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Saturday, January 8, 2011

The Blitz Kids




  

The Blitz Kids were a group of unknown people that frequented the Blitz nightclub in the early 1980s. Among their number were Steve Strange, Leigh Bowery, Boy George,  Marilyn, Princess Julia, Philip Sallon, Carl Teper and Martin Degville.

The Blitz Kids had found themselves bored with the whole punk genre and, in an effort to find something new, took to wearing bizarre home-made costumes and clothing and excessive amounts of make-up. They were often extremely androgynous in nature.

Steve Strange and Boy George later became famous in their own right with their musical outings Visage and Culture Club respectively. Boy George celebrated the Blitz

Blitz as a venue was around for a long time before Steve Strange days, it was originally a World War 2 themed wine bar.  
The club was a platform for new talent.  Apart from the fashion crowd, there was jounalist Robert Elms, who wrote  about the scene, and photographers Gabor Scott and David Johnson who recorded the visuals for posterity. Ben Kelly, who went on to desigh the Hacienda in Mahcester, was part of the crowd. 
The brilliant thing was that everyone involved had a role.  George was in the cloacroom in his white-faced kabuki made-up and kimono, Rusty, in his fifties suits, played the records, and I was on the door in my high hair and high heels, carrying a silver-topped cane.  I only every tried DJing once, on a night when I tried to set up a kind of cafe society, playing Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield,  Frank Sinatra and escalator background music


















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