Steve Strange ( 28/5/59 -12/2/15) - Fade To Grey R. I .P

Sad to hear that Steve Strange, lead singer from 1980's New Romantic band Visage  has passed away , as a result of a heart attack in Egypt. His life was not a masquerade, he could never be capable  of conforming to the logic of order, consensus reality was  very far from the pavements he walked.
In the post punk years remember his presence, the electronic pulses, danceable with shades of Bowie and Roxy, krautrock and disco, a shapeshifter of the 80's,  blitzing through it's shadows. He himself emerged from the working class mining community of Caerphilly,  liberated by punk, he saw the Sex Pistols on his home turf in 1976, he escaped to London, abandoning all hope of a conventional career. In his day, with echoes of social deprivation on a par with today, his only real options, if he had stayed at home, was life on the dole, the factory, building site. or the pit. He sought  refuge in the bright lights of London town, where he would go and look for some kind of irreverent freedom.Treated appallingly by the music industry that championed him. Chewed  up and spat out. He decamped back to South Wales,where he kept planning for his return to centre stage, a life lived full,with fantasy and wild abandon and the whiff of hedonism  never a far distance behind.
It's all a matter of taste, but being outrageous was his reality.
Steve Strange .R.I.P