THE VIDEO Vixen, "Edge of a Broken Heart," Vixen, 1988, EMI
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SAMPLE LYRIC "I've been living on the edge of a broken heart / I don't wanna fall, I don't wanna crawl / I've been living on the edge of a broken heart / don't you wonder why, I gotta say good-by-eyyyyyyye!"
THE VERDICT Metal is a man's, man's, man's world, but every now and then we have to give some love to the ladies -- and no, I don't mean by looking at the one's who are sprawled out on Jaguars or getting chicken blood smeared all over them. Lest we forget, women can and do rock. Just listen to anything by Bitch.
However, this can be a bit easy to forget given the sexy images of women in metal bands -- take away the guitars, and they're hard to tell apart from the gals posing in the videos. Of course, as I talk about ad nauseam, the men of metal can sure look sexy. (Rather than giving a zillion million examples, just think Zakk Wylde or Phil Anselmo pre-disfiguring ZZ Top beards.) But also of course, given our culture's double standards, we don't think of male hotness as some kind of disability that impedes their ability to play the guitar -- or okay, certainly not in Zakk Wylde's case. Now admittedly, the more makeup, glitter, lace etc. you put on a male band, the more people are going to argue that they're all image, they can't play, etc. But again, we can see this as part and parcel of this double standard, right? Feminized men are not okay in metal.
Vixen were arguably the most successful all-female metal band (remember, most of the other women in metal were vocalists with male backing bands -- think Lita Ford, Doro Pesch, etc.). And arguably, they needed to get extra gussied up in order to be successful. I think though my issue with them is less with their look than with their sound. Vixen has always struck me as being a bit over-produced. This first album in particular just sounds like its all hired guns, which is too bad because if you've seen Decline II (if you haven't and you're reading this blog, what are you waiting for?!?! Click here and watch it now.), you'll see Janet Gardner and Roxy Petrucci all over that movie, and you feel like they're genuinely into it and trying really hard. I always especially like Roxy, who has this weird resemblance to Cheri Oteri, and who gets way more screen time than the average drummer.
My guess is EMI felt like they were taking a big enough risk signing a bunch of women and was like "we're signing you but here's what's happening." I don't know that this was the case with Vixen, but I do know this happens all the time with female musicians. And hell, it worked, at least a little. This song, written by Richard Marx -- if you lived through the 80s, don't even pretend you don't know who I'm talking about -- made a respectable showing on the Billboard charts (topping out at #26 on the Hot 100). Listening to it, you can figure out why -- it's not a bad song, but I mean, nothing happens in it that really grabs or surprises you. You could easily imagine hearing this in the grocery store. I much prefer "Cryin'" ...not that anyone in the band wrote that one either.
But what about the video? Well, not the most happens there either. It's mostly Vixen performing on the usual metal video set -- dark except for spotlights, with cameras swinging around them from every which way. The more interesting bits of the video are the "behind the scenes" footage, which likewise per metal video convention is shot in grainy black and white. We cut to each of these thanks to a hand wearing a white lace fingerless glove and a whole ton of bracelets, scrunchies, etc. reaching across to the bottom of the screen and 'peeling' back the set performance footage.
So what are the ladies of Vixen up to when they're offstage? Well, behind-the-scenes metal video cliches like looking pensive and sleeping while wearing sunglasses (both while on the tour bus), staying in hotels, and looking at themselves in mirrors before a concert. But they also do some sillier stuff, like messing around on playground equipment. They practice their instruments and goof around in a record store. We also get to see Vixen at the gym, wearing more or less the non-lacy versions of what they're wearing onstage (I mean Jan has a thong-over-leggings ensemble during the main performance footage). My favorite part is when they hang out with Rikki Rockett from Poison, and he's wearing this incredible custom-puffy paint Poison jean jacket with portraits of the entire band on the back. I hope he still has that. The part where they meet up with Richard Marx is less cool.
And when they're onstage, they enjoy wearing scrunchy, high-heeled boots -- Janet's are white, Roxy's are black and have elaborate spurs (they may well be the boots on the album cover). Vixen also enjoy bustiers, spandex, and belts. Combined with their ginormous hair -- Janet's is tallest, but guitarist Jan Kuehnemund appears to have just an ungodly amount of it -- and impressive waist-to-hip ratios, their appearance is strikingly reminiscent of one of the era's other all-girl groups. No, not the Bangles. Not the Go-Gos either. I'm talking about Jem and the Holograms.
Which came first? Jem started airing in 1985, and Vixen's first album didn't come out till 1988, but Vixen were around well before then. Did Hasbro know about this? Or was the cultural zeitgeist -- hairstyles growing larger and more elaborate, MTV's shift toward more rock and metal to avoid having to show hip hop, the FCC weakening the laws about marketing to kids -- such that this confluence was simply inevitable?
I guess to really know the answer, we'd need to know more about Vixen. Does some plain Jane transform into Janet Gardner via use of a weird female computer that generates holograms? Let's face it, Janet does actually have a resemblance to Jem's alter ego, Jerrica Benton. Roxy's sister Maxine did later join the band, so there is the sister angle... but did the sisters ever run a foster home for girls? And Jan -- come on, even at the time I thought she looked like one of the Misfits with that crazy raccoon streak in her hair. Oh wait, I do not mean the awesome Danzig band. I mean Jem and the Holograms' key rival. Actually she looks the most like the Misfits' fan Clash, or I suppose like Nancy Wilson with a raccoon on her head.
Anyway. Truth be told, I wasn't very into Jem as a kid, even though you'd think it'd be right up my cheesy alley. Barbie hit me before Jem even existed, and once I had a whole bunch of 11.5" tall dolls, being super anal and committed to whatever amount of realism I could get from my play, it bugged me to no end that the Jem dolls were 14" high. Based on that, Jem was pretty much dead to me, save for a sticker album I got sent once. It was exactly as this blogger describes. I think the idea was to send one free and get kids to beg their parents to buy them more so they could see the whole story. I, however, was content with any stickers I could get my hands on, and thus have in my sticker collection (housed in a Trapper Keeper exactly like this one which is still at my parents' house) a bunch of random scenes (or in some cases, half- or quarter-scenes, since they'd only send you enough stickers to make part of the picture) of Jem et al. dealing with I think a volcano.
Thus at the time I was approximately as into Jem as I slightly later was into Vixen -- basically just not feeling it. I did, however, like Barbie and the Rockers, which Mattel rushed out to compete with Jem. The size difference no longer an issue plus their being released right around my birthday, I had a bunch of these -- Barbie (who came with a four-song cassette that my brother and I listened to over and over on our Fisher-Price jambox), Dana (black-hair, giant parachute pants a la Wham!-era George Michael), and not one but two Dereks (think Ken by way of Kajagoogoo). Once those tiny pink-and-silver-striped lycra pants were off Barbie, they were damn near impossible to get back on, and her little silver leotard thing often didn't want to come all the way up either -- hence possibly why we misheard the lyric "dressing up we're totally in the groo-oove" as "totally in the nuu-uude."
Well, that was quite the digression. We are far, far afield from any discussion of Vixen, let alone metal. But really, at least half of what this blog is about for me is reminiscing about my childhood, so sometimes this happens.
But to bring it back around: If we think about it, Vixen dress more or less exactly like Night Songs-era Cinderella. Janet Gardener and Eric Brittingham have the same hair (okay, technically his is better, but it's the same style). But otherwise, lots of lacy coats, big earrings, spandex, it's the same look. Cinderella did take some crap for it, but I doubt anyone ever asked them if they were "really" playing their instruments or was like "just to be safe, let's have Richard Marx write your songs." Sigh!