Come To Milton Keynes – The Style Council (1985)

Description

Additional information about this, The Style Council, vinyl art.

The Style Council – The Artist

The Style Council were an English band formed in 1983 by Paul Weller, the former singer, songwriter, and guitarist with the punk rock/new wave/mod revival band The Jam, and keyboardist Mick Talbot, previously a member of Dexys Midnight Runners, The Bureau and The Merton Parkas. The band enabled Weller to take a more soulful direction with his music.
The permanent line-up grew to include drummer Steve White and Weller’s then girlfriend, vocalist Dee C. Lee.

Come To Milton Keynes – The Song

Come To Milton Keynes is a single released by The Style Council in 1985. It was the second single from the band’s second album, Our Favourite Shop, and charted at number 23 in the UK singles chart. The title refers to Milton Keynes, a new town established in 1967, midway between London and Birmingham. In an interview given at the time of the song’s release, Paul Weller stated that the song was inspired by the “Red Balloon” Milton Keynes advert, which was produced on behalf of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation.

The Cow – The Shape

This record has been modelled into a comical cow, inspired by. The Concrete Cows, the iconic work of sculpture, created in 1978 by the American artist Liz Leyh. The artist was an “artist-in-residence” in the early days of Milton Keynes and part of her role was to lead community participation in art. The Cows was one of a number of pieces created during her stay. They were originally constructed at Stacey Hill Farm near Wolverton, where she had set up her studio. The base armatures were metal, with chicken wire used to create the general shape, then stuffed with newspaper. The original colouring of the cows was achieved using dyes. Some cows were brown. It is only through the council painting the cows that the uniform black and white has appeared. The artist also ensured that each cow had a heart shape used as part of the pattern on the cow skin. Later commentators have interpreted it as an example of conceptual art: the artist poking fun at the preconceived notion of the new city, held by commentators who had never seen the place, that it would consist entirely of concrete pavements where once there were fields, and where its deprived children would need models to know how real cows once looked. The reality of course was different: Milton Keynes Development Corporation was building “a city in the forest”, with substantially more open green space than found in traditional cities. Furthermore, there are real farms with real cows within 2 miles (3 km) of the site, and the cows are currently located in a real field.

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