Rocking The Blitz Club

ROCKING THE BLITZ CLUB (320kbs-m4a/65mb/28mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 24th February 2020

Midge Ure takes us back to the Blitz Club in London's Covent Garden where the 'New Romantics' came of age.

The club first opened its doors in 1979 at the height of another recession and Midge explores how the flamboyant Blitz scene offered an escape from the hard economic reality that he and his contemporaries were facing.

Midge remembers how "walking into the Blitz was like stepping out of time, you never knew what period it was set in. It was a total mish-mash of styles, full of blurred genders and make-up for girls and boys". The Blitz crowd were christened the 'New Romantics' because of what Midge calls their "nostalgia for the future".

The Blitz was a seedbed for creative talent, full of musicians, designers, photographers and stylists. John Galliano first flaunted his ideas there, Spandau Ballet played their early gigs and a young Boy George took the coats.

A new sound emerged from the club - the synthesizer-based electropop pioneered by Midge in his bands Visage and Ultravox. The success of the Blitz bands brought wealth and fame, but the "extreme hedonism" of the 'New Romantic' movement led many into very dark places.

Finally, Midge explores why the 1980s 'New Romantic' synth sound has seen a revival in the current recession.

Midge meets former Blitz Kids including: Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet), Gary Numan, Robert Elms, Rusty Egan, Steve Strange (Visage), Stephen Jones (milliner) and Dylan Jones, to revisit what was undoubtedly a golden era of British pop music.

Producer: Melissa FitzGerald

A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in April 2010.

Visage - Fade To Grey
The Specials - Ghost Town
Kraftwerk - The Model
Duran Duran - Girls On Film
Kraftwerk - Computer Love
David Bowie - 'Heroes'
Culture Club - Karma Chameleon
Spandau Ballet - To Cut A Long Story Short
Kraftwerk - Autobahn
Gary Numan - Cars
Visage - Fade To Grey
Ultravox - Vienna
David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes
Soft Cell - Tainted Love
Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough
Ultravox - Hymn 1983 (Live)
Ladyhawke - Dusk Till Dawn
Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)

The Art Of Water Music

THE ART OF WATER MUSIC (320kbs-m4a/63mb/27mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 11th December 2019

Starting with an underwater concert, Midge Ure sounds the depths of the complex relationship between music and water.

Water has fascinated classical composers, modernist musicians and contemporary sound artists alike, and in this programme Midge hears some of the extraordinary ways in which water has been represented, evoked and even used as an instrument by musicians over the centuries. It flows through an extraordinary range of pieces. Midge meets experts on water compositions by Beethoven, Wagner and Debussy and explains why Handel's Water Music is not technically speaking water music at all.

While some of the water music we know best might be classical, water continues to appeal to those working at the musical cutting edge. Midge has a go at playing a bizarre instrument called a 'waterphone' and talks to sound artist Lee Patterson as he performs a strangely hypnotic piece of 'drip music'. He also listens to recordings of the Danube by sound artist Annea Lockwood. She believes the sound of running water is itself music, raising the question of whether or not water and music are actually different at all. Water, it seems, continues to excite, mystify and intrigue, and musicians have engaged with it with whatever instruments they have had at their disposal: orchestras, pianos, and now computers.

Midge goes to meet Simon Harding who makes electronic music on his computer using the water sounds from appliances in his house, while Professor Doug James, a computer scientist at Cornell University, explains some of the science behind water's unique musicality. There is a wealth of beautiful water music already in existence as this programme shows, but water is still a vigorously flowing source of musical inspiration, even expanding our ideas of what we consider music to be.

Presenter: Midge Ure
Producer: Tom Rice

A Pier Production first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2011.