Phoebe Legere
"Ultra-Romantic Super Diamond Star"
By Kenney Silvers
(SugarBuzz No Name City)
SugarBuzz Magazine
LIMBO CALLING....VENUS RISES....SHE WISE MAGIC....CULTURAL REVOLUTIONARY...FAIRY GODMOTHER OF SOUL...REDEEMER OF OUTCASTS...CONCEPTUAL-BOMB THROWER...BEWILDERING ENCHANTRESS...DUTCHESS OF THE BLUES...QUEEN OF THE MONDO D.I.Y. UNDERGROUND....TIMELESS HOT BLONDE COCKTAIL...THE INDOMITABLE PHOEBE LEGERE!!!
"Beauty is Truth-Truth, Beauty..." (-Keats)
"Punk ain't no religious cult, Punk means thinking for yourself-You ain't hardcore cause you spike your hair, when a jock still lives inside your head..." (-Jello Biafra)
"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus, who presses out this glorious wine for men, and makes them drunk with the spirit." (-Ludwig Van Beethoven)
"The music industry is worse than ever. Rocknroll is great, because it's the people's art, but it's not ours, anymore. Right now, rocknroll belongs to business." (-Patti Smith)
"Do ya really wanna be a cop?!" (-Joe Strummer)
As far back as I can remember, there's always been a tedious roll-call of these bogus, government-sanctioned, wonder-bread "celebrities" (Friends, Tom Cruise, Sarah Jessica-Parker, Michael J. Fox, Patrick Swayze, 90210, Will Smith, Hannah Montana, Madonna, etc., etc.) assigned to validate the two car/TV lifestyle of unfortunate Gameshow-Debbies with orange-ish bleach jobs and four kids, corralled into hopelessly drug-infested, low-income housing in the plantation-states, while the men are all in jail, or locked in the factories; as well as the slightly more-advantaged self-obsessed community college graduates, 'obliged to shop incessantly in malls full of ugly, over-priced shite. Never mind, their Nike wearing, Hooters-frequenting, gun-totin', truck drivin' male dupe counterparts. The fifty million who supposedly voted for Palin. The Pro-War, tragically misinformed, midwestern TV mainstream. I don't get those people. They spend $200 a month on CABLE! The abuse-box constantly blares and taunts greedy housewives and their tool husbands with all that Extreme Make-Over/Deal or No Deal/Get Rich Quick/Lotto hooey, but for the poor, huddled masses, no TV Make-Over Bus is coming to our aid. TV watchers don't seem to care if they have no real prospects, or meaning in life, so long as they're visited daily by these friendly, comforting talk show faces. Oprah's solution to all your problems, invariably, has something to do with a make-over, more shopping, and rigorous conformity, while Fat Doctor Phil stands by, to admonish the men for not earning enough.
In an age where the airwaves are controlled tightly by the mighty media corporations, and their manipulative, pooch-wagging falsehoods, and photo-shopped fabrications, one's worth is measured exclusively on purchase-power. It's like one big, digital-strip mall, populated by willing rubes, and celebrity shoppers, where false-reality shows spit-out an endless stream of gullible, "Wet Girls On Spring Break" air-heads, famous for being famous...but there still stands one exceptional talent famous for being uncommon...for being fabulous...for being unapologetically HERSELF.
IN THE EIGHTIES, as a lay about runaway, I lived a block and a half from the Rivington St. Art-Park on the Lower East Side of NYC, and was introduced to the seedy after-hours milieu of hip underground film-makers, artists, drop-outs, and musicians like Wiseblood, Nick Zedd, Basquiat, Mark Kostabi, Lydia Lunch, and Keith Haring by Minkie and Lisa, the bohemian goddesses who kindly took me in, off the mean streets. Lisa used to work for Vincent Fremont-Andy Warhol's "go-to guy", in those days. I remember how a lot of our trendy, well-heeled neighbors were turned-on by all the no wave/artschool noise rock of Live Skull, Pussy Galore, Black Snakes, the Swans, and Sonic Youth, but the flannel-clad, slumming college scene never spoke to me. I craved bad-ass rock'n'roll and turned to Lords Of The New Church, Hanoi Rocks, Gen X, the Only Ones, Jim Carroll, and the Jacobites, as well as lesser lights like Circus Of Power, back when they still played Lismar Lounge as the Strangers, the Senders, the Waldos, Skin N Bones, Angels In Vain, the Fleshtones, Fuzztones, Antoinettes, Wendy Wild and the Mad Violets, all that action, see? The only arty, highbrow motherfuckers from the downtown crowd that really spoke my language were Phoebe and Foetus, cos they were the ones sadly cursed, like me, with these rock'n'roll hearts.
