Wonderland Burlesque's Down The Rabbit Hole: Lene Lovich

Wonderland Burlesque's 

Down The Rabbit Hole: 

Lana Pellay

Down The Rabbit Hole merely places a spotlight on something slightly unusual that's caught my interest. With the help of Wikipedia, YouTube, and other sites, I gather information and learn something new.

Today, we take a look at the work and history of the multi-talented performer Lana Pellay.

--- ---

From Wikipedia and other sources:

Lene Lovich is an American-British singer and animal rights activist known for her interesting stage fashion and unique vocals. She first gained attention in 1979 with the release of her hit single Lucky Number, which peaked at #3 on the UK Singles Chart and made her a leading figure of the new wave music scene. To this day, she continues to have a very devoted fanbase.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Lovich moved to England at the age of 13, where she met guitarist and songwriter Les Chappell, who later became her long-time music collaborator and life partner. She developed an interest in art and theater, enrolling at the Central School of Art and Design in the autumn of 1968, where she took saxophone lessons. She would spend the next seven years performing and writing in various capacities, more on the fringe of the entertainment world; she danced as both a go-go girl and an oriental dancer, visited Salvador Dali at his home in Spain, and dabbled in various theatrical productions. 

In 1975, she joined the band the Diversions and shortly afterwards wrote the lyrics to Cerrone's single Supernature. The Diversion released three singles and an album on Polydor Records without success. After the band broke up, Lovich started looking for another band to join and contacted the radio presenter Charlie Gillett, who got her to record a demo of Tommy James and the Shondells' song I Think We're Alone Now and played it to Dave Robinson of Stiff Records, who decided to sign Lovich. The song was released as a single and appeared on her debut studio album Stateless (1978), which produced the single Lucky Number.

Lovich's musical style combined her own quirky inventions with contemporary punk rock and new wave styles.

She released two more albums, Flex (1979) and No Man's Land (1982), on Stiff Records, as well as the EP New Toy, featuring the title song written by Thomas Dolby. 

Lovich co-wrote with Chappell and Chris Judge Smith and performed Mata Hari, a play/musical at the Lyric Hammersmith, London in October and November 1982. During this time she was having disputes with Stiff. The success of the show and pressure from Epic, her U.S. label, persuaded Stiff to release and promote No Man's Land.

After leaving Stiff, she independently released the sing Don't Kill The Animals with Nina Hagen and began making concert appearances on behalf of the organization PETA. 

In 1989, she independently released the album March - which contained the US dance hit Wonderland - before taking a 15-year recording hiatus. She completed several tours of the US and contributed to several projects. After having focused on her family, she came back in 2005 with the release of her album Shadows and Dust. In 2013, she established her own publishing label, Flex Music, and released a re-mastered version of all her previous albums in a limited edition box set. She continues to make occasional live appearances and as well as contributing to various music projects.

Lucky Number - Lene Lovich

Say When - Lene Lovich

Bird Song - Lene Lovich

New Toy - Lene Lovich

It's You, Only You (Mein Schmerz) - Lene Lovich

Don't Kill The Animals - Lene Lovich and Nina Hagen

Wonderland - Lene Lovich

(New York Extended Mix)

 

 

--- ---

Wonderland Burlesque's As The Diva Turns! - Megan, Dua & Melanie

Wonderland Burlesque's

As The Diva Turns!

Megan, Dua & Melanie

 

Spotlighting some recently-released diva turns on the part of three one-named phenoms this week.

I must say, you are in for quite the international treat. 

Up first? Take-no-prisoners Megan Thee Stallion with an assist from Flo Millie, rocking the high school old-school with the pin-to-the-beat Roc Steady!

 

Then, in a classic diva move, we have the ever-versatile Dua Lipa - live at The Royal Albert Hall - truly in command with the epic Training Season. 

And finally, delivering more of her fourth-dimensional brand of fantastical pop, my favorite modern seer, Melanie Martinez with her long-awaited truth-of-the-moment spectacular SPIDER WEB.

All in all, a trio of great turns.

