didn’t feature Ice Cube, after he left to go solo, following contract disputes.

Speaking of contracts, the one Cube refused to sign was drawn up by Eazy E, who owned Ruthless Records (co-founding it with Jerry Heller, who went on to become NWA’s manager), NWA’s label.  Not many give Eazy, who passed away from complications from AIDS in 1995, props for his business acumen regarding NWA. Whether you share the view that he was shady or not, that doesn’t take away from him being one of the first hip hop players to own their own label, albeit one initially funded from money he made in his former ‘career’ as a drug dealer. The likes of Diddy and Jay-Z made that factor very cool in the 90s. But before them, following on from Russell Simmons, Eazy was also flexing as a label boss and signed acts such as D.O.C, Bones Thugs and Harmony and both Dr Dre and Ice Cube before they became NWA.

I remember having a recent debate about NWA and Public Enemy, over which was the most important group. I guess that totally depends on who you are asking. Most people I know would kiss their teeth at the mere mention of NWA being any sort of comparison to Public Enemy, and maybe for the majority they are not. But for me as much as I respect Public Enemy and wholly cherish a lot of the songs that are now stone-cold classics, NWA is a totally different monster for me, and that is all based on how I connected with them in my formative years. I guess I never had that experience with Public Enemy. Maybe as an 11-year-old who had posters of New Kids On The Block on her wall (Yes, I am a very eclectic, and WHAT???) I was looking for somewhere to channel another side of me and I found it  in the music of NWA.

Whiel in the group, Dre and DJ Yella handled production, while Ice Cube and MC Ren wrote the majority of the lyrics. After they broke up in 1992, Dr Dre went on to become one of  world’s most respected producers, discoverer of the world’s biggest rapper Eminem and someone who also introduced us to Snoop Dogg and made history with Death Row Records.

Ice Cube, who went on to have a handful of notable solo albums and became one of 90s rap’s most prolific voices with a solo career that will no doubt be etched in hip hop history. He then surprised a lot of people by carving out an uber successful Hollywood career as a bankable actor, producer, writer and director in both film and TV.

DJ Yella also released a solo album in 1996, called One Mo Nigga Ta Go. But these days he is best known for his  successful career directing porno films, and has a whopping 150 under his belt.

Mc Ren has released five solo albums since NWA disbanded, including Kizz My Black Azz, which went platinum in 1992.

Yesterday would have been Eazy’s 47th birthday, his 20-year-old daughter, Erin ‘EB’ Wright, is now taking up the baton by releasing her own single, What I Wanna Do. Check out her story  and a snippet of the single below!

SINCLAIR SPECTRUM ZX

The first computer I ever saw, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was about the size of a large paperback book, jet black (save the rainbow flash of colours zipping across the bottom corner) with tiny grey rubber keys.

Invented by balding scientist Sir Clive Sinclair in 1984, the Spectrum was one of the first home computers. Plugged into the telly, you could play games in your own front room! Granted, they were all rubbish, but I wasn’t allowed in arcades, so to me, they were like stepping into TRON.

If you could go back in time to visit the eight-year-old me, and swap my Spectrum for an XBOX, it would be like giving a caveman a Cornetto. I’d love it for five minutes and then throw up, my body unable to comprehend the assault of colours, music and hard-core violence. (That is exactly what would happen if you gave a caveman a Cornetto)

For one, all the games for the Spectrum were on cassette tapes.

While this made copying your mate’s games pretty easy (all you needed was a tape-to-tape HiFi) it did mean that most Spectrum games took at least eight minutes to load. EIGHT MINUTES. Can you imagine any child today waiting eight minutes for Call of Duty to load? No, they’d be off spray-painting the library.

I found those eight minutes quite handy – you could pop downstairs for some toast and cup of tea and be back before the game had loaded. That way, you also avoided the EXCRUCIATING loading noises. Like scraping a cat’s claws down a blackboard while simultaneously putting its tail in a George Foreman grill. No one who owned a Spectrum will ever forget that noise – and it lasted EIGHT MINUTES.

(Later, when the games became more complicated, you often had to inset ANOTHER cassette tape and wait AGAIN. Even then around 75 per cent of the time, you’d just get an ERROR message and have to start over.)

However, if you were patient, you were rewarded with an embarrassment of riches.