Yeah-Phoebe left her lasting, spell-like imprint on me way back when I was still the teenage Zorro of the snakeskin under-world. She seems to have the same mesmerizing effect on anyone who beholds her, except for a certain type of envious female who envies her dazzling beauty and talent. While she's very naturally attracted some of the other great spirits of our time, she's never had to trade vicariously on any of her companion's accomplishments, because she was always every bit as talented in her own right, as any of her broadly- celebrated companions.
Long before Downtown NYC became the unfortunate and exclusive domain of horrible rich people-goofy teenage millionaires, and lawyers-in-love, I used to strut around the Village in my dangling skeleton ear-rings, and black leather threads, listening to "Love" by the Cult on my Sony Walkman, smoking cigarettes, shoplifting French rock postcards, and feeling right- the-fuck-on.... Maybe I didn't see Joey Ramone, Kid Congo Powers, Rudi Protrudi, Stiv Bators, or Phoebe Legere everyday, but it still felt cool to know they all lived there. Lou Reed, Billy Idol, Dee Dee and John Spacely and Cheetah Chrome. You could FEEL it in the air-that rock'n'roll circus communal spirit.
I told my old lady that listening to vintage Dylan is alot like being able to talk to your Father, except he's not lying to you. Like alot of you, I look to Patti and Chrissie for consolation, cosmic muse-mama's milk and honey...but Phoebe is something else, entirely. In a better world, she'd have a powerful band behind her, and be as big as U2. I go to Phoebe when I need fuel for faith-to really hear what's good about America, still singing. "The chimes of freedom flashing". She brings with her, to the stage, the spirits of Blondie and Billie Holiday and Hoagie Carmichael...Jim Morrison and Woody Guthrie, Odetta and Timothy Leary, Ziggy Stardust and Marilyn Monroe-a whole pantheon of good ghosts.
She's a sha-woman. The Mayflower-Maestro. She's been the perennial Best-Kept-Secret/"IT"-Girl/Critic's Darling/Next-Big-Thing for so long now, among those who really "get it", that little could really be done to bolster her reputation. It's no accident that corporate America has steadily silenced, and ghetto-ized our most visionary messengers, and authentic voices, who speak to the better parts of us all, and enhance our otherwise dreary lives, to make way for tedious high school talent show auditions, judge shows, and all these bullshit celebrities like Fergie and Jessica Simpson and reality show clods and big machine frauds who eagerly play ball with the big media agenda of marketing distortion, distraction, imperialist-static, and Big Brother fear and doubt.
They're obviously unwitting agents of the prison-industrial complex, the actual enemies of freedom and democracy, pedaling isolation. I always think it's crucial to underscore the distinction between these microwave-safe, so-called "celebrities" you find in your neighborhood mega-mart freezers-most of whom are famous merely for having wealthy, or indulgent parents, without having to produce anything of lasting worth, besides camera time; and a TRUE STAR, cos see, kids, a TRUE STAR, is someone graced with some extra-special dazzle-think Hendrix, Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, and it don't all revolve around proper pitch, as to avoid some part-time Journey bassist tellin' you, "Kinda pitchy, dawg..." It can be primitive, or cultivated, that shimmering star quality-Tom Waits, or Bardot...Edie Sedgewick, Johnny Rotten. Van Morrison, or Maria Callas. It's that intangible VIBE that makes a star, talent and charisma, whether or not they EVER get acknowledged by "BIG MEDIA". Almost all of my favorite artists of this era are internationally ignored by the corporations. People like Michael Rank, Chick Graning, Mad Juana, Soho Dolls, Bobby Durango, the Hangmen, TSAR, and Inger Lorre. All those people are TRUE STARS, at least in my eyes. Jim Jones Revue, Living Things, Mary Weiss, Russell Brand, Stereo Junks, the Wolfmen, the Escovedo family, White Lies, Carbon/Silicon, and Sixty Ft. Dolls. That's the stuff I dig! Fuck big media, anyway-overpriced stadiums and air-guitar video games available at big-box plastic warehouses. There's still plenty to be said for the purity of intimate performances by real artists who are still in touch with their real audiences, who can convey a whole spectrum of real emotions, y'know?
