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GODS OF MUSIC
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This spirit has been seen in many incarnations of fem-rock throughout the ages. But nowhere is it as...This spirit has been seen in many incarnations of fem-rock throughout the ages. But nowhere is it as charming as here on this track. Take that, Runaways.
The subtle but honest torment expressed here is something that I wish I could relate to a little closer, but I’m not about to emasculate myself just yet (although, if I were to amputate my male member, this would be the song to which I’d do it.) Who really is the “most perfect imperfect girl?” Well, that’s a tricky question to get a handle on. Let’s start with something easier:
Does this track rock? Yeah, in a non-headbanging way, it certainly does. I’m sure several times this week I’ll catch myself singing about what an imperfect girl I am… And baby, I ain’t getting any perfecter. Strummy acoustic guitar will keep you bopping along until the sumptuous backing harmonies POP in to catch you quite off your guard, and maybe just knock you right on your imperfection. I, personally, was clobbered when I heard the chorus for the first time – my born-again-virgin eardrums burst by the delectable strains. Or, to put it more mildly, MY MIND WAS COMPLETELY BLOWN. I was anticipating something dull and dry, and I got an ‘A’ instead! My mother will be so happy.
Gosh dangdong, I’m really impressed by the uniqueness found layer upon layer in this track. This is no slipshod folky ugly-girl angst punk (sorry, Ani.) This is an actual attempt to write a GOOD pop/rock song. I wish that more women would break out of the stereotypes and just rock, or pop, or swing, or whatever it is they do. This track is a good start. Inspire a generation, Black Flamingo!
"I'm gonna teach you a lesson you'll never remember."
GARY ARTHUR BROWN
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TECHNO-DYKE.COM~ Black Flamingo: Self-Titled
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When I turned 18, I fled my narrow, religious small-town life like a bat out of hell -- or rather, l...When I turned 18, I fled my narrow, religious small-town life like a bat out of hell -- or rather, like a catholic school girl out of her white-cotton panties and plaid socks -- and began my new life as a fresh-out-of-the-closet, freaked out, wide-eyed college girl. Those days were full of random coffee houses, 3pm breakfasts and as much illegal consumption of alcohol as humanly possible.
Some of my favorite memories are those random punk and indie bands that my friends and I would happen across in our day's meanderings... the coffee house culture, and I'm not talking Starbuck's, I'm talking about those tiny little dives, pizza joints, indie owned coffee bars where everything is fresh and warm and tastes really good after a hangover; where kids, just like you but way cooler, lug out their own beat-up amps and guitars plastered with political stickers and start making music you can relate to.
When I clicked through CDBaby.Com a few weeks ago and found Black Flamingo, I was immediately yanked out of my grey padded 3-wall cubicle job nightmare and padding the streets of downtown portland again, reliving those days where I felt hopeful and angry and powerful and giddy and excited about love. Black Flamingo's music captures exactly that feeling, exactly that moment, exactly that essence of what it is to be young, awake and full of startling things to say about things that most people close their eyes to.
Hailing from NYC, Black Flamingo has been that coffee house punk performer, but she's also made quite a name for herself -- sharing the stage with such legendary performers as Joey Ramone, Ronnie Spector and Patti Smith, not to mention more mainstream performers like The Spin Doctors, David Johansen/Buster Pointdexter and Tony Randall. She's been featured on the Oxygen Network for her benefit work and music. Her songs have seen airplay in LA, Boston and Australia and have even graced a movie soundtrack. (The Vampire Project)
The thing that stands out the most to me on her self-titled CD is her ability to make a strong point, either politically or personally, while still maintaining a sense of lightness and humor.
Song #1, Choate, is a Punktry (punk+country) clap-along that, contrary to its light-hearted background music, tackles a tough subject like her boarding school days at Choate where expectations were high, but she was higher (literally). Pressured by the former presence of Jackie O, JFK and (?) Jamie Lee Curtis -- Black Flamingo highlights her own accomplishments (drug use, cheating and expulsion) and how she later, thankfully, found out that she wasn't the only one "flip out" at Choate.