Take the game Horace Goes Skiing for example. Check out these state of the art graphics. And the gameplay! You could move Horace left AND right!

Another staple of the Spectrum was the text based adventure game. These dispensed with graphics and moving characters completely, opting instead for descriptions of what was happening. The player would simply type instructions such as ‘go north’ to move to the next location.

But the rubbish nature of the graphics eventually forced programmers to be wildly creative with gameplay resulting in some of the cleverest, most inventive games ever made.

Sinclair brought out a 128k memory version, allowing software companies to make games like Chaos (chess with wizards), Laser Squad, (vast tactical warfare) and Elite (a never-ending space trading game). Soon, the Spectrum had become the most popular home computer in Europe. Kids at school that had the rival Commodore 64 were losers – the ‘Speccy’ was king.

Back then, you didn’t need 72 programmers, voice-artists, musicians and script-writers to make a game. Anyone could learn to code games on their own machine, meaning there was no end to the bizarre titles that came out. If a programmer had an idea, they could make a game out of it.

Want a somersaulting egg that solves puzzles? No problem, you had Dizzy – a sort of Indiana Jones.

Then there was Paperboy (you just had to deliver papers), Marble Madness (you were a marble), School Daze (you were a naughty schoolboy who had to terrorise fellow pupils without getting detention) and Jet Set Willy (not too sure what happened in that one…)

I loved my Spectrum more than it was normal to love a stupid noisy box of wires. It became more than a hobby – hunting down second hand games at car boot sales and devouring both monthly fan magazines, Sinclair User and Your Sinclair.

Even when Amiga’s, Mega Drive and Nintendo arrived, I stuck with my old Speccy. The new games dried up, but there was still a hardcore fan base still programming their own. I still remember the last ever issue of Your Sinclair – a massive double edition that paid tribute over a decade of Sir Clive’s revolutionary home computer. It was like Michael Jackson had died.

Now, the entire concept of the Spectrum is so alien to today’s youth, it’s hard to believe they even existed. But they did, and I’ve still got mine in the loft somewhere to prove it. I’ve got an XBOX now, and while the games look like Hollywood movies and you can spend hours recreating World Cup finals against 12 year-olds on the other side of the world, I’d still rather sit through eight minutes of screeching and play a two-dimensional black and white game featuring a somersaulting egg every time.

By Luke Chilton

SCOOBY-DOO

Everyone remembers Scooby-Doo, right? And do you recall the three most classic series in the franchise: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The Scooby-Doo Show and Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo?

Based on a comedy ghost-hunting dog and his pals, Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne (aka Mystery Inc.), this Hanna-Barbera-produced cartoon made its original debut way back  in 1969. However, many of us 70s and 80s babies remember watching these memorable shows in the 80s, when they were on heavy rotation (syndication) on British Tv screens. Continue reading “SCOOBY-DOO” »

BUTTON MOON

In research for this article I managed to find a whole episode of button moon on Youtube and, I have to say it’s a lot different watching it back now. The catchy yet brief theme tune goes, ‘We’re off to button moon, we follow Mr Spoon, button moon.’ THAT’S IT! This is then repeated twice. Somehow, I remembered it to be a lot more… well, a lot better than that. But oh no, it’s just 11 words long, and a bit rubbish really ! Continue reading “BUTTON MOON” »

LISA STANDSFIELD

The biggest achievement for any British pop star is to make it as a successful artist over in America, and the majority – although Godly to us in the UK – never quite tickle Uncle Sam’s fancy.

But there are some who do make it across the pond…

Lisa Stansfield is the Lancashire lass with the soul voice. Her success in both the UK and the USA, in the late 80s and early 90s, was almost identical – something which few British artists can claim to have. Continue reading “LISA STANDSFIELD” »

DAWSON’S CREEK

In a land where everything American is fully embraced, celebrated and emulated, the birth of a contemporary, youth-oriented show that was Dawson’s Creek became an overnight sensation in the Philippines, the country I fondly call my homeland. My people have long been fascinated with American culture because in many ways it embodied boldness and mirrored a lifestyle that was far different from ours. As a result, US exports such as Sesame Street, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Hershey’s Kisses, Twinkies had infused with our own culture. Continue reading “DAWSON’S CREEK” »

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