All that product-rock wears on the soul. Jay-Z, or this week's rich kid punque band-it's always the exact same sparse drum tracks, blinding light-shows, retarded cheer-leader line-dances, booty chicks, and pyrotechnics - who can really tell the difference between Gene Simmons and Diddy, Miley Cyrus, or Fallout Boy? It's all the same rented shit! Vanity throwing its money around. By now, even the see no evil TV-watchers know the super-rich have been screwing the world with no remorse for the past eight years, while the zombies of death are glued to American Idol. The pharmaceutical gobbling, meat swilling, sports focused, gas guzzling, war tolerating, consumer class still feels compelled to constantly monopolize every lingering resource at once-because they can-with their credit-cards. Somewhere, on rolling, green campuses, college kids talk about Buddha and Bob Marley, but cats like me, we're seemingly cursed to scrub latrine floors for the rest of our disappointing lives. TV force-feeds us the super rich white man's reality, but for many of us permanently downsized and dislocated refugees, it's just more work, work, monotony, work, worry, TV, work, rent, shame, humiliation, and watching you guys with the khaki shorts and chicken wing stains, driving your dumb trucks, while your rude wives are out there on cell-phones, obnoxiously narrating their eternal whoopee-shopping.
Total sobriety, while hopelessly immersed in deep poverty, is a foul purgatory I would never even wish on those who excluded and blacklisted me, intentionally. Pay the man, punch the clock, pay the man, punch the clock. Or be homeless, begging for the privilege of filling out lengthy applications for minimum wage jobs on in-store kiosks that demand you take psych profiles, drug-tests, and extensive background checks for minimum wage jobs that won't be enough to keep a roof over your head, as you sink ever lower into debt, until no one cool wants to save ya. Once you're down and out, it's over; there are no more Mickey Rourke Big Comebacks, once you've fallen into Real Poverty. They never let you back up, after that. Old friends don't wanna know. Rejections come swift and furious; they'll pummel you with exclusion until you’re filthy with dried blood and self doubt. If you're rich, they'll bring you gifts, give you stuff for free. It's brutally twisted. The American Ruse is killing my spirit. Don't fall for it, youngsters, RUN NOW, while you still can. Otherwise, you'll all just end up like crabs in a box. Rodents on sticky traps, gnawing their own legs off. Slavery is pain. Just say no to TV-reality, war, government pills, video games, pre-packaged, artificial soundtrack music for insufferably trendy rich people into high end wind chimes and elaborate ceramic pot-pipes...Kim Wylde's eighties wardrobe, plastic dance fads, a photo-op with guestlove, and more obedient behavior, under thinly-guised Orwellian double talk. Work WILL NOT set you free. I know I'm sort of obliged to remain grateful and optimistic for the recent Regime Change, here at home, but SO FAR, it looks to those of us on the verge of getting evicted by preoccupied middle-class landlords who don't care about your sob story, like MORE OF THE SAME: more welfare hand-outs and bonuses to billionaires and bankers, and smirking C.E.O.'s! Neo-Con Blowhards, Rush and Trump and O'Reilley all fancy themselves "stars", too-back in the sixties, we called 'em "pigs".
1984 has come to pass, kids, and if you think that's hyperbole, it's just cause you're too busy freshening up your on-line profile, while getting high on that danger herb you keep hidden inside the head of your Astro-Boy Japanese toy bank, while trying for high-score on Guitar Hero, with a Net-Flix video on your door-step, a Blue-tooth phone in your ear, platinum credit in your camo-shorts pocket, and cum-stains on your still-ironic Iron Maiden t-shirt, thinking about your imported beer in the big silver fridge. The rest of us are waiting in lines all day for the beautiful privilege of begging for more Forced-Labor Camp franchised America, minimum wage-slave food-service, or big-box retail jobs that you have to apply for electronically.
