Thursday, August 9, 2007  10:07 pm 

Robin’s VH1 broadcast from the Forests

VH1 presents Divas! Live, for one, magical night only from a wishful, imaginary place located somewhere in my brain, and hopefully yours too. On the bill tonight…

Amanda Lear. A perfect pop star. An enigma, shrouded by folklore, wrapped up in a mystery, tied up within a myth. She may never have existed at all. She may in fact have been the brainchild of a certain Salvador Dali. Her real name may have been Peki, a part English, part Chinese, part Mongolian boy. Amanda Lear may actually be an anagram for the words “a man” and “Dali”. She may have actually been born Alain in Switzerland. Or potentially France. She may have had a part Indonesian, part Russian father. She may even have been born a girl who went by the name of Amanda Lear.

Considering the jigsaw pieces of the puzzle have never fit, and for all intent and purposes never will, chances are slim that the truth will ever emerge, and I hope it never does. In a time when pop stars will probably start issuing x-rays of their internal organs with their new records as the next logical step in promotion, the question marks that surround Ms Lear make her a rare, and unique breed. Most starlets exist as blow up dolls, vessels waiting to be boarded, obvious and easy. Amanda was problematic. She was an almighty head-fuck. For your regular hetero chap she was a serious conundrum. Did they want to ravish her, and if they did, was it wrong? Did it really matter anyway? What to do, what to do?!!!!!

Look at her face on the cover of her third album ‘Never Trust A Pretty Face’, and you’ll see she proudly wears the expression of a person with a secret, happy to keep it. Like the sphinx she refers to on record, only she ever knew the definitive answer to the riddle of her own existence. Perhaps the clues were to be found in the decadent disco gems she dispensed throughout the 7O’s. Or perhaps not. Either way, I can’t help, but fall under her spell.

Amanda Lear - Black Holes

On the basis of this bittersweet treat, which is like riding on a cloud to Heaven with the saddest angel you could ever meet, Valerie Dore entrances for an entirely different reason, managing to crystallise with intense, moving perfection the sadness that love, and it’s many uncertainties can arouse in us fragile human beings.

Valerie Dore - Get Closer

Sounding like a woman who should have a gaping hole in her chest, a heart of glass revealed inside, swinging from side to side like a pendulum, ready to give up and break at any moment, she intones that when the world is running down, get closer, turning this into the apocalyptic anthem we should all be singing to one another in our final few moments of existence. Moroder style synths poignantly glide in and out of proceedings like fleeting moments, opportunities missed, hopes slowly fading, but importantly, not yet entirely diminished. If it wasn’t for that voice, it would almost be strangely joyous, even comforting. The melancholy tremble in Valerie’s voice is just far too telling to ignore, betraying her secret that in spite of what she says, she may have very possibly given up already, resigned herself to loneliness and an eternity of floating through space, believing her pleas destined only to fall on deaf ears, and that while hope is alive, its only a matter of time.

Of course Valerie was wrong, because nothing this beautiful could ever fall on deaf ears. I hope one day, she knows that.

Once she was a normal girl, leading a normal life, just minding her own business, until one day things would never, ever be the same for her again. It happened whilst she was out walking, when she tripped and fell, hit her head on the ground, and suffered a nasty concussion. When she awoke in her hospital bed, she awoke to find she was no longer the normal girl she had previously been. In fact she had absolutely no recollection of her old life. Her friends and family tried to convince her of her past, but there was no use. Something in her brain had ruptured, and from thereon in she could never be classed as a normal girl again, because from the moment her eyes opened, Virna was reborn.

Virna Lindt - Pillow Talk

Mundane would become a foreign term, for Virna was not a girl, she was a woman, an undercover spy from the 60s. Like all good spies she embraced her existence in the world as a shadow, only ever briefly glimpsed at night time, turning into dark alleys, in exotic European cities. Her life was one of romantic danger. She always wore her elegant, cream coloured trench coat, that never seemed to get dirty. Her hair was always perfect, not one strand out of place in her immaculately coiffured ice-white bob. She always drank the kinds of drinks ordinary people had never heard of, and smoked the same brand of French cigarettes, slim, long and black, her lipstick always leaving its mark on the tip.

In her spare time, Virna was something of a chanson too, relaying her days of international espionage, in her unmistakable part spoken, part whispered coo, her broken English only helping to enhance her sensuality. “Pillow Talk”, its dewy eyed synthesizers cloaking our heroine in hazily erotic, soft lighting, may be a lovelorn serenade to the only man she ever loved, who also in a cruel, complicated twist happened to be the same man she had been sent on a lifelong mission to catch. We’ll never know for sure if it is, because like all professional agents shes always remained hard to pin down and question. Glimpsed for one second, and in the blink of an eye, vanished just as quickly.

labels >> Robin, disco, italo