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TRANSVISION VAMP |
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BORN TO BE SOLD So the story goes that angry young Jackie O. sunglasses-wearing, clove smoking, outdoor cafe' posing, daft punk sex kitten, WENDY JAMES met dapper scam merchant-culture slut-post punk guitar stylist, NICK CHRISTIAN SAYER, in some perfectly suited for celluloid setting and determined that they would start a band and become huge stars, like so many of us do. Nick had a drum machine and a four track in his Brighton flat and they started creating basic song demos, soon locating two more like minded media gluttons-Dave Parsons on bass, and Tex Axile on drums and keyboards. With Wendy's visual appeal and breathy, undulating vocal style, they soon after inked a deal with MCA.
Nevertheless, "I Want Your Love" charted at
#4 in Great Britain and Wendy continued loudly comparing herself to Bob
Marley, Leonardo Da Vinci, Bob Dylan, the Last Poets, and Lou Reed while
even their more clever stuff, songs like "Revolution Baby", or "Hanging
Out With Halo Jones" just weren't very exceptional at all, let
alone-"revolutionary". Everybody'd already seen and heard it all done far
better and more sincerely a hundred times before. If she turned you on,
you might play along, but otherwise they'd be in the stack you took back
to sell to the used record store. As much as Wendy wished she had really
"been there" when punk rock was actually happening, or was the one who
first thought of sorta parodying Ad-Age commercialism as a satirical form
of social commentary, the sad fact was, she just wasn't the first or last
to come up with any of this posturing. It was all very run of the mill. A
sexy wisp making naff dancepop and using all her sultry pictures to sell
it, but demanding the critics all be willing to play along, and praise her
as some really deep and edgy innovator. How pre-teenly naive. Transvision
Vamp so brazenly wanted to be worshipped worldwide for having the good
taste to perform a Holly & The Italians cover ("Tell That Girl To Shut
Up") when not even Holly & The Italians were all that very
appreciated. Perhaps everyone was supposed to be so dazzled by her
physical desirability that no one would notice that her first cuppla
elpees "Pop Art" and "Velveteen" were cool trash, but
nothing more. Me, I like alot of cool trash- the Tater Totz,
Toni Basil, Doctor & The Medics, Bow Wow Wow, Age Of
Chance, Sigue Sigue..., but I know the diff. between Ashlee
Simpson and Patti Smith. You know wot I mean? There's a place somewhere
for Ginger Spice, but it ain't the Punk Rock Hall Of Fame. DEPRESSED DARLINGS.... |
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| Wendy's albums were, come to think of it, EXACTLY, the audio-equivalent of all her blue meanie adversaries in the English tabloids. She was making colorful and glossy magazine-pop but somehow imagining she was composing the aural equivalent to some great book like the Clash or Nick Cave sometimes do, and the poor darling got her Sex Pstols panties in a bunch every time another unattractive rock critic pointed out any one of her many contradictions. "Why were you so tardy putting up your guard?" She craved the press even as she loathed it, and the press felt very much the same way about her. None of her accomplishments, or privileges ever remotely satiated her infinite ambitions. I think she wanted to be "Taken seriously" like Madonna, but as one who has yet to see much evidence of Madonna as a serious person, I can't quite relate to Wendy's blonde ambition. |
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In this sick-in-the-soul, dick sucking, corporate brainwash state we inhabit now, money buys consensus and false legitimacy everyday. And calls it stardom, and sez it's what we should all pursue. Surely Wendy didn't wanna settle for that kinda jive. WORKIN' FOR MCA: GOD SAVE THE ROYALTIES... Jolly old St. Nick musta raked in the lion's share of publishing, cos he
wrote most of the songs that weren't covers, especially on the earlier albums.
His lyrics were always fun in a Sputnik sorta throwaway style, a bit like
New Values era Iggy at times, but notoriously, cliche' ridden. The Mary
Chain's lawyers were on the phones at some point over "Psychosonic Cindy".
