Retrovision: Barbie Wilde- Phantom Lady

Barbie Wilde known as Canadian-born British actress and writer was also a member of the rock/mime burlesque music group Shock in the early 80's who used to tour with Depeche Mode, Ultravox, Gary Numan and other great artist. Everything she did related to music was somehow connected to Tik & Tok and Shock. This video is small evidence of something she recorded under her own name of course produced by (Burgess, Walters, Wilde). The video was released in 1984 and was directed by David Rose.

 

Retrovision: Shock- Dynamo Beat

The London based dance troupe Shock was in the vanguard of the New Romantic cult of the early 80's in company with Boy George, Duran Duran, Steve Strange and Spandau Ballet. The group performed in clubs like The Haçienda, The Blitz Club and The Venue(London). Alongside performing and working with other artists, they also released two singles in the early 80's. Their second single "Dynamo Beat" was produced by Richard James Burgess of Landscape and it was released in 1981 on RCA Records. The music video for this song was recorded around 1982 and featured Tik and Tok, Barbie Wilde and Carole Caplin. 

One Year of The Burning Flame Blog

Today is exactly one year since this blog started on Wordpress. I really enjoyed working on it and hope I managed to deliever some useful info about some lost bands. Here is the line up of the bands that were featured here:

The Associates, Josef K, I Start Counting, Nits, Blue Zoo, D.A.F., Fiat Lux, Fay Ray, Dalis Car, Tik And Tok, Thick Pigeon, Pink Industry, Images In Vogue, Stockholm Monsters, Terry Hall, Fra Lippo Lippi, Ronny, UV POP, Polyrock,
Do Re Mi, Dark Day, Mydolls, Intaferon, Snowy Red, The Beloved, Vitamin Z,
Leisure Process, Alison Statton, Mathematiques Modernes, Foreign Press, Black, Winston Tong, Little Nemo, Max and Malcolm, Seppuku

Tik and Tok Announce the Release of Dream Orphans

After a 22 year lunch break they're back with a brand new 13 track album Dream Orphans. It's a musical journey from lo - fi ambient to full- on electronica and it's yours to purchase now from http://www.tikandtok.com. Go on, you know you want to!

Tik and Tok

When robotic act Plastic Joe and mime and music outfit Shock got together in 1980 the seeds of Tik + Tok were sown. Shock played at legendary venues at their height like the Hacienda, The Blitz and The Warehouse, became a key part of the New Romantic movement and recorded with Rusty Egan (Visage) and Richard Burgess (Landscape). Tik and Tok consisted of Tim Dry and Sean Crawford with Barbie Wilde, Robert Pereno, L.A. Richards and Carole Caplin.

“Mime was where we started. It was our chicken or was it our egg? We never wanted to be human! Then bit by bit we bought some music equipment so we could start to make our own little soundtracks for Mime ideas we had. We've always seen ourselves as being abstract visual artists who just happen to make music as well.” Tik

When Shock split soon after, Tik + Tok appeared everywhere from the Covent Garden Piazza to the 1983 Royal Variety Show, on countless TV shows and had key roles in 80's sci-fi creepfest Xtro. A young band called Depeche Mode supported them live, they released a series of cracking electronic singles on the Survival label and one album, Intolerance, shortly before disappearing from the music scene in 1984.

“A mix of everything that we liked musically at the time. Movies like Blade Runner too. Plus needing tracks that we could create a Mime piece to. Oh, and sex and Sci Fi too of course! We'd already got Vile Bodies so we kind of built side 2 of Intolerance around that. Side 1 of the album was geared towards a more 'Poppy' kind of stance, but deep down we were still wanting to be unearthly and quite weird musically. The pop stuff was fun to tart around to but I think that both of us now feel that we're quite glad that we didn't have a hit single. No 'Buzzcocks' or revival tours for us!” Tik

After 21 years away from the live circuit, Tik + Tok have reformed and re-emerged earlier this year at the annual Elektrofest festival whipping up a storm. Back to finish what they started, the time was perfect to communicate with the legendary Robots.