You can tell who I am from the back, indeed!

Midweek hump?

Feeling in the dumps?

Here's some music to make your heart jump!

- uptonking from Wonderland Burlesque

Roc Steady - Megan Thee Stallion feat. Flo Milli

Training Season - Dua Lipa

SPIDER WEB - Melanie Martinez

--- ---

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: Charli XCX

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip:

Charli XCX

In my own personal big gay church there is a wing dedicated to those who belong to the Rhythm Nation. These divas got us to think, encouraged us to love and respect ourselves, made us feel sexy as hell and... most importantly, got us to dance!

One such musical brat?

Charli XCX!

While undeniably beautiful, her real super power is her ability to write massive smash pop hits. 

To say she's smart is an understatement.

To say she's got her fingers on the pulse of modern society? 

Well, now you're saying something.

It's true. She's brash and bold, with a fresh sense of humor and... a need to be nice.

This is not your typical poser with a diva fetish. Far from it. Though she can count those on the cutting edge of pop music as familiars, she's much more interested in making quality music with a long lifespan. She wants her fingers in many pies, her prints all over the charts, with an eye on becoming a true musical influencer. 

And while fashion may dictate, she loves to buck a trend, bend a standard and skewer those who pose. She lives unafraid and will to work hard for herself and on the behalf of others. 

On the scene since she was 14, her focus has shifted multiple times, but one thing remains as true as that knowing look in her eyes...

This is not your ordinary pop princess. 

No, sir. 

This one means to be queen!

(But not a mean queen.)

The gospel according to her?

Well, here are three from the hip, dropping from her lips.

The topic? Cool vs. Nice

"I'm not interested in the idea of celebrity."
 
"I really just want to change the way women think about themselves. A lot of young girls are quite lost."
 
"There's something about girls together, uniting, that I just thought was cool."
 
"In the '90s, there was always this continuous pitting of women against each other in the media, trying to make them battle it out."

"I think debate is good. Everyone has an opinion, and it's definitely healthy to voice those."

"If there's intelligence behind an opinion, then I'm all for expressing it, but I would never just start a fight with someone for the sake of it - that's just not me."
 
"Females should stand by each other, especially in an industry which seems to try so hard to pin us up against each other and make us fight. It's not about that for me. I refuse to be sucked into a twisted world of insecurity and lose who I am."
 
"I think I'm a girl's girl in the sense that I support women a lot, and I'm definitely all for girl power, but I think I'm quite a tomboy at heart - even though I love my fashion and dressing up, I think my essence is very boyish."

 

"I just feel like the songs I write lend themselves to this girl-power feeling, and those are the artists that I looked up to when I was younger."
 
"I spent a lot of my teenage years experimenting with who I was as a person and not really getting it right. And then, I think, I realized that I just had to chill out in life."
 
"I was never the cool kid in school, and loads of people told me that I was weird, that I dressed uncool and did uncool things, that I was too nice, too happy."

"When you're growing up, I think there's this idea that the coolest people are the ones who are really rude and feverish. But I've come to realize that isn't cool."
 

"I think the best people are the ones who are just as nice and fun. This is really cheesy, but you only have one life - why spend most of it pretending to be cool?"

"I feel like I'm a pop star without being a diva."
 
"I feel like when people meet me, I'm very much not what they expected I would be. I'm not a diva, and I'm not mean to people or have weird rules."

"Being nice is awesome. You have more fun; you meet more people."

"I get on with people. I don't hang out with people who aren't nice. It's like, be real or go home."

"You should respect the people you are around."
 
"My one thing is respect. I don't care about anything else. You should respect everyone around you - the people who work for you, peers. Be classy."

"My philosophy is to treat people how you want to be treated."

Boom Clap - Charli XCX

1999 - Charli XCX with Troye Sivan

360 - Charli XCX

And one last parting shot...

Most of my favorite artists are strong females.

From the moment I stepped into this industry, I've always had to fight for my ideas and for my voice to be heard.

