Strange Conversations: Part Sixty-Nine
Posted 4 December 2008 in Strange Conversations by Catriona
During a heated conversation about who the lead singer of Transvision Vamp was:
ME: Well, I nearly posted a video on Pownce with the tagline, “Hey, does anyone want to watch Wendy James seduce a microphone stand?
NICK: Wendy James?
ME: Yes, the lead singer of Transvision Vamp.
NICK: Isn’t Wendy James the Canadian-Australian chanteuse?
ME: No, that was Wendy . . . something else. [Matthews, we remembered later.] Anyway, she hasn’t recorded anything in ages.
NICK: Yes, she has.
ME: Not really.
NICK: Well, she’s been doing a lot of the moody, slow jazz exclusively performed in a certain kind of inner-city, elitist, avant garde Melbourne cafes.
ME: Well, nobody makes a living out of playing avant garde jazz in inner-city . . . slow . . . moody . . . cafes. Oh, shut up.
It’s almost impossible to refute an argument with that many adjectives.
Share your thoughts [13]
1
Wendy wrote at Dec 4, 08:41 pm
Wasn’t Wendy Matthews one of the singers on It Takes Two…she must have taken time off from her avant-garde, moody, elitist jazz to amke some actual money!
2
John wrote at Dec 5, 12:29 am
Wendy Matthews was Canadian?
3
Catriona wrote at Dec 5, 12:38 am
Apparently, she was born in Montreal. She seems to have grown up there, and then moved out in her teens to work her way to L.A. (Wikipedia!)
(According to my spelling, of course, she was “Candian.” I might just go and fix that silently . . . damn.)
I only know her from her early solo stuff: “The Day You Went Away,” etc. I didn’t know about either the moody jazz or the It Takes Two fame.
4
Wendy wrote at Dec 5, 03:55 am
also I’d especially like to thank strange conversation part 69 for helping to hum that transvision vamp song “I want your love” (which was perhaps their biggest hit?) most of the day
(at least you didn’t mention billy ray cyrus I guess)
5
Catriona wrote at Dec 5, 04:13 am
“I Want Your Love” was the one I was watching, where she seduced a microphone stand. More or less. “Seduce” is the polite way of putting it.
(And, yes, I was watching YouTube instead of working.)
I think there only other major hit was “Baby, I Don’t Care,” where there’s no microphone-stand seduction, but she is dressed like an ice-skater.
6
Wendy wrote at Dec 5, 04:22 am
hmmm…i don’t remember the ice-skating one…but the other band that came to mind from your conversation was roxette! and I had tried to block them from my memory as well…i wonder if they still exist…youtube..wikipedia here i go….and i am at work where we have jsut been given a lecture about wasteful internet usage!
7
Catriona wrote at Dec 5, 04:41 am
You’d probably remember the song—I think they got similar amounts of airplay. In fact, I think they were off the same album.
I secretly rather loved Roxette, until they did that song for, what was it? Pretty Woman? Or was it Ghost? Or both?
I think in real terms that means I loved them for the duration of one song. But I always thought they were rather funky.
8
Wendy wrote at Dec 5, 04:47 am
I have wikipediaed (is that a word?) – and now know quite a lot about roxette – they are still going strong…
there was a pretty ballad there…“listen to your heart” – don’t know if it was from a movie….
i think ghost the big song was unchained melody? so maybe pretty woman?
gosh now we have a busy afternoon of research ahead!
9
Catriona wrote at Dec 5, 04:57 am
Thanks to my own Wikipediaing (if you’ve invented the past participle above, we need to have the present participle. I have unilaterally decided that “Wikipedia” as a verb is regular verb rather than irregular), I now know that the Roxette song from Pretty Woman was “It Must Have Been Love”—you’re right, “Listen To Your Heart” wasn’t from a movie.
And, interesting Wikipedia fact for the day:
From the song page rather than the band page. These were the elections after the non-violent overthrow of Communism in the Velvet Revolution.
10
Catriona wrote at Dec 5, 04:58 am
Also, I feel the government and our alma maters should be very proud of our intense use of hard-won research skills in pursuit of this information.
11
Wendy wrote at Dec 5, 05:01 am
goodness…I didn’t get that far…the things you learn….I had conveniently forgotten that other song from Pretty Woman…the less said about that film the better for me…although some people love it for reasons i don’t understand
12
Wendy wrote at Dec 5, 05:01 am
yes don’t they realise that this stuff if v,important!!!!
13
Catriona wrote at Dec 5, 05:09 am
Oh, I’m with you: I can’t stand Pretty Woman. And if that’s a modern-day Cinderella, society needs to have a long, hard think about how it positions women.
I consider my obsessive reading of Wikipedia during working hours to be a honing of my skills.