Sunday, 15 June 2008

Diana from V - Could you die!!!

Ok ... firstly ... OH.MY.GOD.!!!! I have to explain. Way back in the 80s, for a period, one of the few things that made school bearable was that you could see your friends and talk incessantly about last night's epsiode of V!! What am I talking about?? Well, V was a miniseries on TV about alien invasion of earth.


It had all your basic american stereotypes dripping in acid wash and shoulder pads, frizzy perms and bodywaves!! But central to all this hairsprayed polyester madness was the character of Diana - the acid queen, cat suit wearing, big haired, redlipsticked, rodent eating head of the aliens!!

diana - aka Jane badler in V

Well nothing has changed really ....


jane in recent permutation

Turns out Jane Badler not content with just being erstwhile TV queen, is also a singer ... of the torchsong cabaret variety.

Anyhoo, let me say how fortuitous it is that I just watched tonight's CSI where Grissom expounds on his "string theory" because this is the perfect encapsulation of the notion that there is no real coincidence in life.

When the DVD of V came out several years ago ... I shat my pants!! M had never seen it but it didn't take long before he was hooked. We then mention this to DK who as it turned out remembered it from her childhood and got an aboslute kick out of watching it again ... P apparently was not allowed to see it because of its appalling cheesiness?? I dunno ...

But despite being in different states, towns even countries, we have all been touched in some way by V ... and extending this further ... we have all been touched by Jane!!

But the real gem of this story was when I read about how she now is married to an Australian, resides in Melbourne and had hooked up with local band SIR to record and perform. I shat meself for the second time and couldn't wait to share this extraordinary piece of coincidence with someone, anyone who would indulge me. But I never got the opportunity and when I did, I forgot about it entirely, until one day I blurted it all out to R, who is my 80s "friend in the fridge".

He'd never seen a single episode of V but he goes "funny you mention it ... " The world stopped spinning right there and then!!!

Turns out he's doing BVs for her and the band (are you dying at this moment ... coz I'm reliving death as I type this!!!) Oh the questions the questions ... and none answered to my satisfaction ... betch!!!

Well forward the reel to a few months later and I read about the album launch of The Devil has my Double at Toff in the town - Jane Badler and SIR. So I text R to ask if he's performing and he says Yes and do I want names on the door (Dead!!) so I says to M we're going!! and as we were planning to meet up with P anyways I say Lets go!! So off we went.

We parked the car at P's and trundled off in the cold on foot to one of Melbourne's finest drinking holes - the Toff in the Town:


We get there before 9 so Toff wasn't that packed. We even managed to score a banquette all to ourselves (well you say Booth, I say banquette .. i just like the word). The whole Curtin House joint on Swanston Street is one of the many reasons I love this town. Its all here in one building ... cookie, metropole, order & progress, toff in the town ... warms the cockles of this aesthete's heart!! Creative nirvana!!



  M looking all ghostly and nosferatu-like in our banquette

After pretty much sculling a divine glass of Gewurtztramminer ... we headed off to the performance space to bags a seat.


Its an intimate space, but all the tables were filled so we had to put up with chairs at the back of the venue in front of the support for the support, Jess something or other, who we naturally bagged without knowing that her posse was in earshot behind us ... typical!!!

  blurry shot of Jess in her velour catsuit - hhmmm

In between we played a game of spot the crap celebrity ... sigrid thornton won hands down .. is there a more annoying tv personage??? what is it about her?? She's relatively harmless ... is that cockscuker's mouth ... its like she permanently has a costume duck beak's mask on!!!

Finally it was Jane on stage!!! I absolutely loved it!!! Technical difficulties and all! She had the voice, the outfit, the poses ... it was truly "melodramatic pop/jazz" as described by her myspace page. I kept saying to P that I felt like I was in a david lynch movie ... all we needed was a coked up dwarf and some backward masking.

(http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=201436689)

 
R looked nervous but maybe it was more to do with the fact that he also spotted Nanouk of the ice in her siberian fur hat!!! Should have taken a photo of that one ... what a waste!!


  crap zoom on mobile phone camera ... but that's R with the white tie

Will be buying her album at the earliest convenience.

Apologies to any friends still reading this but I will be dining out on this story for awhile.

Hope you all had great weekends too!!!

And here is THE scene!!:
 

 
And here is the hotness live!!!:
 

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