Minutemen - My Heart and the Real World

Born on this day: post-punk No Wave chanteuse Cristina (Cristina Monet Palaci, 17 January 1956 – 1 April 2020) who made precisely two barbed, weird and distinctive albums - released by the cutting edge Ze label - that flopped commercially and then retired from music. Cristina’s trademark is setting scathing observations to perky music, and she mostly sings and writes within the persona of a jaded party girl or gold digger (a tradition that dates to Mae West and Eartha Kitt). Self-titled debut Cristina (1980) (reissued in 2004 as Doll in the Box) is her mutant disco album. Lushly produced by Kid Creole, it’s campy fun with Latin rhythm in its hips (if you like cowbell, this is the album for you!), but I prefer the 1984 follow-up, the tougher, darker and more cutting New Wave pop of Sleep It Off. Cristina’s venomous, spikily funny lyrics work as wry poetry already, but then she enunciates them in an alienated, deadpan can't-be-bothered snarl (she has “resting bitch voice”, occasionally punctuated with a Johnny Rotten sneer). Here’s a sampling of her wit and wisdom: “My life is in a turmoil / My thighs are black and blue / My sheets are stained, so is my brain / What's a girl to do?” from What’s a Girl to Do? is as lacerating as anything found on Lydia Lunch’s 1980 magnum opus Queen of Siam. “Don't tell me that I'm frigid / Don't try to make me think / I'll do just fine without you / Don’t mutilate my mink” from her punk masterpiece “Don’t Mutilate My Mink”. (In their obituary for her, The Guardian describes it as sounding like Audrey Hepburn fronting the Sex Pistols). See also: her icy Christmas classic “Things Fall Apart.” Like many abrasive early eighties New York punk funk musicians (see also: James Chance of The Contortions), she may initially work best in small doses and for many may be an acquired taste. But think of Cristina as analogous to Campari – once you acquire that taste, you wondered how you ever lived without it. 

Miles Davis at the Newport Jazz Festival 1969

from Sample Credits Don’t Pay Our Bills

Sources: https://austinpunk.wordpress.com/category/soap-creek-saloon, Flickr, various, etc...

Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson cover) [ANThology, 2001]

Surrender - Cheap Trick

Rest In Peace Rick and Teena.