August 3, 2010

We are pleased to announce that the three Electric Dreams DJs are going to play a guest set at The Dark Mills Festival on Saturday 4th September 2010. This a festival of Gothic arts, and includes alternative bands, seminars, performances and film. It takes place over two days, Sat and Sun 4th and 5th of September, at the Merton Abbey Mills, South London. We are going to be appearing from 10pm til 2am in the Colour House Theatre. More details on our set here.

June 7, 2010

We have recently heard the following sad news about Mick Karn, the bassist from Japan. Naturally we at Electric Dreams offer Mick and his family our condolences. Full details below:

MICK KARN APPEAL
With great sadness we regret to inform you that Mick has recently been diagnosed with advanced stages of cancer. Mick is currently in a positive mood and undergoing further tests and treatment. His family and friends are close with him, supporting him in practical ways, and surrounding him with their love, friendship and care.... See More

Mick has been struggling financially for some considerable time now and we are hoping that this appeal may help to raise funds for any necessary treatment and perhaps go some way towards providing a small degree of financial support whilst Mick's immediate family provide the care and comfort we would all wish for him. We are hoping that his friends, fans and musical colleagues will, over the coming months, offer any support they feel capable of giving. Quite aside from the sheer brunt of daunting medically-related costs, Mick's clear and major concern is for the security and well being of his wife and young son.

If you would like to make a donation whether as an individual or as a group, you can do so via the paypal link below which has been set up for this sole and express purpose. Any support you are able to give, no matter how small, could make a difference in helping Mick cope during this difficult period. His friends will be looking at a variety of ways to raise funds.

If you would simply like to leave your kind messages of support for Mick, please do so, here: Messages

Steve Jansen has kindly agreed to donate all proceeds from the sale of any Mick Karn portrait from his website to the Mick Karn Appeal. The images can be purchased from http://www.stevejansen.com/imageshop/

We will keep you all updated as often as we can.

Please do note that news is released with Mick's full approval.

Posted: 3rd June 2010

the paypal link is on here
http://www.mickkarn.net/

April 29, 2010

The BBC have asked us to to add this press release to the website. They are due to release a drama about Boy George as part of the BBC eighties season:

WORRIED ABOUT THE BOY - PRESS RELEASE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/02_february/05/boy.shtml

Worried About The Boy, new drama about Boy George, was commissioned as part of BBC Two's Eighties season.

Mathew Horne (Gavin And Stacey, The Catherine Tate Show), Marc Warren (Hustle, Mutual Friends), Mark Gatiss (The League Of Gentlemen, Crooked House) and talented newcomer Douglas Booth are announced to star in Worried About The Boy, a BBC Two drama from Red Production Company about a young Boy George and his journey to become a star on the Eighties fashion and pop music scene.

Written by Tony Basgallop (Hotel Babylon, Hughie Green Most Sincerely) and directed by Julian Jarrold (Red Riding, Brideshead Revisited), Worried About The Boy follows George's journey from cloakroom attendant to cultural icon – from falling in love for the first time, to embracing his unique style, to meeting his Culture Club bandmates.

As a teenager, George O'Dowd realised he was not like the other boys his own age – sharp-witted, independent-minded and with a passion for clothes and make-up, he dreamt of becoming a star.

Leaving the suburbs of Eltham for the smoke of the city he soon became a fixture at the infamous Blitz Club – the favourite haunt of those at the forefront of the New Romantic movement.

Set at the heart of the changing music scene and youth attitudes of the Eighties, Worried About The Boy reflects on an iconic and influential star and the cultural era he is synonymous with.

Douglas Booth plays Boy George, Mathew Horne plays Culture Club drummer Jon Moss, Marc Warren plays nightclub pioneer and Visage front-man Steve Strange, and Mark Gatiss plays music impresario Malcolm McLaren.

Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning, says: "Worried About The Boy will be an evocative and visually enticing drama about one of our most iconic British pop stars. With its mix of music, fashion and youth, it rounds off our trio of dramas for BBC Two's Eighties season perfectly."

Nicola Shindler, Executive Producer, Red Production Company, says: "At Red Production Company we always try to tackle provocative subjects with humour and warmth and this is exactly what Tony's script does with Boy George. I was very excited at taking such an iconic British character and showing a different side to a story everyone thinks they know. The early Eighties magical setting of the Blitz Club and the New Romantics is fun, visual and new to TV drama."

Matthew Bird (The Street, Plus One) produces the 90-minute drama.

Worried About The Boy was commissioned by Ben Stephenson and Janice Hadlow, Controller, BBC Two.

The executive producers are Nicola Shindler (Red Production Company) and Juliette Howell and Lucy Richer (BBC Drama).

Worried About The Boy will show as part of the Eighties season on BBC Two, which includes dramas The Royal Wedding,
written by Abi Morgan, and an adaptation of Martin Amis' Money, starring Nick Frost.

More content about Worried About The Boy will be published, as transmission approaches, on these pages:

www.bbc.co.uk/tv/comingup/worried-about-the-boy and www.bbc.co.uk/tv/features/eighties-season

Please click the thumbnail images below for some pictures:

Publicity shot from the programme	Publicity shot from the programme	Culture club as they were in the eighties
Boy George as he was then	Steve Strange 1	Marc Warren from Life on Mars and Hustle will play Steve Strange in the Worried about the Boy production for the BBC eighties season.
Steve Strange 2	Publicity shot - Marilyn in Worried About The Boy	Outside shot of The Blitz Club, Covent Garden, as it was in the early eighties.

April 28, 2010

We are sad to announce that May 14th 2010 will be our last Electric Dreams at The Purple Turtle. From May 29th onwards, all of our nights will be held at The London Stone. We are going to continue Electric Dreams on the second Friday of the month at The Stone, with the same music policy we had at The Turtle - mainly eighties, with some goth, punk and industrial.
We will also host occasional Saturdays at The London Stone too. These will either be Music For The Masses Depeche Mode parties, or Ashes To Ashes nights. The Ashes nights will in future be strictly early eighties and new romantic music only. We will also strongly encourage everyone to dress up as much as they can for these nights. For a full list of dates, see the calendar page.

April 6, 2010

We started in 1997 at Gossips, Soho, before moving to our current venues. Gossips was also where Steve Strange started his first New Romantic club in the late Seventies. We thought you might be interested in this snippet from Steve Strange's autobiography, where he mentions starting his 'Club For Heroes'.

Billy's Club by Steve Strange

One day ( circa 1977), Rusty and I were chatting about how thing had gone a bit stagnant.
We were talking about London clubs and comparing them to those in others cities. We were young and had the balls to do anything, so we looked for a venue where we could set up our own club. We were very shrewd. We went to Gossips, a club at 69 Dean Street, on a Tuesday and saw that it was empty. It was a venue with a great past. When it had been known as the Gargoyle club before the war. The people hanging out there were mostly Soho's sex workers, grabbing a breather.

Two weeks later we went back to the owner and said we could pack the club. He could have the drinks' profits and we would take the money on the door. It didn't occur to us for a
moment that no on would turn up. We printed up flyers with the tantalizing line,
"Fame Fame Jump Aboard the Night / Fame, Fame, Fame. What's Your Name ?"

We opened in Autumn 1978 and very quickly we were successful. All the punks who were also closet David Bowie fans turned up. Soon it was a regular event known as Bowie Night. In the end though, it became ridiculous. Even though it was still an underground, word-of-mouth scene, more people were being turned away than we could fit into the club, which had a capacity of 250. Queues were stretching round the block. This was without any support from the press. There weren't any live bands so NME and other inky music papers weren't interested, and The Face and i-D hadn't been founded yet. We had tapped into something bigger than we had imagined.