"Trash City", "Sex Kick", "Bad Valentine", "Andy Warhol's Dead"-you can
see where they were coming from back then, right? I mean we all wrote
songs like this in our teens, no? The Cult, the Front, and
Transvision
Vamp were all warbling in the 80's about their "Sister Moon" and say hi to
Bono for me, too! There's always bound to be some friction in a band at
some point, especially when there's some major money rolling in offa top
ten records, and when "the face" of the group wants to be known, or be
allowed to grow into "the brains" of the operation, well, this rarely
works, and the Tv Vamps broke up soon after their third album,
"...Babble". Be careful which kind of celebrity you wish you had,
children, cos all this shit-stardom, fame, celebrity-what does any of it
mean anymore? It's all just tit jobs and money. Fame's something purchased
by the machine for whomever has the right profile. Who cares? What a crap
world we've allowed them to construct all around us while we're baffled by
their video games, and fighting like rats for pieces of excrement. Or
running 'round like gerbils on wheels-it really has become a rat race. I'm
going back to sleep in my wood chips-I can't hack it anymore. The abuse
box is full of nothing but lies designed to make us feel bad until we've
earned enough money to squander on their jive products and it takes me
days to get all that brainwash outta my system. |
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| FALLING FOR A GOLDMINE... | |
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"There goes my money, there goes my
lawyer, there goes my lover with another cheap whore, I don't mind...."
(-Wendy James) It's a sick age when the illusions of bought and paid for "success" are all that matter to people. When publicists endow these obedient sex dolls with whatever qualities they actually lack, at least in the minds of millions. It's just like that nerd sci-fi movie, "The Matrix", really. Can Britney juggle? She can now. Just look at the way we waste our time discussing these shite so-called celebs we've been assigned, when we need to be focusing on bigger problems. It's programming. I find myself just endlessly debating Britney Spears as if she was some real talent rather than a Barbie Doll. A shallow commodity, a product. A lap-dancing economic force. Whores of Babylon, babies! I miss Wendy James so bad. She was like the Edie Sedgwick of the flashy trash late eighties underground. How could you NOT love her? |
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Especially if you were 16,17, or 18 and weren't EXPOSED to the real Velvet Underground growing up, Sputnik and TV VAMPS were what we had. Yeah, it's a bit silly that the Vamps wanted to be admired not only for their flair and verve and humor and taste, but "respected" even as they released trite crap like, "Baby I Don't Care", no, not a cover of the cool old Elvis song, but "Hang On Sloopy" with different lyrics and a drum machine. And Hey, why not? The same kinda tongue in cheek hustle was being perpetuated simultaneously by Dirty Deg and the boys, it was working for Sputnik, if only for five minutes, we're all still getting laffs from it, talking about them, being entertained by them. ANDY WARHOL'S DEAD...... Instead of being praised for their wit, they were widely maligned and
despised by the British tabloid press who wrestled, ceaselessly, with
their own fascination with, and sexual attraction to prissy, pissy, little
Miss Wendy James. And her ever shifting scrapbook of various iconic and
archetypal personas. She wanted to be the heroine of a thousand faces, but
Madonna got the gig. Mostly, I think she was their kickdog for making no
bones about wanting to have top ten hits and be a big star in that moment
in time when it was becoming trendier and trendier for all the rockstars
from Edie Brickell to Eddie Vedder to all pretend like they were actually
these shy, retiring, little shrinking violet wallflowers who just absent
mindedly stumbled into the spotlight of major label recording contracts by
accident. Then there's Wendy, with her wild looks and many opinions. I
can't fault her for wanting to be perceived as an artist and not a mere
whore, but she seemed to really think of herself as some great architect
or artiste who should be exalted, even while only releasing these
lightweight, new-waif songs that she herself didn't even write most of the
time, dabbling in echoing Link Wray guitars and ska rhythms, early 90's
club beats and warmed-over Stones riffs. Her baby voiced cooing, moaning,
whining, and fussing eleventh-hour combat booted foot-stomping and
adolescent sloganeering was never going to make her Sinead O'Connor, and
let's face it, the critics hated and reviled Sinead even more than Wendy!