 

I think it's awesome when a woman is in control of everything she's doing, especially in an industry like this where people think that doesn't happen often, but it really does - well, from my knowledge and how I manage my own project.

 

When I got signed, I had just turned 16. I felt like I had to continuously have these confrontations with older men who were doubting my ideas because I was a woman, because I was 16.

 

I actually think it doesn't even matter what age you are or what sex - though that does play into it sometimes - you always have to fight in any kind of creative world because nobody knows your own brain and your own creative ideas better than you do.

Some people think of feminine as just being pretty and quiet and sweet, but I also think being feminine is being angry and also being sexy and aggressive and passionate.

 

If you're in control of everything, then no matter what it is, you can make that feminine.

 

I believe I deserve everything that could maybe happen. And I don't think that's a cocky thing to say because I've worked really hard, and I've never bitten the hand that fed me, and I've always been really respectful

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: Olly Alexander

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip:

Olly Alexander

In my big gay church there is a wing dedicated to The Divas Who Represent. They're not all flashy or cocks of the walk - in fact, some never officially came out of the closet during their lifetime - but they are all extraordinarily gifted, sharing their songs, music, and insights, allowing the world at large to learn, in the most subtle of ways, what it's like 'being green'. Thanks to their gifts and their bravery, they help make the world a little more gay every time their voices are heard. And that's been their true super power all along... their voice; they were heard. They mattered. And, whether they liked it or not, they represented!

Well, I suppose once you've sung a song at Eurovision in a floating cube-shaped gym shower room surrounded by four dancing, beefy, musclebound boxers - it's all downhill from there.

Don't count on it.

This diva has barely hit his stride. 

A product of social media and the run-of-the-mill media, this actor, dancer, singer, writer, is constantly on point and as far out as one could possibly be.

He's Frank Sinatra for the coming generation. All he's accomplished - television, video, music, concerts, film... it's like superstardom on steroids. 

Not heard of him? Well, come up for air once and awhile, my dears... this lad is in it for the long haul. 

It's not all been a night at he prom. He's experienced and is experiencing all the usual showbiz clichés: sudden success is always accompanied by some type of whiplash. But this gay icon has dealt with it all with head on - as in, head on straight. Never blindsided for more than a moment, for one so young, he's managed it all quite well. 

It all bodes well for the future. And this diva has a wonderful one ahead of him... 

So grab on and take this one to the stars... he shines so bright.

The gospel according to him?

Well, here are three from the hip, dropping from his lips.

The topic? When Sexuality Meets Music

"I used to be scared of people thinking I was gay but now I'd be shocked if they didn't."

"As young as 10 I started fancying boys. It's a common experience but I just wished I wasn't gay up until the age of 18 or 19."

"We are traumatized by growing up in a world that doesn't really accept us. Obviously, we've made great leaps and bounds, but I think there's a tendency to force a narrative onto queer people that once you come out... you have to be really happy and really successful and proud all the time."

"So many queer people come out constantly for the rest of their lives, ya know? To the people they work with, to people in taxi cabs. Whatever it is, it isn't the one day."

"Let's let our men be happy, be sad, be trans, be questioning, be bisexual, be non-conforming, be feminine, be masculine!"

"There's something endemic about the gay community where we praise masculinity more than anything else."

"We can't police the way people express their sexuality."

"We have to listen and learn from each other to lift each other up, so we can all live the life we deserve."

"I would love it if less bands were hetero."

"Everyone has a different definition of what they find sexy, so why do we so often get given one version of what sexy is time and time again?"

"Most of the pop videos I've seen that have any male/female interaction are usually centered around a romance - and that's great, I am all for romance. But let's face it, there are a lot of other sexualities and identities that are well-deserving of some shiny pop video love."

"When I meet gay kids and they know who we are, I remember that's amazing because literally every gay person in every gay story I knew growing up was doomed to die. There weren't any positive gay stories and it's incredible that has changed."

"My sexuality is part of my music, part of my identity."

"There's entrenched homophobia behind the scenes at all levels of the music industry."

