Luscious Jackson: Women On The Verge
by Sandra A. Garcia
B-Side
August/September 1994
Fourteenth street in New York City isn’t a fun place. It’s not evil, or scary… it’s just disgusting, covered with unnatural ingredients like slimy plastic bags masquerading as banana peels and a dirty gray mist that’s posing as rain. And what’s the most unnatural is the fact that every single store is having a 50 percent off sale!
Natural balance is re-established once in Kate’s spacious apartment/rehearsal space far above the teeming street. We are greeted not only by Kate but also by Josephine Wiggle of the Breeders. Kate and Josephine are obviously pleased that Luscious Jackson briefly toured with those ‘Cannonball kids last fall. No wonder Luscious Jackson is into their upcoming Lollapallooza run: they”ll be surrounded by friends in the Beastie Boys and the Breeders!
Talk is the generic variety that occurs when you’re waiting for the band to make the scene. The tape recorder’s not on but the ears are primed for interesting information, like there’s something physically wrong with someone in the band at all times or who always has the worst cramps. I’ll never tell. By the time keyboardist Vivian and guitarist Gabby arrive vocalist Jill is relating helpful household hints: did you know you can shine the leaves of a rubber tree with a banana wrapped in pantyhose? Now that’s something you wouldn’t get from just any band.
My rubber tree gives Luscious five green leaves.
Now for some true tales from the big bad city…
Our goddesses of groove are sadly constrained by the problems facing any mere mortals. Take that pesky old driving thing. The band was counting on Kate to get her driver’s license so they wouldn’t be so depended on others when stranded in L.A. But even confident Kate can be traumatized, she having unfortunately taken lessons during this past snow-clogged winter.
“I ended up taking my driving test on a morning when it was raining and I couldn’t parallel park the car. He gave me three chances and I got more and more freaked out each time. Let’s try that again. ‘Why? What did I do wrong?'” Kate snaps in remembered agitation. “After the third time he said ‘ok, pull over’ and he wrote something insulting like needs practice steering.”
This announcement causes the rest of the Luscious women to crack up in sympathy.
“So none of us drive and when we go to places like LA… we’re fully dependent.” You can tell it bothers Kate to be dependent on something that silly.
“I do have a driver’s license but I’ve only driven like three times in my life,” admits Viv. “That was ten years ago so…I’m afraid.”
The rest of the band wants to know where Viv got her license. “It was in Texas. I was driving this big old car, and there’s this military-looking guy next to me and he went, ‘I once had a girlfriend named Vivian,'” she playfully drawls. “I was panicking, but he was just reminiscing away. He actually passed me,, and when I got in the car to drive home, I almost killed my mother. I was pulling out of the motor vehicle parking lot and my mom was like ‘WATCH OUT, WATCH OUT!’ Her hair was standing on end. I was like ‘haha, I have a license!'”
“A license to kill!”: scoffs Kate, unable to resist asking, “You had to do parallel parking?”
“Yeah. I passed it,” teasingly grins Viv.
Kate grumbles, “If he had asked me to do a three-point turn it would have been all right.” Josephine obligingly supplies sympathetic head strokes.
“Next time you should go to upstate New York,” declares Gabby.
“Oh yeah, in all that free time we have,” retorts Kate playfully. “I’ll set up residence in Ohio somehow and take it there. I know how to park… I can drive. I can drive forwards and backwards. I just can’t park,” concludes Kate.
“She even drove in our first video,” remembers Viv. “I can’t believe you handled that so well.”
“She was pretty scary though,” grins Jill.
“You were really chasing down the guys… I thought you were really going to run them over! But you didn’t!” commends Viv.
“I was smart. I just watched,” cuts in Gabby.
“Jane (L.J.’s manager) asked me if I want to do some driving on the tour,” muses Kate. “I can practice in the Lollapallooza parking lots,” as she imitates taking tight turns at a blazing speed. “I can drive around behind the stage area. While the show’s gong!”
