Well, all right then. Who doesn't remember where they were, one fateful night in 1991, when first this spectacular bit of bizarerie hit one's favorite video bar or dance floor?
Yes - as if it needed any explication - it's the immortal Miss Tammy Wynette, transmogrified into some kind of fierce (and more than a little bemused) pagan diva by the very twisted minds who various billed themselves as The Timelords, the Jams, or the KLF. Justified and Ancient, indeed - although it's sobering to realize that at this moment of career resurrection, when to our cynical gaze she seemed a relic from as vanished a past as Norma Desmond's, Miss Wynette was all of 49. Now I feel Ancient.
Apparently the KLF may have some new tricks up their sleeve, but I can't help thinking that without Tammy, it just won't be the same...
However advanced in years it may make me, I do indeed remember the first time this popped up - I was out with a pal at the old Uncle Charlie's on Greenwich Avenue. A few years earlier, the Pet Shop Boys paved the way for this kind of collaboration, but nothing in their glorification of Miss Dusty Springfield could have prepared one for this.
And all these years later, after the holidays and nearly a week of enforced idleness as a result of this blasted cold, I'm feeling more than a little ready for Muu-Muu Land myself...
This song still ROCKS!
ReplyDeleteYou'll get no argument from me!
DeleteIt must be Kismet... Only this evening, this eloquent article about the impending return of the KLF as a sign of salvation in the music industry brought Madam Arcati and I to discuss Miss Wynette's very unexpected renaissance courtesy of this very record... Jx
ReplyDeleteUncle Charlie's! I remember seeing videos of Grace Jones' "Love is the Drug" there, as well as clips of Roseanne Barr doing standup, long before she was on television. Thanks for the time travel!
ReplyDelete