"If you look at pop stars through the ages, we've had camp, glam popstars from the 80s - your George Michaels and what have you - but then people went back to the closet a bit, and became more homogenized and generic."

"Pop music has a pretty good track record of embracing queer culture."

"I get a real thrill for being 'overtly queer' in my aesthetic."

"What's great about being gay is that you can celebrate all types of sexualities, because we understand that being queer means you might also be gender nonconforming or bi or whatever."

"I identify as a gay man all the time, but I also like to identify as queer."

"The word queer first started being used in the late 1980s by members of the community who wanted to reclaim something negative and turn it into a positive. It's still a painful word for some, and lots of people don't identify with it. But for me it's a helpful and empowering term that unifies an ever-growing community."

King - Years & Years

Starstruck - Olly Alexander

Dizzy - Olly Alexander

And one last parting shot...

"I feel sorry for straight people."

"I'm not saying that being straight is easy, but when you're gay, you don't really have a familial network or support system. You have to find that."

"I'm the person I am because of all the support we have but inside there is still a scared, gay kid, worried he's going to get bullied and people aren't going to like what I do."

"I think the reason I've been so committed to advocacy is because I see so many people in pain."

"I genuinely do want the world to change in a positive way, but I wouldn't call myself an activist, you know? I'm an entertainer who engages with activism because it feels really meaningful for me."

 

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: TLC

 Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: 

TLC

In my own personal big gay church, there is a wing dedicated to what can only be described as... The Sisterhood. No matter their musical genre of choice, these ladies came together as a unit, joined arms and mesmerized the world. Their harmonies inspired unity while creating an energy which was absolutely infectious. Hit after hit, they earned their place in music history, sharing their unique vocal stylings.

One such trio?

TLC.

They are the bestselling girl group of all time. 

Their sound, their songs, their style informed a generation of young women. 

And their message? It was always liberating. Stand up. Be proud. Don't settle. 

It was about sisterhood!

They had heart, too. For they sang about the world they saw around them, never sugar-coating it. 

The managerial and financial mess they found themselves in early in their careers would have been enough to put a pin it permanently for others - but not these women. The stayed strong. They stayed the course. 

It was only true tragedy - the untimely death of a member - which slowed this juggernaut. 

But only for a moment.

To this day, they play on. They are out there. Performing. Spreading the message. 

Sharing their sound, their style... 

The gospel according to them?

Well, here are three from the hip, dropping from their lips.

The topic? Style & Sound.

"In the early '90s, all the girl groups were dressing super feminine. And then we came on the scene wearing Cross Colours, Girbaud, and Nautica." - Rozonda Thomas

"TLC always looked up to male bands. We saw guy groups could just go out and get the fans screaming by just standing there - fully clothed and with nothing but their music... We saw them as the competition more than the girl groups, with whom we wanted to stay unified." - Tionne Watkins

"From day one, we always admired male R&B groups. They would go onstage with no shirt on and baggy jeans, and girls would scream." - Rozonda Thomas

"Bell Biv Devoe, back in the day, we used to look up to them. They had incredible style back then, so we wanted to be like them." - Tionne Watkins

"We don't want to box ourselves within any type of genre, you know? Whatever feels good, if it moves us and we like it, we get on it and make it our own. That's what we do."- Rozonda Thomas

"We did want to stand for something, not just cute girls with cute concepts. Everything we talk about has meaning behind it."- Lisa Lopes

"Starting out as young women, we didn't care that people thought that we were a fad or if people thought we didn't dress girly enough - we were just like, 'Whatever.' We were able to accomplish that with three totally different girls, in a group." - Rozonda Thomas

"For our first album, we were our own dressers. We didn't have no stylists. We came up with all of the ideas when it came to dressing. At that time, Cross Colours and Jabos were really popular, so we were able to get stuff from them, but we always added accessories." - Rozonda Thomas

"When we were first recording, I was wearing a bag on my head." - Lisa Lopes

"When I met T-Boz and Left Eye, they were buying jeans that were a size 38. Three little cute girls dressed like boys was cool back then. Our style was cartoonish but fly at the same time."- Rozonda Thomas