“Let’s run over rock stars!” laughs Jill. “Look, it’s the guy from…!”
So when the news reports human Pumpkins that really are Smashed on this tour, you heard it here first.
Ladies, since we’ve made contact with the subject of the tour we should ask about that to make it look like we’re half serious about this music biz stuff.
Jill reasons, “It’s not too bad: in July we have Lollapallooza. That should be fairly painless, because it’s all outdoors, it’s all the same set up. And there’s good bands on tour.”
The Luscious women are playing the second stage when Nick Cave is due to go on. Their reasoning is they think people who aren’t into Nick Cave will wander over to check them out. Although they do admit that there could be people who are into both bands and therefore will be terribly torn. Of course they hope they win that particular battle. Hey, maybe they could run Nick over!
Battles and run-ins bring up the curious constant delay of this sexy new album. Every week saw it being pushed further and further back… now it’s due in mid-August. But happily this is not a matter of a battle between Luscious and Capitol records. The women sheepishly admit Natural Ingredients has only been finished since May. “It took us a really long time to finish,” confesses Jill.
Kate shrugs, “We thought we were done then…”
Jill further explains, “We thought we were going to be done with it in January or February, and we thought it would be ready to come out in June. But that was our inexperience. We didn’t realize how many details we had to still take care of.”
“And they’ve been fairly patient about it: they haven’t put pressure on us about it, so that’s cool. They want a good album so…,” Kate again shrugs. Its probably wise not to pressure Kate.
The album’s progress is again detailed by Jill. “We started it a year ago. Last summer! We did a couple of weeks, and then we went on tour, then we got back, and we went on tour again, got back, did some more, went on tour again… we didn’t spend any solid time on it. And then we finally did. We spent four months on it straight, doing the mixing and such… so the delay was us.”
“And there’s always the lag time, because radio needs to get ready and with videos. There’s a CD5 coming in July that has four songs on it, and the single. And then the video, so they’re going to start while we’re on the road.”
And then the mighty media campaign is mounted… “Yes, the ten foot tall posters mounted on the sides of buildings…” grins Gabby.
“The cardboard cutouts: Luscious Jackson: coming soon,” announces Kate in her best broadcasting tone.
“The Beastie Boys had that,” claims Jill with a laugh. “Their record debuted at number one.”
The band shares a few proud moments over their friends’ stunning success. Kate says the Beastie video is essential viewing, but only if you can find the uncut version. “The MTV cut doesn’t have some drugs in a suitcase, a car blowing up and a knife fight. They won’t show that on MTV, which is interesting.”
“So let’s see: they won’t show guns, explosions, or drugs. Or smoking… they’ll just show tits and ass,” Jill declares with deep sarcasm. “But a car blowing up..”
Now Jill, that never happens in real life! Don’t you know people might start doing that if they see it on MTV?
“There’s also a part where a guy gets thrown out of a car, and it’s so obviously a dummy, and they won’t show it,” mocks Kate.
“It is so obviously a dummy,” echoes Jill.
But it’s not obvious to those dummies.
“So we have to be careful what we put in our video,” claims Kate.
Jill goes on to describe that since MTV won’t allow brand names in videos, the shooting of their video as an outdoor documentary in New York City will be tough gong for the band.
But Gabby isn’t too worried, she scoffing, “I don’t think they’ll get that specific, unless every single shot has one of a sneaker!”
“I think certain brands complained about certain videos: specifically rap videos,” describes Kate. “They didn’t want people to think they were supporting rap music in any way, especially gangsta rap. All of a sudden these brands disappeared from the screen.”
Jill suddenly declares, “I don’t watch too much TV any more.”
Gabby is fascinated, asking, “Does it make you happy?”
Jill asserts, “When I don’t watch TV it makes me happy!”
“I got rid of cable because I was afraid of becoming a TV junkie,” confesses Gabby. “You can sit and watch talk shows all day long.”