There was clearly a like-minded crowd for what we were doing. There were people who had created unique identities for themselves, like Philip Salon, Boy George was there in his kimono, Stephen Linard in his tartan Culloden outfit, Marilyn, Claire the Hair and Tranny Paul. Pinkie Tessa, formerly known as Theresa Thurmer, was a secretary at the Daily Express by day, but by night she changed her name and dressed like an all-pink, home-made version of Bo Peep. Stephen Jones was there. So was the designer Kim Bowen, and Melissa Caplan, Simon Withers and Lee Sheldrick. Influential stylist Michael Kostiff and his wife Gerlinda (Kinky Gerlinde), who was since sadly died, would pop in. The film-maker John Maybury, who at the time was the boyfriend of the artist keven Whitney, was a regular. Everyone made an effort to look as different as possible, drawing insipiration for their looks from the unlikeliest of places.

One night David Claridge and Daniel James turned up as characters from Thunderbirds.

St. Martin's was at its height of creativity, and the bright sparks of the fashion
department seemed to be using the club as its common room. People stood in the Soho rain in gold braid and pill box hats, waiting to get in. cossacks and queen mingled happily
and narcissism ran riot. Billy's attracted a clique of outrageous people like a magnet.

All these people were dressed like a royalty, while in reality they were just ex-punks
running up the clothes on their mum's sewing machines at home in the suburbs or living
in the nearby squats in Warren Street.

At Billy's we were were all clocking each other to see who was more outrageous. The people who turned up were a bit of a mish-mash, but what they all had in common was that they were fed up with punk, and had a love of David Bowie. Rusty, who DJ' d, tried not to play much punk music, so there was a lot of Bowie on the turntables, along with futuristic German music, Being Boiled by The Human League, Warm Leatherette by The Normal, the theme from Stingray and torch song from Marlene Dietrich. Rusty didn't think of himself as a DJ though.

He was just the bloke who put the records on. As there wasn't much music to play he also
played the electronic demos we had done with Midge Ure, which went down very well. "In the year of 2525" and "Eve of Destruction" were old songs, but they seemed to fit in with the mood of a gathering that was signalling the end of one era and the beginning of another. It was decadent and evocative of Berlin cabaret in the thirties.

Because the club was so busy, I stood at the entrance in my leather jodhpurs and German overcoat, deciding who could come in. I was strict on the door because once people were inside I didn't want them to feel they were in a goldfish bowl. I wanted them to feel they were in their own place amongst friends, and anything went. Just because guys were wearing more make-up and there were gay overtones, it didn't mean a guy as gay. Once inside the small, sweaty downstairs room, customers were greeted by an unusual atmosphere.

The club was in the heart of Soho, and was still frequented by pimps and hookers.
The hookers didn't create bad vibes, but the pimps occasionally made people feel
uncomfortable, because some of our crowd were scantily dressed and the pimps were
intimidating. But apart from that, everyone mixed freely, there was rarely ant hassle.
The only real problem came from the owner. We had kept our promise of filling his club up, but after three months we realized it was time to move on because we needed bigger premises.

Once the owner heard we were thinking of leaving, he threatened Rusty, because he wanted to keep the winning formula. Rusty got paranoid and went into hiding, but we had no choice but to make the move to somewhere bigger. The nightclub revolution had begun....

March 29, 2010

We received a mention in the recent Evening Standard colour supplement. A scan of the article is shown below:

March 27, 2010

For our next Depeche Mode party, we are trying a new venue due to a double booking at The London Stone. The new venue is called The Gaff, and is situated in North London at 382 Holloway Road, N7 6PN. The venue is about five minutes walk from Holloway Road tube station. For all other details, please look at the flyer below:

February 3, 2010

Electric Dreams now has a presence on the blogosphere! Please feel free to look at, join, or add your comments to any of these three blogs:

http://electricdreamsclub.blogspot.com
http://depechemodeparty.blogspot.com
http://ashestoashesclub.blogspot.com