"We were always authentic when it came to our style. From when we started to the height of our fame, we've always been consistent in our look because how we dressed was a result of how we felt. We weren't playing dress-up." - Tionne Watkins

"Everything from the music to our clothes was truly authentic. Lisa and I were in my basement spray painting our overalls." - Rozonda Thomas

"TLC's always been sexy but always tasteful." - Rozonda Thomas

"The magic of the group has everything to do with the chemistry between myself, Tionne and Chilli." - Lisa Lopes

"We can't be tamed at all. We've never been that kind of group. We always used to talk about how our image was as big as our sound." - Rozonda Thomas

"TLC never broke up. We are sisters for life." - Tionne Watkins

Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg - TLC

Waterfalls - TLC

Girls Talk - TLC

And one last parting shot...

"We want every generation to know a little something about TLC." - Rozonda Thomas

"The TLC sound! That's what's so awesome - we have our own sound." - Tionne Watkins

"We're so blessed to have an amazing catalog." - Rozonda Thomas

  

"To have a body of work is a blessing - when you have songs that have been around generation after generation that they call timeless music, you can work that for a long time." - Tionne Watkins

"We still have the love for music; it will forever be in my heart." - Rozonda Thomas

"Music is my heart." - Tionne Watkins

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: Tina Fey

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip:

Tina Fey

In my own personal big gay church, there is a wing dedicated to the Ladies Of Comedy. Theses are the gals who made us laugh and, on occasion, brought a tear to our eyes. They are visionaries, capturing aspects of the human condition while holding up a mirror to the world. Their characters, style, and phrases have helped form our daily vernacular in ways we are not even always aware of - but that is the power of comedy and the magic these ladies all possess. Breaking ground while breaking all the rules?

The whipsmart Tina Fey!

The world remains in awe of this woman. She's so insightful, so dead-on. Time and time again she nails it... perfectly.

And while it's easy to fall under her spell... you fall under this woman's eye at your own risk!

But don't worry - she never 'goes after' people. She merely gives you the devil, and sits down and levels with you. She tells her truth - the unvarnished kind.

The great thing is, she does it with such style, I promise, you won't even mind being exposed. 

She's that way with people and with the world at large. For this diva sees things and isn't afraid to share what she finds. 

It's refreshing. And I think it's her honesty that has us all enthralled. She never shies away from telling us the whole stinkin' truth. 

And we, the world? Are all the better for it!

The gospel according to her?

Well, here are three from the hip dropping from her lips.

The topic? Growing Funny

"Every kid has something they're good at, that you hope they find and gravitate toward."

"I was a very confident little kid."

"Somewhere around the fifth or seventh grade I figured out that I could ingratiate myself to people by making them laugh. Essentially, I was just trying to make them like me. But after a while it became part of my identity."

"The only way I could get comfortable around people was to make them laugh. I was an obedient girl, and humor was my one form of rebellion. I used comedy to deflect. Like, 'Hey, check out my zit!' - you know, making fun of yourself before someone else has a chance to."

"I was the editor of the school newspaper and in drama club and choir, so I was not a popular girl in the traditional sense, but I think I was known for being relatively scathing."

"I think everyone's intentions are to become a performer at first. But by the time I was in high school and college, I discovered that I liked writing and that I was probably a little better at it."

"I dreamed of being an actress when I was a little kid because you don't know then that the writer writes everything the actor is saying. But as I got older, I got into college and became more aware that writing is another option, and I started getting into it, too."

"After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you."

"Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don't know who that's attributed to. I think it's Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great."

"We're all comedy fans in my family. My parents mainly wouldn't let me watch stuff that was either annoying to them, or just garbage. My dad wouldn't let us watch The Flintstones if he was home, because he said it was a rip-off of The Honeymooners. But he would let us stay up really late in the summer and watch old Honeymooners."

"I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities."

Tan France & Tina Fey Give Rachel Dratch

 An Arianne Grande Look

Dressing Funny

Girls Meet Blerta - Tina Fey and Cast

SNL

A QVC/HSN Christmas - Tina Fey w/ Busy Philipps

Busy This Week

And one last parting shot...