Vivian sighs, remembering, “But I was really envious the other day. I came over here and Kate was watching ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ it looked like a particularly good episode, and I was ‘you don’t mind if I sit down and..” Viv pretends to settle deeper into the couch cushions with a totally rapt expression on her slender face.
“I love that show!” exclaims Jill.
“It was like these male Charlie’s Angels,” describes Viv.
Kate adds, “It must have been a failed spin-off attempt, band Barbara Stanwick was the ‘Charlie…’ and her name was ‘Toni’, and the episode was called ‘Toni’s Guys.'”
“Really! No way!” gasps Jill in jealous admiration.
“She had three guys who were detectives, and they were going to protect Charlie’s Angels because someone wanted to kill them,” laughs Kate.
“But they always ended up being outsmarted by those Angels,” Viv laughs. “One of them would get locked in a closet by one of the Angels and he would be like,” as she affects that overbearing male attitude of ‘gosh, the little woman got me there.’ You know the cliche expression. “He was outsmarted, but he still smiled fondly.”
Kate is into this. “In the beginning, Barbara was out on a balcony going ‘I’m Toni, and these are Toni’s Guys.’ Obviously it didn’t work out because these guys just didn’t have enough personality to compete with Kate Jackson.”
“They always got really good replacements on that show. I never really missed the originals: it wasn’t like ‘awwww,'” says Jill. “But Kate Jackson obviously couldn’t be replaced.”
“And Jaclyn Smith stuck it out,” admires Kate.
“She was great,” laughs Jill.
Gabby can’t resist an easy target, scoffing, “Her and K-Mart!”
Jill staunchly declares, “All the Farah replacements were OK, as far as I am concerned.”
“My favorites were when Farah would come back,” remembers Kate with a grin. “‘Oh, I’ve been off racing cars on the Riviera… I’ve gotten involved with another race car driver…’ but he turns out to be a diamond smuggler so now the Angels have a dilemma…”
Kate’s dramatic scenario is the cue for everyone, sans Josephine, to sing the Charlie’s Angels jingle before dissolving into giggles.
Kate suddenly realizes she needs to clear up something now. “I don’t want you to think that I sit around and watch TV all day.”
No problem. Everyone else stresses this, especially since Kate’s TV does this weird fading trick whenever she watches it. General opinion is it’s the TV’s way of telling her too much is bad for her.
“To keep on the subject, I heard that Jaclyn Smith is going to be in this TV movie about Jackie Onassis,” offers Viv.
“That’s cool.” Jill is very loyal to her Angels.
Vivian goes on to gag in disgust about this fawning Jackie O. Article she read in the Times as Kate describes that Luscious was in Europe when Jackie died. The entire band begins to affect atrocious French accents to describe the French news broadcasts on CNN.
Kate finally decides, “She is definitely was a New York type, that Jackie O. Type woman, Upper East Side…”
“You could see her on the street in her little sweat outfit, going up and down Fifth avenue doing her little jog… totally incognito, no bodyguards,” remarks Jill.
“But I am sorry, those huge glasses were a dead giveaway! If you saw anybody with glasses that big you were like ‘mmm, Jackie O., trying to hide…'” laughs Viv. “The glasses were like one foot tall!”
“And jogging in that really lethargic way. No chance of jostling the breast tissue,” laughs Jill.
Viv gasps with laughter, exclaiming “Jostling the breast tissue?”
Jill is giggling in turn as she states, “That’s why I don’t jog. No jostling here… I can’t take it!”
“Nancy Reagan got a double mastectomy. She could have had a lumpectomy, but she had a double mastectomy so that her Adolpho suits would fit her better,” declares Kate.
The shocked gasps of disbelief must have been heard all the way in Queens. “Nooooo, that’s not true!”
“That’s what my mom told me,” defends Kate with a shrug. “She works for the American Cancer Society.”
There’s sick disbelieving laughter to accompany this, as the band decide lumpectomies are the better way to go.