I love the cool trash, I'll go to lover's leap with you, don't try to take
my knife away and please doncha ask me if I loves ya...either you wanted
to play along with Wendy or ya didn't, but like an excruciatingly funny
former drummer of mine always used to say to people who mocked him for
listening to the Knack and the Shoes, "If you don't like bubble gum, then
why are you blowing me?" |
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It's strange that TV VAMP'S pop trash as high art shtick
ever generated any controversy whatsoever, ESPECIALLY now, when we inhabit this wretched corporate era where every other program on Smear The Queer/ Brainwash
TV is another "reality" show "talent" contest for more plastic post-fab pop
stars. Anyway, by the time the Vamps had released their third record, "Little Magnets", Wendy felt so used, betrayed, exploited, and violated by her dysfunctional lover the music press, that she wrote a scathing song called "Don't Believe The Type" sneering at all of her jealous hearted, sexually frustrated detractors at NME and Melody Maker, who she felt were cramping her style at the time, and it's at least, ALOT more entertaining than (m)any of Axl Rose or Courtney Love's boring anti-press diatribes: "Dumb little jerk with your mind up my skirt"... Somebody desperately needed to wise Wendy to the fact that everyday people aren't likely to have alot of sympathy for someone whose primary bitch in life is she can't control what the media sez about her. |
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"Then Quit", sez Johnny Rotten. It's what Sinead O'Connor and Axl
Rose pretty much seem to have done. I was reading an old Vanity Fair article where director/centerfold shtupper/Sopranos star, Peter Bogdanovich
was sadly reminiscing about the days of wine n roses, when he too, was
flaunting all of his good fortune, and stardom, and money and privilege....He had
an all too cavalier attitude about what he was entitled to, he was getting kind
of imperious about his hit movie and relationship with 70's "It"
girl, Cybil Shepard, who the nerdish director had stolen offa King Elvis, and Gregory Peck, or some other old actor came to him worried, and warned
him to marry the girl if he loved her, to hide his treasures and stop parading
the lady around like a trophy because the bloodshot working masses HATE
it
when the beautiful people are too happy, and the grey lumpen herd will energetically always find a way to bring you down. I figured that's
what Robbie Williams was referring to when he called his album, "Sing When
You're Winning", or whatever. What was wrong with lithesome Wendy that she
wanted to waste her own 15 minutes of fame just complaining that she wasn't
famous or beloved enough? The rest of us have to go to jobs we hate in the
morning. "I Just Wanna Be With You" was an exquisite single in a Top 40 mall-pop sortof way, but it could've been performed maybe just as charmingly by
Kylie Minogue, Samantha Fox, Bananarama, or Strawberry Switchblade- and I
wouldn't blink an eye if they had Pink or Hillary Duff recording a cover version
of it for a Disney or Nickelodeon movie soundtrack or GAP or McDonalds commercial the day after tomorrow. It's hard for a recovering glory
whore like me not to feel SOME empathy for W.J., though, cos she just begs
and begs and begs and begs to be loved in such a petulant, snotty little
kid way I can identify with. She was also just DYING to say something of great social and political import, but we can't all be Chuck D. or Woody
Guthrie and like the great Jim Carroll once rasped: "It ain't no contribution to
rely on the institution to validate your chosen your art and sanction your boredom while you play out your part". Or Something like that, anyway.
It was just too late, The 70's had already happened, so she had to settle
for stalking her lover (the music press): "You're mine, you're mine, the
stars told me, you're mine, you're mine, it's your DESTINY....DESTINY!"
and for coming on in an irresistibly bratty teenage girl way-"I think I'd
be happy to be bad, if you said I was good at it...Please Baby, please
baby, please baby tell me/ was I good at it?" Bloody marvelous, if you asked ME, dollface! You were just caught growing up with your pants down like Lou Reed says, that's a tough gig for anybody, but you were a nervy kid and you kinda helped pave the way for people like Inger Lorre and Brigitte West who probably wouldn't admit to be hip to you, but the problem still remains that if you trade primarily on your appearance and sex appeal, why would you expect to be seen as some insightful visionary? Lotsa male rockers have had the same problem, from Jim Morrison, to Michael Hutchence. It was their young lion poses and Memphis hip shakin' that shifted units more often than either of their valid poetry and substantial song lyrics. Much of TV VAMP'S ouvre WAS composed of pretty vacant dance tracks wallowing in hipster ennui and narcissistically half-hearted worn-out catch phrases while even the BEST of it was still boppy, catchy teenage news with heavy panting, porno pouting, and alot of really terrific clothing! That don't all add up to being Leonard Cohen, y'know? But if you DO have a soft spot in your heart for pop trash with brief expiration dates, like I do, once in awhile, than of course some unabashedly vapid fun can surely be had on any of Transvision Vamp's shite records, and I'd pay hard earned money to see her live. I wonder if they ever play reunions in England. I challenge in connoisseur of pop trash to NOT be at Wendy's feet by the end of side 2. By the time you get to "You Put A Spell On Me", I think it's basically
IMPOSSIBLE not to surrender to the nagging, relentless, tambourine shakin' spirit of Wendy James. She just wears you down. She's like some holy
pop tart with this bleeding, kitsch heart. "Back On My Knees Again" sounds
just like the Jesus & Mary Chain or Mazzy Star's french pop/ sixties folk influenced stuff, which is to say, poignant, and touchingly beautiful.