"I got a fan letter on the back of a prison menu. And I remember thinking, 'Well, they get pie. It's not so bad. They get pie on the weekends.' I want to say blueberry and also a Boston cream pie. Not so bad."

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: Bonnie Raitt

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: 

Bonnie Raitt

In my own personal big gay church there are many wings. One is dedicated to The Rockbirds - so named after a turn of phrase coined by Deborah Harry, one of the divas who resides there. These ladies raged against a very specific machine: the misogynistic heart of the corporate music business. They endured countless interviews asking them how they felt being a woman in the world of rock n' roll - the assumption being that it was exclusively a man's world. Are they the women of rock? Hell, no... they just rock! And they did it all with a singular style and unique voice.

One such 

Bonnie Raitt

Her music goes down smoother than a Long Island ice tea.

A true journeyman, this diva burst on the scene and the rock press was head over heals. Live, she was a  firecracker, but on vinyl... well, something was frequently missing.

Her answer? To look for it at the bottom of a bottle. 

After her label dropped her, she hit rock bottom, but didn't stay there long. She quickly righted the ship and kept on touring - but sober, now.

During this time period, she became known as an activist.

And though it took her a few years, she eventually found, not only what was missing, but a whole new audience, one that has remained with her to this day.

Grammy's followed - her most recent for Song of The Year in 2023 - demonstrating that this diva's work remains as vital as ever. 

For her? The road is never-ending.

The gospel according to her?

Well, here are three from the hip, dropping from her lips.

The topic? Becoming An Artistic Heavyweight

"I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time."

"I've watched my peers get better with age and hoped that would happen with me."

"I think it's our job to write about what we're going through at the moment, and being 41, I'm not going to write about the same things I wrote about at 20. I don't think artists should be farmed out to pasture just because they're in rock n' roll."

"Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists."

"I was always drawn to the blues. Alberta Hunter at the Cookery was a life-changing experience. I only wanted to get enriched as a performer as I got older, to have an audience which got older, too, and would come to see me when I'm 80."

"I like to think I get better with age, but maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder."

"There's nothing like living a long time to create a depth and soulfulness in your music."

"The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes."

"I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool."

"In blues, classical and jazz, you get more revered with age."

"I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around."

"I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids."

"I've been lucky enough that I can gather all sorts of experiences and find inspiration by traveling around and by spending time with people I admire."

"I just play the music that I love with musicians that I respect, and fortunately, I'm in a position where people are willing to play with me, and perhaps I can do something to help them."

It is still a surprise when people tell me that I've had an influence on them, particularly when it's someone I really respect.

"One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years."

"Not being a natural songwriter... for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the greatest writers of all time, Rodgers and Hammerstein."

"Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music."

"When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it - why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the '90s - Nick of Time and other songs I was surprised I came up with - it was because nobody else was saying what I wanted to say."

Runaway - Bonnie Raitt

 

Nick Of Time - Bonnie Raitt

Just Like That - Bonnie Raitt

"I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one."

"Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there."

"Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice - those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were the ideas of working for peace and if you have more than you need, then you share it with people who don't."

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: Jayne County

Sunday Diva/Three From The Hip: 

Jayne County

In my big gay church there is a wing dedicated to The Divas Who Represent. They're not all flashy or cocks of the walk - in fact, some never officially came out of the closet during their lifetime - but they are all extraordinarily gifted, sharing their songs, music, and insights, allowing the world at large to learn, in the most subtle of ways, what it's like 'being green'. Thanks to their gifts and their bravery, they help make the world a little more gay every time their voices are heard. And that's been their true super power all along... their voice; they were heard. They mattered. And, whether they liked it or not, they represented!

One such fire bomb?

The salacious Jayne County!

Jayne County set a pre-punk standard for outrageous rock & roll stage antics and regalia with her then bands Wayne County & the Electric Chairs and Queen Elizabeth. Her goal, she boasted, was to "make Alice Cooper look like a nun." Now living in quiet rural Georgia with 19 cats, Jayne is mostly making visual art, and the occasional music.