“We’re going on tour in a breast cancer mobile,” declares Kate. “Mammogram test center! When we were doing Easy, there was this diagnostic breast cancer truck parked out front of the theater every day, a big Winnebago.”
Jill’s in total agreement. “Perfect size!”
Gabby suddenly exclaims, “I got catcalled the other day from a breast cancer truck. I was walking by and there was this,” she supplying the typical male catcall, “and I look over, and it was coming from this truck. I could just not believe it this is not happening!”
“That’s sooo sick!” cries Jill just before giggles choke her.
All right, that’s a perfect opening: time to play reporter. I did get to NYC to see one of the Easy performances. Vivian choreographed the funky ’70s style dance numbers while the Luscious women supplied the spacey live music. It was a fascinating mix of dance and live music all spiced by a huge sense of fun, challenging the staid NYC dance community while providing Luscious fans with another fascinating facet of this multi-talented band.
The women quickly defer to Vivian, who truly is a trained choreographer. “It was all Viv,” proudly declares Jill.
Ah, but she also managed to get all of you very involved.
“They all agreed very nicely,” coyly smiles Viv.
“We learned all of Vivian’s music in two weeks,” remembers Jill.
“We only had like four rehearsals,” giggles Viv.
Jill continues, “It was a great experience for us because we were forced to play with each other without our usual method of one person writing something and someone else adding something. We were forced to figure out the key!”
Viv smiles in remembrance. “But it was really fun. I am glad it happened. I was in the performance scene for years and years before my second career in Luscious Jackson. I’d like to try and continue both. I am also tired of how closed off the different worlds are from each other: the dance world in particular seems to be people creating work for an audience of the same 50 people who I see at every dance show I ever go to and I think ‘this is so boring!’ So boooorrring! I decided that It would be fun to try it, and I figured if we played it, it would be a different audience, and something good would come out of that. I think we succeeded on that count.”
People were definitely grooving in their seats.
“Viv wanted to make something that people would have fun at, that was lively, colorful and silly,” describes Jill.
“The dance critics were horrified!” Viv shrugs.
Kate decides to play reporter, asking “Do you think that your exposure to the rock audience made you actually realize that there was a fun audience out there?”
“Yes! I guess so! People laugh, party and dance! People are actually up for having a good time,” marvels Viv with gentle mockery.
Gabby has an idea. “That could be a new thing, dance shows where the people can actually dance!”
“That’s what I wanted to do with this piece. I wanted it to finish with a party, so that everyone could dance, but I was just so crazed, and pressed for time, that I couldn’t pull that part together. Which is too bad, because it’s a little mean for people to be up there dancing and ‘oh, we’re having such a good time…'” Viv laughs. “It makes sense to run music afterwards and have it become a party. It would have worked so nicely. Next time.”
That’s if there is a next time, for although it was a success, the women describe that funding for those performances is extremely tight, and even in this case Viv used a lot of her own money to assure this classy creation had a future.
Jill points out, “Last year she did it while we were teaching, and it was really hard to pull off.”
“It was hard. I went into debt for both shows,” Viv sighs. “I was joking to someone about my expensive hobby, thinking that perhaps race car driving would be more economical.”
Just like Farah. But watch out for those diamond smugglers… hold on, do they fund the arts?
Gabby remembers those days of Viv teaching and choreographing. When she first met Vivian, it was through Jill, who was working with Viv teaching continuing education. “When I first met you, you were teaching, you were miserable and you were trying to get that dance piece together. You were so stressed: you looked like you were almost dying you were so skinny… you had such a sad look on you face constantly. I was like ‘wow Jill, she’s kind of unhappy… what’s with her?'”
“I think that was due to the jobs. We were dying… I mean..” Viv finally looks to Jill for moral support.