The red-tape they want you to go through, and time-consuming groveling is what I'd expect from the college financial aid office at the community college. The Man calls protest graffiti a "quality of life-crime", but I tell you now: $8/hr. is a "quality of life crime". How do those people sleep at night? This pharaoh-like pyramid-scheme culture only gives bail-outs to people who will NEVER KNOW what it's like to need 'em. All my shit-hoarding ex-friends are so proud of their Diplomas and Property, but the moolah they most often, inherited, or married into, has done very, very little to enhance their humanity, creativity, humor, or compassion. They're all still consumed with either grasping upward when in the company of their rich friends ("networking") or, when they see a have-not coming from miles away, they go into that all-too-familiar defensive posture. Clinging, gnarled, mean, unhappy.
The celestial Legere, a natural born libertine, cares about people-art and ideas-freedom and social justice, more than hollow prestige, money, fame, or power, which are all just chaser-drugs, like crack, anyhow. Which may be why she never ages, whereas all her would-be former rivals are getting the pinched, plastic-surgery tight faces they deserve. She flows, while they clinch.
Don't get me wrong, I think M.I.A. is foxy on the cover of Spin Magazine, too. I like the vibe and look of Nico Vega - only wish they were a bit more articulate with their messages...I like alot of fairly disposable music, like that Lil' Mama "Lipgloss" song, f'rinstance-but the world is full of foxy chicks, and arty Santogold gadflies. Phoebe Legere is better than just clever. She's got soul-power. The Anti-Authoritarian, Heretic, Rebel-Goddess is the queen of the Mondo-D.I.Y. Underground, with her relentless boundary-exceeding, undiminished showmanship, and raw talent, she effortlessly eclipses most any current brand-name entertainers you might care to play along with. She's often compared to Madonna, which is absurd to me, because Phoebe achieves her art without the aid of conference rooms full of lackeys, stylists, paper-shufflers, producers, yes-men, ego-caressers, and professional bean counters. Where Madoona has always been trite, predictable, and boring, Phoebe's always cutting-edge, blazing new trails, with her activist-accordion and trademark originality. Perhaps the marketing-wonks of Big Money can only remotely envision her as an "Adult-Alternative" chanteuse they could maybe market towards the Norah Jones/Sarah McLaughlin/Starbucks crowd, but Phoebe is no corporate tool. She lives her songs, like a bluesman, and steers her own career, like a protest-song. A virtuoso master of roman-candle-like dynamics, and cheap theatrics, of creating ATMOSPHERE with nothing more than that peerless voice of hers, and perhaps a simple prop, or two, Ala Tom Waits, Edith Piaff, Captain Beefheart, Liberache, or Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Phoebe Legere is a force of nature, organic, alive, her artistry keeps evolving....
Bitchy old impoverished luddities like me are forever resentful, cos we don't have access to the flash techno-toys most of you take for granted. I-Pods, Lap-tops, cell-phones, Pro-Tools...none of that's in your reach when you're struggling just to stay off the streets, hustling to keep from being evicted, so us poor and disenfranchised folk are still attached to the old album format-or, even, CD's. Those of you who are blessed enough to own computers and have the internet are really fortunate, because you have round-the-clock access to the soothing, and consoling music of Phoebe Legere. Cherish her now, SugarBuzzers, there won't be another like her. A few years ago, all I had to listen to for about a year, besides the public radio station, was a couple of CD's by Joe Strummer, Ian Hunter's "Rant", and Phoebe Legere's milestone record, "Last Tango In Bubble-Land”: a techno-torch-song-gospel-experimental-classical-reggae-loungey-jazz-punk-zydeco tour de force that you probably never heard. Maybe Lisa and Wendy, and the mohawked guit-sling from Bow Wow Wow should be her band, henceforth.
