Thursday 17 September 2009

More Music,

A quiet girl like this....


became, in a few years, a loud one like this.


Having just posted Suzi Pinns, from 1978's "Jubilee", (yes, I know... Queen Elizabeth II's silver jubilee was in 1977, the film arrived a little late).... it brought me to thinking of other women in the punk era. And to Nina Hagen. Nina was born in the same year as Ms.Pinns, 1955, but in East Germany.
By the time she was nine she was considered an opera prodigy, she was expelled from the Free German Youth group at the age of twelve, left school and joined a band at sixteen, went to stage school, formed a band... 'allowed' to leave East Germany in 1976, she was listening to punk music in Hamburg, travelled to London, mixed with the Sex Pistols, The Slits, and othercentral figures of the punk movement. (I got all that from Wikipedia)... I first heard her when Icelandic punk friends played her records to me.
(disclaimer: I was NEVER a punk.)
I did, however, have a couple of her albums, on tape, which I'd listen to whilst working.

I'm sure she's absolutely deranged, but hey! she makes me laugh.



Quote: "I can't sing gospel, I'm a white chick"

Ha! makes Debbie Harry look like Goody Twoshoes!. Mind you, this is her being the very model of genteel restraint.
Here she is being a bit more herself.....

Jerusalem, Rule Britannia, Suzi Pinns.



From the 1978 film, 'Jubilee', dir Derek Jarman.

JERUSALEM

William Blake (1757-1827)

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear!
O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.


Suzi Pinns was the character Amyl Nitrate in the film, she was not really called Suzi Pinns, she was called Jordan, well, that was her assumed punk-name, when she worked in Vivienne Westwood's King's Road boutique, of course, Jordan wasn't really her name either.
Her real name was Pamela Rooke.
She sang with Adam and the Ants (who were also in Jubilee) and managed them for a while. Was stripped on stage by the Sex Pistols....
The Interweb tells me she now works as a veterinary nurse and breeds Burmese cats.