10 Stories of Women. (8) Vivien Goldman
Launderette For
@[Taddi] "If you can’t get an erection, then you buy a gun."
Vivien Goldman, the "punk professor" in the music world— as she likes to point out— has done it all: from being Bob Marley’s first press officer in the UK to director, producer, journalist, documentarian, and musician, and finally an adjunct professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University.
A beautiful career for the daughter of two German Jews who escaped the Holocaust and settled in England.
A friend of Adrian Sherwood and John Lydon, she has played and sung with the best of that scene that discovered and mixed dub with punk and industrial sounds (she was the voice of the New Age Steppers, to name one).
But I recommend you get her "Resolutionary," the only full-length album in her name, which not only contains some gems and her only "hit" (the "Laundrette" that I suggest you listen to), but is also an excellent example of her militant commitment: fierce and never mundane lyrics, focused on feminism and anti-fascism.
“Vernon and Norman/Were in their Mini/While the skinheads beat a person on the sidewalk/Blood everywhere” (from "Private Armies").
A tough one, capable of continuing her DJ set in Jamaica even during a shootout.... "I thought the sound of the bullets was the beats of a synthesizer drum and that people were lying on the ground because they were dancing the ‘Get Flat,’ the trend of the moment." (in this case, perhaps more "dazed" than tough, but whatever).
Definitely a character.
Needless to say, there’s no trace of her here on the DeB, I wonder why.
Needless to say, "Resolutionary" is a really great album!