I wish she'd find her own Mick Ronson figure. A genius guitar-playing counter-part, a firebrand deserves a firebrand--but what do I know? I can't find one, either. Where are all the fuckoff guitar players?? 'Meantime, P bravely soldiers on, perfecting her craft, plying her many splendored trades, cultivating her whimsical inventions, and staging her new incarnations, all over the internet, which is where most of you think you live, nowadays, anyway. Look out honeys, cos she's using technology. The ever inspirational Legere evolves, and grows, diggin' the new, without ever abandoning her real friends and ideals, and staying true to her core integrity. Who else can we really say those things about, at this point?
I still watch Letterman some nights, cos I only get one channel, when I'm not too zombiefied by the inevitable anti-depressants, and humiliating, life-force draining job at the local grind-mill. I sometimes enjoy Craig Ferguson, too-he should book Phoebe on his show, but rarely do I see his often-exquisite musical guests, like the Damned, cos I just can't keep my eyes open that late, anymore. A month or two ago, I saw some piano-playing girl singer on one of those shows, who made a flicker of an impression on me, because she wasn't some 15-piece joke rock band like Vampire Weekend, or something. She could really sing her heart out, and accompanied herself on a real instrument, she was Australian, blonde, had an unusual name. That's all that registered. But she was still more memorable than this revolving door of rich kids pimped non-stop by the TV mainstream. I revile the dumbass shopping exploits of the idle and talentless rich - all the Billy Bush/Fergie/The Hills/Jessica Simpson/Boy-Bland buffoons. What kind of fuckery is this? That I have to hear about Spencer and Heidi and those Kardashians and preppie whiteboys with turn-tables, while the whole world goes to hell, and the police-state occupies your town square? Fackoff, People Magazine! Just dreadful, stump-dumb, Kid-Rock bullshit to distract the children of fat, chortling Republicans from that conscience that whispers to them that it's WRONG to spend more than $100 on a purse at anytime, ever. What did ANY of those tit-jobs ever DO besides let some liver-spotted old tycoon grope 'em up for a reality show? Sick, wretched, redundant heiresses like Lou Adler's kid are everything that's gone wrong in the age of neo-con robber barons, lawless white collar corporate killers, private armies, and "golden parachutes".
LET US NOW CELEBRATE REAL TALENT. A wizard, a true star, with vision, beauty, and innovation, if only for a few more long-winded paragraphs, here, shall we? How does one begin to discuss the real magic of an unforgettable medicine woman, like the one and only, Phoebe Legere? It's difficult to not just fixate on her beauty, but even harder to deny her unbridled genius. She's already been compared by more learned writers than yours to every genius who ever lived, y'know? "The female Freddy Mercury". "The Female Beethoven". "The Female Frank Zappa". From Salvador Dahli, to Sara Vaughan. She's a real heavyweight. She does the whole supper club/vaudeville thing so effortlessly it probably bores her, but the melancholic torch singing at the piano may be my favorite of her many Bowie-like personas, when she improvises for a room full of people with all the verve and wit of Louis Prima, Sam Butera, Keeley Smith, Bobby Darrin, and Chris Isaak all rolled into one. While singing with the range and soul of an uncola-diva. The soaring majesty of her golden pipes is really unimpeachable. Her paintings are as striking as Blake or Kahlo. If she was a dude, and ALL SHE DID was WRITE, we'd all still dig her, and follow here, even without the intoxicating doll-face. The yankee rose of the avant gutter. Our truth-telling humanitarian. Playwright. Vegetarian. Performance Artist. Underground Film-Maker. Example-Setter, Luminous Beacon. Songwriter. Soul-Stirrer! If I were her producer, I'd ask her to really focus on fine-tuning her autobiographical, literary pop-art lyrics she so excels at - cos like Chuck D. used to say, music's gotta be the news, now that the deregulated capitalist power-structure 
owns and monopolizes the entire media-'maybe encourage her to collaborate with the righteous politico, Naomi Klein, or people from the American Indian Movement, the way the Clash used to work with both 60's beat poets, and reggae toastmasters, cos alot of her hardcore fan base craves a lengthy statement-perhaps a socially conscious, deliciously seditious, world-pop double album to be pressed on colored vinyl, like a cross between "1999" and "London Calling".