Jill describes, “It was a teaching job where we had way too many students, we were given no curriculum…”
Viv adopts a stunned look at the memory of her job. “The people were at every level of literacy… ‘OK, you study algebra, and you work on learning to read!’ All in the same room! Plus they would send us the… the system has these recipients that have to do something in order to collect, and some of these people in social security were serious schizophrenics! And we’re supposed to be teaching!”
“Gabby was working at this bar over on First avenue and we’d come stumbling in after our day of work… and that’s when I first really met Gabby, and I would see how you would think I was a victim of some terrible disease… the disease was the education system,” declares Viv with a shaky laugh. “It was really bad.”
“Then I was the true Vivian after about a month… the glowing happy woman!” Gabby grandly declares as Viv looks embarrassed.
Jill wants people to hear about the nightmare these women lived through for a paycheck. “There were these computers we had to teach on, that were from the defense department, to teach literacy, but they were completely ineffective. Basically the government had transported money from education into defense, what a surprise, so they decided to put 250,000 dollars back into this program.”
Viv further describes the scary scenario. “They claimed they’d ‘de- greened’ the system, meaning they’d taken out all the military symbolism. For example, they’d show a sergeant symbol, and they went ‘look, we’ve removed his dogtags.’ Yeah, but you forgot to remove his khakis!”
“And they had guys in trenches with guns, and army barracks for fractions… they even had a guy cut in half for a fraction. It was like ‘this man is divided in two!'” describes Jill as the disbelieving laughter drowns her out.
“So that was our job which we will never recuperate from for as long as we live,” dramatically declares Viv.
No wonder you’re not phased by anything a record company can throw at you after that experience! There’s total agreement on this.
Jill suddenly looks around and exclaims, “How did we get on such a depressing topic?”
“Viv being depressed… when I first met Viv for a rehearsal she was like,” as Gabby adopts a pathetic zombie-like stare. “I was like ‘Jill, is your friend OK?'”
“‘She’s really nice, I swear!'” pleads Jill. “Give her a chance! She’s a genius, she’s just a little sad today!”
“That explains why you were giving me those looks like… I’d go in the bar and she’d be looking at me like…” as Viv stares at Gabby with total suspicion. “Then she’d be like ‘here, have a free drink!'”
“No I didn’t… did I act like that?” frowns Gabby.
“You did… it was really intimidating!” exclaims Viv.
“I must have been a real asshole,” sighs Gabby remorsefully.
Viv immediately stresses that’s not the case. “It was so hilarious because it was one of those situations where I had been hearing about you for so long and then I finally met you, and …”
“You thought I was a sourpuss!” laughs Gabby.
Jill assures Gabby, “I had warned Vivian about your sour personality in advance…”
“Old crabby Gabby!” grins Gabby. “But it was only for the first few days. Now it’s totally different. But her mouth actually curved down, her eyes curved down… oh, the weight of the world…”
“I was trying the Sylvester Stallone look,” laughs Viv. “But now we’re happy as clams!”
They’re also as happy as clams over this album. Natural Ingredients has that groovy finished yet ragged surface, creating the type of album that sticks in your ears instead of sliding on by. This coupled with the too cool sounds of songs like the raucous ‘Pele Merengue’ makes this album one sultry experience. This sexy sound was achieved by the women wisely sharing co- production cores with Mr. Tony Mangurian.
But Jill admits that here the label developed an attitude. “I think they wanted us to sound more polished. They ended up remixing a couple of things for radio, not for the record. So that is fine.”
Gabby adds, “It’s definitely more polished then the last record.”
“The last album was like a demo tape. That was a garage hip-hop record. The basement tapes, and it was made in the basement, so it had that sound, and that was the beauty of it. People are like ‘oh, this one sounds so much better,’ but we like them both for what they are,” declares Kate.
Absolutely. In Search of Manny is still a lively listen.
“Yeah! It was fun, and raw, and that’s what it was. This one is the next stage: better equipment, more money, more time,” describes Jill.
Gabby slips in, “And other musicians.”
