Teena Marie

[koganbot]

I used her as a challenge, a battle flag, and a question mark, and what I wrote about her really pissed her off.* The challenge was that she created music way better than anyone like me seemed able to anymore - "people like me" being the children of Dylan and the Stones, now a musical marginal intelligentsia that was constantly tripping itself up and rolling itself into the fetal position, a little ball. The question for me was how do I achieve what she achieved while still remaining myself, and the answer was that I couldn't remain myself, I had to take in more than I'd been able to so far. That eventually meant committing myself to what I do best - which is to write - and to demand of myself that the writing live in a wide open space, as big a world as possible. When I was working on my review, Leslie put the problem of how to describe Teena, "How do you capture..." and then she held her arms out in a giant, reaching embrace. And so I started, "Naked To The World - that ridiculous title-... It's more like the world is naked to her, and she slurps it all up."

Watch on YouTube

*Or so I heard third-hand through either Doug Simmons or RJ Smith, and Chuck subsequently confirmed when he interviewed her.

Comments

[koganbot]

No obit in the NY Times yet, but they posted this from the Associated Press:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/26/arts/AP-US-Obit-Teena-Marie.html

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

What didn't she like about what you wrote?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

(it's been interesting seeing which artists have been paying particular tribute to Teena Marie on Twitter - Dâm-Funk, Teedra Moses and Katy B - all make sense in different ways.)

[koganbot]

Gamble & Huff put out a press release praising her, which is how I found out she'd died - I'm on their publicist's list, so it showed up in my email inbox.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I found out on Twitter - woke up to lots of RIP messages. I think every celebrity death this year I've first heard through Twitter.

[koganbot]

don't know, though I can guess. Remember, there's the paragraph that begins, "Teena can be such a NITWIT." And there's the description of me and Leslie going into gales of hysterical laughter the first time we listened to Teena's tribute to Minnie Riperton, the point being the vast difference in sensibility between us (and people like us) and Teena, my trying to rub people's faces in the fact that at least some of the advantage lay with Teena. That said, the piece is probably the most massive rave I've ever written about anyone ever. I remember when my friend Mary read the passage that went, "You know, in so-called 'punk rock' we want to make the most blistering rock 'n' roll song, so 'Okay, let's concentrate everything on blistering rock 'n' roll.' Teena tosses off blister like it's mere background throb." Mary, a writer, said, "I wish someone would write that about me, that I toss off blister like it's mere background throb."

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah that slightly manic edge to her voice is one of the most singular things about Teena Marie to me - as Rich J put it on Twitter, at her best she was unhinged:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IfFpjEEK24

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Haha it's been so long that I have genuinely forgotten completely how to embed youtubes in bloody lj.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

That is a great song, but it's one of those that leave you vaguely pondering for ages like, lips to find you? What does that even mean? XD;

I have a sense that your taste in music and mine converge most closely in the mid-80s.

[koganbot]

John Leland once wrote that my writing was fundamentally an attempt to reconcile my love for Iggy Pop and my love for Teena Marie. So, I'm merging the '60s and the '80s, I guess. One reason I like E.via so much is that I have a vague hope - with almost no evidence to support it - that she's going to combine the Rolling Stones and the Cover Girls.

Yes, there is much to food for thought in Teena Marie's lyrics. E.g.:

Crystal blue persuasion in your dreams the spice
Will find you chilly killy in your bed at night

Don Allred once spun a complicated yarn on this, his fantasy premise being that "chilly killy" is a reference to Jean Claude Killy, whom he seemed to be confusing with Spider Sabich.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm actually listening to her stuff right now? [Instead of working on a disastrously late work project.] Whatever exists on German mp3blogs at the moment, anyway... The Internet sez Nicki Minaj used "Square Biz" on a mixtape, which I haven't found, but listening to the 6:40 original single version it's startlingly obvious why she would have. The rap on this is crrrrrazy.

[koganbot]

Her liner notes can be wondrous - enthralling one second, appallingly naff another. "Once upon a time there lived a little girl name Pity who decided more than anything in the world she wanted to be green." That's from the back cover of Emerald City, the album that gave us "Lips To Find You" and other fierce rockers.

From Robbery: "Like omicron is the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet or Sarah Vaughan is like jade – Jessica Lange became Frances, and Dunaway and the word respect go together like hand in glove"; also mentioned on the sleeve are Shirley MacLaine, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Mahatma Gandhi, Narada, Maya Angelou (who also appears in "Square Biz"), Fonda (Jane, presumably), Shuri, Ntozake, "and women period," Natalie Wood Wagner, and Billie Holiday: "Like Billie Holiday to the blues, or Joan of Arc to sainthood, destiny was never my choice, I am only an instrument like saxophone-needle-conversation and Ms. Pacman."

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Missy repurposed that rap on Ciara's "1 2 Step", which makes a lot of sense too...

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'll have to listen to it again! Darn, I haven't heard that song for years.

...Haaa there are not a few bits of her songs I'm recognizing from being quoted elsewhere. XD;

[koganbot]

[koganbot]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBHNgV6_znU

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Frank do you have links to any of the old stuff you wrote about Teena Marie?

[koganbot]

No, unfortunately. Most of it was in my fanzine, and my review of Naked To The World was before the Voice was online. Actually, you can get the first four paragraphs through Google books, but then they kill the next page.