She’s not slowed down - as she can still be found 'wrecking' on busy roads outside of southern churches.

'Wrecking', as she describes in her 1995 autobiography with Rupert Smith, Man Enough to Be a Woman, is when she and other drag queens would purposefully summon outraged reactions from passersby.

Moving from the South to New York City, she became a fixture at punk clubs like Max’s Kansas City, a part of Andy Warhol’s Factory. As the first - or, at least one of the first and certainly the most well-known - out trans frontwomen of a rock band, Jayne made a name for herself in New York, London, and Berlin with her foul mouth, wild stage antics, and offbeat sense of humor

Her energy has always made a lasting impression, so it was only fitting that she was present for the historic Stonewall riots. Her music, including the song Fuck Off and the band’s Blatantly Offensive EP, was banned by radio stations. On stage, Jayne made a habit of squirting members of the audience with water pistols shaped like dildos and performing songs while sitting on a toilet.

Once, during a performance at CBGBs music club, one of County’s fellow musicians began shouting homophobic insults at her, an action he soon regretted when County broke his shoulder with a microphone stand in response.

Yes, this diva takes no crap from anyone!

The record companies had no clue what to do with her, but she still managed to find her place in annals of rock 'n roll and gay history. 

The gospel according to her?

Well, here are three from the hip, dropping from her lips.

The topic? Wrecking!

"There was a whole gay subculture in Atlanta, and I dived right into it… I turned into what was known as a Scream Queen: wearing make-up, walking down the street screaming at people, screaming at boys, having to run from them. That’s what Scream Queens would do, go out wrecking people’s nerves. We’d put on our Cover Girl makeup and go driving around in Miss Cock’s convertible wrecking people."

"Just deliberately trying to freak out the regular people, the solids as we called them. Shaking people out of their normality, just trying to see what nerves we could push. They need their nerves twisted once in a while."

"We used to do things like go into department stores and ride up and down the elevators just screaming, you know, holding up women’s clothes and saying, 'Look at this! He’s going to adore me in this!' One of our big wrecks was going into the men’s room at the Greyhound bus station, a bunch of us queens, maybe four or five. The men were at the urinals with their you-know-whats out and we’d start screaming, 'Ooh, look how big it is! Look at that one! Oh my God, I think I had that one last night! How is your wife in bed, darling? I’d be a lot better!' The guys would be rushing to get their zippers up, so uncomfortable with us in there."

"It’s a wonder we didn’t get killed, a wonder we didn’t get in more trouble than we did. We did get shot at. They would actually come by in their trucks and shoot at us for the fun. You could hear the bullets flying past your head – shhhhhhw! Oh yeah, they wanted to kill us! But I think, because people were so shocked, they usually didn’t have time to think about hurting us. They were just too busy being shocked. By the time they got over it, we were gone and they’d be wondering what the fuck happened."

"I couldn’t get anywhere for a long time because people were too freaked out by me. I wrecked them too much. They had no idea how to market me. [Record companies] had no idea what to do with me at all. It was just too beyond their understanding."

"People are still shockable. You have to get the right kind of person to be shocked. Now people kind just look at you and roll their eyes and are like “oh they must be making a movie or something.” But, you know, down here in the South it is way easier to shock people. A lot of people are ultra conservative. So a trans person in a huge, 3-foot tall wig, it’s sort of attention-getting down here."

“I still to this day do a little wrecking without even knowing I’m doing it.. I have a bad tendency to talk too much when I’m out shopping. Sometimes I’ll say something really outrageous to myself and make the person shopping next to me really nervous. I get a big thrill out of doing that.”

Paranoia Paradise - Jayne County

from Derek Jarman's Jubilee (1978)

I Fell In Love With A Russian Soldier - Jayne County

I Don't Fit In Anywhere - Jayne County and Am Taylor 

And one last parting shot...

"Gay or straight, an asshole is an asshole."