“We didn’t want to deal with big amounts of male engineers or anything, which is what happens when you go to a regular studio. ‘I don’t think that sounds good. You like that sound, little lady?’ ‘Yes, we like that sound…’ ‘OK, if you really want to, you’re the boss, ladies… if that’s what you girls want.’ Jill’s voice has descended a few octaves and she’s sounding suspiciously redneck in inflection. “‘You little ladies coming in here and causing trouble…'”
Time to go for the emergency crowbar!
“Exactly! Time for the cattle prod! ‘Hey, put that sound there!’ BZZZT! ‘I said take off those effects!’ BZZZT! ‘No more flange, take it off!’ BZZZT” Jill collapses with laughter at the fun thought.
“I think we should have cattle prods for life in general,” agrees Gabby with an evil smile.
“But Tony’s an exception. He’s great,” declares Viv. “He gets special super male status.”
“He’s really one of the girls,” praises Gabby.
Deserving of honorary female status?
“Yeah, I wanted to say that but he wouldn’t understand that at all,” sighs Gabby with a shrug.
“Men should realize when we call them honorary women it is a high compliment, because I say that all the time… it’s the highest compliment!” explains Jill. “When I say ‘you should really act more like a woman now’ it means why don’t you stop trying to get all the immediate attention every second. Chill out in the situation. Learn how to listen.”
Gabby is nodding emphatically “Exactly!” she agrees.
“So Tony gets honorary female status in the best of ways,” concludes Jill. “He’s learned to listen to us and know what we want…”
“We are really comfortable with him,” adds Gabby.
“Especially doing our vocals. We can retain that. Sometimes it’s really intimidating to do vocals in a room full of people, or if it’s like a regular recording studio with that separate glass…” frets Jill.
“People wandering in and out of the control room,” frowns Gabby, imitating vocalizing while peering around suspiciously.
“They’re all sitting there with no expression on their faces but you can see them talking…and it’s more like ‘whose got the bagel with butter?'” laughs Jill.
“That’s like the London experience. You can see them on their side of the glass and they’re like,” as Viv pantomimes various expressions of confusion and dismay. “They’re like ‘excuse me, but would you like to try that again?'”
“Oh my God, that day was so horrible!” cries Jill in agony.
Jill’s distress is over a taping session the women did for the BBC in London. Apparently it was one of those days… “It was so funny. Me and Vivian, it was like the final hour. We could not sing these harmonies. Over the headphones they sounded different then in the control room. We would do these harmonies, they would sound perfectly fine, we’d go in the control room and be like… uggllgh. They would be ever so polite and say ‘Ahh, that’s really quite out of key, ladies. You’re missing the note completely.'”
By this time the entire band is laughing in horrified memory. “I was ‘OK, Vivian, relax and do it again,'” Jill growls. “She’d come in and it would be totally off key. I tried it again and it would be totally off key…”
“It was awful! It was totally jinxed! It was just one of those situations. But I liked being in the BBC… you walked in and there were these big orchestra rooms, these opera rooms, there was an orchestra recording a symphony, and we kept going down and finally came to our studio…it was fun,” enthuses Viv.
“They had these perfectly tuned Fender Rhodes,” sighs Jill.
Viv dreamily agrees. “Oh, such beautiful instruments.”
Gabby plays the voice of reality. “But trying to jam too many things in a day off… we did like four songs in one day. And then trying to mix them too… it just wasn’t going!”
“That was our only day off! And I twisted my ankle too. I started crying! I can’t take it any more!” Jill sobs. “If I had done anything really serious to it that would have taken it over the top.”
But the women are bravely returning to play the Glastonbury festival plus other British dates before the big Lollapalooza run.
Jill supplies, “It’s supposed to be a really good festival. We’re opening for the Beastie Boys two days after we get there. We’re opening for them for the other show too, so it should be good.”
But we all agree it will be a mess if it rains. The weather’s already getting Luscious down since they’re supposed to finish up their video in 95 degree weather. “Oh yeah, we’re going to have fun shooting that video, mmm- hmmm,” Gabby softly mumbles.
