take the spandau train...!

umm, i don't know if i'm gonna wish i hadn't posted this in the morning, but whatever. here we've got three of the early 80's spandau boys, on tour, presumably, lugging all their flash new wave junk onto their train. notice they don't seem to have a lot of roadies or assistants and people like, helping them with it. okay, i guess i should identify the blokes, 'left to right'-style. okay, from the left, we've got tony 'front man' hadley, steve 'blonde hair-bangs' norman in the middle, and last but never least, we've got gary's older brother martin kemp on the right. he looks mildly pissed about something. maybe its because the last train lost his 'little bag,' the one with all his black socks, therefore, or rather, hence, the blinding white booties he's got on here. somehow they still manage to look 'serious' about the fact that they're about to take public transportation. i wish i could like, put into words why i think this picture falls into that 'unintentionally hilarious' category, but it does. ...it just does.

spand-mag!

mmm, yes... glorious full-color teen mags from the 80's! first of all, i think its pretty funny that the title of this publication is '2001.' yeah, that date doesn't seen so wild and futuristic now, does it? (mmm, hey, hey eight years old.) i can't read the date on this, but since it mentions duran duran's 'singolo per 007,' then i'm assuming it was sometime in late 1985... coninciding with that garbage bond flick 'a view to a kill' that D2 did the title song for. (and yeah, i've seen that movie recently. christopher 'bleached hair' walken and grace jones? yeah, okay. actually, grace's acting chops impressed me more than roger moore's. seriously.) okay, so what else does this mag have to offer? hey, it boasts a 'tony hadley exclusive.' i guess you read that when you've got a serious case of 80's insomnia. (hey, who am i kidding? i'd love to read a tony hadley interview from late '85. there's no way it couldn't be hilarious. like, what if he's all ego-boasting that spandau ballet were the 'true future' of pop music in the modern world? like, that would be comedy 'gold.' ) okay, what else? it confusingly promises to feature the weirdly-alike-but-not-alike 'two nicks;' namely nik kershaw and nick heyward. like, which one was which again? oh wait, i just remembered... i don't care! so dig it. and if you have some spare time, see if you can dig up spandau's 'lifeline' or 'instinction' videos. both great. ( and 'musclebound,' and 'paint me down,' and the hilarious outfits in 'to cut a long story short.' glam kilts? i don't get it.) click to enlarge.

horserace

yeah, my partner and i sometimes play a game called 'horserace,' and all you need is a photo with more than 2 people in it. ideally, a photo of a pop band like duran duran, the beatles, or the boys from spandau ballet, featured above. its very easy. its essentially a 'who's cutest' contest. so, who wins this horserace? you know, i've gotta give it to the easy, cocky gary kemp in this shot. (and for those of you who need to be told, gary's the one in the middle.) he's not the cutest one in the band all of the time, but he wins this particular horse race, by a length, at least.