I don't know or care if the Vamps were industry puppets or wronged or
misused by their producers Duncan Bridgeman and Zeus B. Held, or what. Were
they overlooked Che Guvaras of deceptively subversive dancefluff---? Or
glorified Madonna Wanna bes? To me they were just fun, cute, dumb, cool, trashy,
and entertaining, and yeah, I hope alot of scantily clad pictures of
glittery saucepot James accompany this feature! |
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I WANT TO STAND FOREVER.... |
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Eventually, our anguished starlet Wendy took her case to a court of last resort, by throwing all her career aspirations and wounded reputation on the mercy of ELVIS COSTELLO, a peculiar, if not outright bewildering choice in that E was not especially renowned for being all that merciful towards pained beauties who're incessantly moaning, "Don't hate me cos I'm beautiful". She wrote him a long series of inappropriately intimate letters and asked him to write her a song and El and his wife at the time, Cait O'Riordan, were both so charmed by her needy, heartfelt appeals that they wrote and produced an entire album for her. Declan and Cait did seem to have a wee bit of mean-spirited fun at James' expense with alot of the lyrics and articulate vitriol they put in her mouth, but ultimately, it was a redemptive and triumphant mercy mission that succeeded at every level. "Now Is Not The Time For Your Tears" is basically, a masterpiece, and easily one of my favorite albums of all time! The record was so good, I seem to remember it even making Aimee Mann a bit jealous, I think. Wendy finally had some songs that could equal her self-image-whether she wrote them or not, you can hear how deeply she felt them. Elvis explored his usual themes of monogamy, guilt, lust, ambition, betrayal, guilt, alienation, identity, ambition, etc., and he does it all through the filter of Wendy and the Transvision Vamp story. These songs are all so brilliant! "Now Is Not The Time' is home to summa Costello's best writing since the late 70's and actually planted the seeds of the Attractions reunion that occurred after some of them participated in the recording of this record for Wendy. |
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Top of the line musicianship and production with eloquent, melodic songcraft all
starring our long suffering, sadly beautiful heroine, Wendy James, this is exceedingly gorgeous, deeply thoughtful and heartfelt music- and it
speaks straight to the pain that I'm in which is what most music fails so
miserably to accomplish anymore. Wendy hit this one right outta the park, and I
hope it somehow helped her to resolve at least some of her pangs and snares. "London's Brilliant", "Basement Kiss", "Do You Know What I'm Saying?", these are some of the most brilliant songs I've ever heard. Like Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row". They're at that level. So Wendy did manage to pull off a pretty impressive hat trick after the fabulous disaster of Transvision Vamp. did it silence any of her critics even for one moment? Nope, but it has given me a record that I've listened to appreciatively for hours on end. Where Is Wendy? |
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-FIN-
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-Pepsi
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Yes. But more importantly, do you remember
Lightning Strikes Motherfucker? Now, there was some
phony-ass future pop! Fuck, now I gotta write another FMS entry. -
Overworked Sleaze |
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Their
audacity knew no bounds, and they traded in high style, and McClarenesque
sham-pop. Alot of attitude with less aptitude, their whole "public image"
smacked of disposable, Warhol-like detachment, self-conciously heralding
themselves as the next coming of the Pistols and the Clash, Suicide and
Blondie, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis, and the entire history of rock'n'roll
at once. (More along the lines of Nena Cherry, the Primitives, Westworld,
and Big Audio Dynamite, really...and does anybody remember
