Vocalist: Goldie and the Escorts - Goldie and the Gingerbreads
Ten Wheel Drive - Genya Ravan Band
Producer: The Dead Boys - Cryer and Ford - The Shirts - Ronnie Spector - The Wives - Cheetah Chrome - Dripping Goss (see blog for full list)
In her recent autobiography, Lollipop Lounge, Genya Ravan recalls opening for Sly and the Family Stone when an audience member shouted, Sly! Ravan abruptly stopped everything to tell the audience, If you dont want to listen to my music, I will get the fuck off. If you do want to listen to more of my music, then shut the fuck up. She was promptly arrested for obscenity.
If the story doesnt qualify Ravan as the original wild woman of rock, it certainly stakes her claim as a pioneer of bad-girl attitude, years before Courtney Love, Chrissie Hynde and even Janis Joplin, the singer to whom she was mercilessly compared in the late 60s and early 70s.
I hated when they compared me, she says today, older and perhaps a bit softer. I also understood why but not at the time. At the time I was just really pissed off.
Like Joplin, Ravan hollers with spine-chilling intensity, but she also has a gentler side that lets her explore jazz and soul with conviction. In todays music world, where young singers prove their eclecticism by trying on different styles like Sean John sportswear, Ravan stands out as a true original.
R&B is what I was listening to as a child on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. One, two in the morning my ear glued to the radio so my mother couldnt hear it. I learned really how to speak English through music.
Born Goldie Zelkowitz in Poland, Ravan came to New York at the outset of 1947, having survived the Holocaust in labor camps with her mother, father, and sister. As a young woman she worked as a cheesecake model before releasing her first single in 1962. Later, she formed what is arguably the first successful female rock band (Goldie and the Gingerbreads), fronted the jazz-funk group Ten Wheel Drive, then went solo in the early 70s. Her career peak came in 1978 with the success of Urban Desire, regarded as a classic of New Wave. But in the mid 80s everything collapsed.
I bottomed on cocaine, on booze. I lost everything. Right after [losing] my own record company, Polish Records, I went into seclusion.
Then came the worst news Ravan could hear: she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Oh, long story, honey. They said I had third stage and I had maybe three to six months to live. I remember just thinking, What the hell is money about? What the hell is any of this about except living, breathing and looking at nature?
With ironclad determination Ravan fought back, kicked drugs and cancer, and returned to performing. Her show at the Cutting Room will be recorded for a CD, and promises to be an emotional knockout.
From performing recently, I almost embarrass myself because I am so out there. Im being so intimate that I feel almost exposed. I think thats where all my feelings are. Thats my primal scream.
Review by David Freeland Fri., July 8 2005 NY Press
