Life as a Dating Profile: A Brief History of Deee-Lite

I still believe the best accessory is a smile, the best attitude is no attitude, and the only permanent thing about me is change. Lady Miss Kier [on style]

Oldsters will remember Deee-Lite’s Groove Is in the Heart from 1991. If so, they’ll remember the image of Lady Miss Kier (née Kierin Magenta Kirby) and her stunning visual charisma and style as indelible brain graffiti. She presented herself as exotic, aided in part by her retro fashion sense and loud print obsessions. Her opening spoken riff from Groove added well to the myth – not bad from a girl whose origins were anything but; I’ve no idea of her ethnic background but as she was Ohio-born and raised and I’m going to guess she’s a Midwestern white girl through and through. Though, credit her for getting out as soon as she could – she moved to NYC right out of high school. Also, props for her elegant and completely transformative reinvention.

That’s the context: But this isn’t for just simply touting the brilliant sparkle of Lady Miss Kier. Instead, I’m here to drag corporatism and the muthaf**kas that create the culture we live in. She’d prove to be yet another one of its multitudinous victims.

Kier’s style and presentation were considered fire back in the day – if not still. I’d hesitate to give too much credit to the other two members for Deee-Lite’s sound since it was mostly standard-issue sample sausage dance groove. What is interesting is that corporate beastmasters thought so highly of Lady Miss Kier and her outfit that after a label bidding war, Deee-Lite was offered a seven album deal with Elektra Records. (Note: This is according to Wikipedia so we may need to take the claim with some salt. The only other mention of this “deal” I could find was on a Deee-Lite fan page.) That’s right: Seven. Who gets that? No one and, as it turned out, neither did they.

So, after all the dating profile-like effrontery and foreplay, like some creepy nerd who tries to slip in the tongue with his New Year’s Eve kiss, their record company went totally Capitalist dickhead:

After global success, tours, dance club fame, and a single peaking #4 on Billboard, Warner Brothers refused to pay for the recording of a second album. Deee-Lite managed to pull together the cash and financed the follow-up themselves. Of course, their second offering didn’t come close to the smash of the first which I suspect was a problem WB was expecting. They did manage two Top 40 hits, however – which would be respect enough for anyone. Their third album fared a little better.

But after five years together, and the dissolution of the marriage between Lady Miss Kier and husband and band partner Supa DJ Dimitry, Deee-Lite would de-commissioned. And the will of Capitalism would take another.

Before Car CD Players Were Only Used to Hold Mobile Phones

Al Jaffe is an illustrator and writer for Mad Magazine. His work first appeared in the magazine in 1955 and still does to this day. Jaffee is 98 years old.

Jaffe did a recurring series in the magazine as well as books called Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions. This is one.

The Kind of Love that Never Dies Is Often the Very Kind that Does

You can’t front feeling like this.

On his 1974 album So What, Joe Walsh attempted to make sense of the loss of his daughter and the debilitating grief that went with it (rarely possible). She was not quite three years old when her seat would take the direct impact of a car running a stop sign. His response would be A Song for Emma.

The song’s emotional atomic weight is a like that of a Rare Earth element: Its density of heartbreak is both stunning and subtle. It leaves a burning chill like dry ice. If you want to write something that’ll nail people to the floor, then take a lesson here – don’t write about s--t that never happened. When it’s real or not, the reader/listener knows. You can’t front. It’s a part of existence we’re just too familiar with to accept facsimile or artifice. And this song is real AF.

Walsh’s marriage to Emma’s mother would end not long after, as often happens with such a loss. Ten years later Walsh was in a relationship with Stevie Nicks and still in mourning. Nicks would be so moved by his sharing of the experience she wrote the song Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You about it. Of the song she said it was “…the most committed song I ever wrote…Nothing in my life ever seems as dark anymore since [the day he shared the his story with me].”

You don’t need to have kids of your own to understand the heartbreak rattling around inside Song for Emma, though it’ll help. If you do, expect your eyes to piss bitch tears. Though, I promise they’ll be cleansing ones.

Sometimes, the heart just needs to sit in its feels. This song’ll drop you into subterranean depths quick. You may think you won’t want to go there, but on a wintry day, it may be just the thing.

An Old Joke Still Killing: Killing Joke

I love it when old guys deliver. And here Killing Jokes ships like a meth-smoking Flying Dutchmen on 11.

A brief history: British, formed in 1978, often credited with being the instigators of what’d become known as industrial. Their early albums featured tribal drumming, guitar slabs on repeat, simple grooves, and singer Jaz Coleman’s distinctive roar which often seemed to operate beyond the redline. He seemed capable of massive vocal bursts that could’ve been sculpted on a cheese grater. They were, and are as you’ll note below, if nothing else, intense.

Fifty-eight year old, New Zealand-born Coleman (his mother is half Bengali) has been known to have some, er, interesting worldly notions. He left music behind in 1982 to go to Iceland and wait out the impending asteroid apocalypse. During the time away he’d also study serious classical composing. Later, he’d work with “some of the world’s leading orchestras.” He’d also become an ordained priest and a father of three daughters. After touring the U.S. many times, he has come to see Americans as the obese, food doped, crippled with short attention spans, dumbed-down, and unfocused passive zombies that we are. He also says computers are killing the future’s potential great minds.

Fair enough.

The 2015 version of Killing Joke flexes a sound of brutal guitar hammering and insistent ruthless drumming. It’s a groove fit for slamming on the dance floor. And that voice: When he says “I am the virus,” you will believe. So clamp on the headphones and prepare for five minutes of an aural apocalypse you won’t regret.