Like many of you, I've been downhearted since the particularly hard-hitting deaths of Thompson and Strummer -we keep losing all the torch keepers and golden agers-Lux Interior, Ron Asheton, Bo Diddley, Studs Terkel, Mitch Mitchell, Norman Mailer, Betty Page, Levi Stubbs...There ain't many shining examples left in this punishing world that we can take much heart from. I do believe in Ralph Nader, Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith, Nina Hagen, and Sinead O'Connor. It's just hard to see the light, while miserably dwelling in the dreary confines of sobriety in the inky-depths of this Kafka-esque surveillance-state, all while living hand to mouth, and humble hat in hand, groveling for an honest wage, and seeing most of my old roll-call take their government pills, and swallow the big lies that their lives will be fuller if they work harder and ruthlessly compete to acquire more dumb plastic shit. And BRAG about it-like it's something to be proud of.
"DON'T TAZER ME, BRO..."
I saw this Susan Sarandon narrarated video last night called, "This Is What Democracy Looks Like", and it reminded me how empty the white-suburban rat-race is. How we've got to remobilize the real rock'n'roll community, and share information, and even our precious resources, and get together, again. We all have a common cause that's far more crucial than the status of one's ego-trip, or parochial local-legend status, or comfort, or convenience, or showing-off all our cash and prizes. Remember how lame our parents seemed to us, when they got sucked into that whole Keeping Up with The Huxtables social programming? The corporate-world has quite obviously created a prison-slave state, policed by jackbooted paramilitary thugs with terrorist mentalities, 
who get off on violence and killing for their paycheck in the name of the lord. Read about Blackwater. It's up to the people to resist the big media static and lies that instruct us to compete, and consume. We got to get back to LOVE, my weary rock'n'roll motherfuckers, and start creating a better world, NOW. Phoebe's been trying to tell us this for years. The artists should be working in harmony with one another, and have a sacred responsibility to unbury the truth. People only hear good music on commercials, y'know, that are used to induce you to buy shit.
The catchiest shit on STATE-RADIO (Duffy, Beyonce') are just glorified jingles for diamond stores and lip gloss. Are these broads even "artists"? Or just paid-for, collaborative, million dollar art-projects? Amy Winehouse? The Babyshambles guy? The Killers? You're kidding me, right? None of that shamelessly derivative Spin Magazine shit even touches me, except to rub it in how I'm still chained helplessly to the sink in the basement of the tumour-factory, while any, and most every, random middle class, Red Bull sucking, South Park quoting, suckshit haircut in the world makes whiteboy disco-music about fart jokes for a living. There's just not alot on the horizon, y'know?
I DID dig that androgynous Antony kid from Canada who was in the Leonard Cohen tribute concert video. He had soul. I still have a soft spot for all my aging punk heroes like Kusworth, Perrett, Hunter, Hanoi, Morrissey, and the Brian James Gang. I read Matt Taibbi's political rants in the otherwise uninspiring pages of Rolling Stone, and look forward to Johansen and Sylvain's next record, but mostly, it just gets worse and worse, don't it? I mean, I'm thrilled that Obama closed the torture-camp at Gitmo, and suspended torture, first thing, but I'm still being browbeaten to death by all that shitty, gutless, push-button Mickey Mouse celebrity shit--daily, and it really gets me down. Donchu people ever get tired of fakeass pre-programmed, faux-hip-hop commercials for capitalism without conscience? It's appalling how even the old P-Funk crowd seems totally content to show up like the old Lone Ranger guy at any super market opening, or ballgame, to sign autographs, shamelessly selling half written jams to sports-oriented, dumbass white people, and putting their whacky name brand logos on franchised concept restaurants like Jimmy Buffett, 
and Alice Cooper, and Sammy Hagar....Don't those fools have enough money, yet? WHERE IS THE SOUL? I figure summa you must feel the same way. Which brings us back to why I urge you to listen to Little Steven, Naomi Klein, and Aphrodite In Human Form...PHOEBE LEGERE. Wise up, Americans!
-Kenney Silvers