A chorus of groans circles the room as everyone indulges in a little bitching and moaning. “Great, we’ll be all sweaty,” frets Jill.
“It adds a little drama,” laughs Vivian.
Jill muses about using background atmosphere tapes with rain forest sounds to keep fresh. She swears they totally work.
Kate keeps the theme. “I saw Perry Farrell on TV and he was talking about how they’re going to have a rain forest tent at Lollapalooza. They hook up mist and there’s going to be sound effects.”
“Cool! That’s where I am going to be hanging out in!” grins Jill. “If there’s lots of oxygen in there from trees, I’ll be in there.” She then suddenly adds, “I saw Perry Farrell on TV looking so crazy.”
“Oh, he’s a freak,” dryly asserts Kate. “Talk about schizophrenia…”
“And he’s the guy who organizes the whole thing?” asks Viv in mild confusion. “Does he still?”
“He just has input” dismisses Kate, a woman after my own heart when it comes to dissing on St. Perry.
“Yeah, but does he still get his percentage?” asks Jill with a pointedly sweet smile.
“I heard he’s supposed to get married at the New York show,” laughs Kate in total disbelief.
What, are we going back to the ’60s with Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki getting married on the Johnny Carson show?
Kate announces,”They will be joined on the acoustic stage..”
That’s not too much of a publicity stunt, is it?
Viv is having visions of her own. “I keep seeing us calling ‘Oh Jill! Jilllllll!’ We’ll be crawling through this rain forest, looking for Jill. We’ll find her under a tree with a plantain and a panty hose…”
“‘I was just fixing the trees in here… oh, here’s my little tree, look how nice it shines,'” Jill giggles at the thought.
The women will be disappointed to know there’s no trees in the tent, just wet kids. And speaking of wet, that’s one very important item on Luscious’ tour list. Luscious need a pool so they can swim before the shows. “Hell yeah, I want a pool!” declares Gabby. There’s to be no argument here!
Jill extols the virtues of yoga, she finally deciding, “If we don’t do exercising we will be so depressed.”
“When you have a pool you just wake up and go in the pool. There is going to be one, isn’t there?” queries Gabby suspiciously. She’s ready to take someone to task about the matter right here and now.
“We have to make the request that we need a pool. We have to have it. Then we’ll have the special request that they have to keep the pool open late and open early” declares Viv with finality.
There’s some discussion of how to fake being lifeguards then Viv hits on the brilliant idea of pretending not to understand English. Here comes another vaguely French accent. “Oui, I am so sorreee, we did not read zee sign… we just wanted to svim! We can go skinny dipping, theeze es ok”she happily squeaks, waving her arms with a charming smile. “Becaze in my country, we do not wear zee bikini… we go topless, oui?”
Whoa, can you see it now? New York babes go topless in St. Louis: news at six. That could cause some pool-side pandemonium! For now, the women realize their entire life has descended into total pandemonium. But they aren’t let in themselves think about what’s to come. They know they’re women on the verge of something big but they can’t be bothered with that nonsense. Kate’s too worried about fitting the cooler in the van and they have too much wrapped up in rehearing, plus the new songs, the video… and when are they ever going to have time to do their laundry?
After informative digressing about good thrift stores, their new on stage DJ Alex arrives, he fresh off the plane from Britain. This seems like a good pint to break things off and go to photos… there’s still rehearsal to be fit in before that important Knicks game that night. And Gabby isn’t going to miss her man John Starks for anything.
Sigh. It’s back out to Fourteenth street. And it’s raining unnatural grey stuff again. But after spending some time with Luscious Jackson, you just know the real sun is shining on high and proud. They just have that naturally funky, sexy effect on the musical imagination.
Reprinted without permission, if you want something taken down, just ask and i’ll oblige
©1996-2007 The Luscious Jackson Source