The CD is eclectic, parts recorded live at gigs, parts more professionally recorded, but all capture the same essence of a girl, her guitar (and sometimes her band) and her desire to make the world a better place.
My favorite song on the album is Imperfect Girl. It's an anthem for every girl who has ever had to deal with competing expectations of self and society, self and parents or even self and religion.
" how can i be honest without being judged / oh plastic surgery, yea that's the way / religion is such a crutch / worship thy mother / cherish every word / then cry alone in your room / never to be heard "
In the chorus, she proudly explains that she's the most imperfect girl you'll ever see, and that's just fine with us. She's happily and refreshingly - perfectly imperfect - just like the rest of us.
You can catch samples and buy the CD at the following sites:
http://www.cdbaby.com/blackflamingo
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Punker Goes to Promised Land
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Union Square’s Lisa Ludwig blends a raw sound with spiritual lyrics on ‘getting through the wilderne...Union Square’s Lisa Ludwig blends a raw sound with spiritual lyrics on ‘getting through the wilderness.’
SUSAN JOSEPHS - Staff Writer
As a little girl, Lisa Ludwig secretly wanted to be a singer and the messiah. To prepare for these careers, she practiced singing with a microphone-shaped piece of soap and dropped out of her spiritually bankrupt Hebrew school by the first grade. Later on, she would discover how the essence of punk rock and the Lubavitcher rebbe’s insights could intertwine and inspire her to reach new musical heights.
“If I have learned anything,” she says, “it’s that everything is so weirdly connected.”
These days, Ludwig — a Union Square resident and a 37-year-old, purple-haired mother of two small girls — simply strives for tikkun olam, repairing the world. As a singer/songwriter with her own band, Black Flamingo, Ludwig has spent the past decade performing what she calls “sophisticated punk” or “punk pop” at New York clubs such as CBGB, Irving Plaza, Wetlands, Spiral and Coney Island High. As the founder of Music & Love Productions, she also organizes benefit concerts for AIDS-related charities in honor of her brother Richard, a UJA-Federation professional who died of the disease in 1989. These concerts have featured prominent musicians such as Patti Smith, the Spin Doctors and Joey Ramone.
Described as a cross between Courtney Love and Barbra Streisand, Ludwig blends the raw simplicity often found in punk music with messages of love, peace, and other lessons from growing up as a Jewish girl on the fringes.
“I just want to make the world a better place by being a New York, Jewish, punk prophet,” she says.
Heidi Heft LaPorte, a professor of social work at Yeshiva University and New York University who had been a close friend of Ludwig’s brother, observes that Ludwig’s appeal lies in her “being very spiritual and honest. She’s not afraid to show her vulnerabilities as a human being and she doesn’t try to polish herself. The result is powerful,” she says.
Having attended many Black Flamingo gigs, Heft LaPorte adds “there’s something very Jewish” about Ludwig’s music in that all of her songs concern the story of Exodus. “Her lyrics are always about going through the wilderness and getting to the Promised Land, despite all the golden calves along the way. That is the message of Judaism, which extends to life in general.”
Thom Jack, the booking agent at the East Village club Spiral, agrees that Ludwig “is a spiritual, concerned person who gives uplifting, exuberant performances. While her songs are catchy pop songs, they always have a message. They’re not just fluff,” he says.
Seated in the livingroom of her dimly lit apartment perfumed with incense, (her husband works at home as a massage therapist), Ludwig somehow embodies a wide-eyed, wholesome appearance despite her purple hair and heavy eye-liner. Since she’s talking to a reporter from a Jewish publication, Ludwig takes care to mention her daily pondering of the “Jewish quote of the day” from UJA-Federation e-mailed to her by her father. These quotes — from personalities ranging from the Lubavitcher rebbe to Rabbi Harold Kushner — consistently factor into her songwriting because they’re about “an idealistic, basic common sense. That’s what I sing about. They’re about how to get along with other people and how to make the world a better place ... that’s all I want to do,” she says.
Born in the Bronx, Ludwig grew up in Westchester as the only Jewish kid on her street and attended summer camps populated by Jewish girls from the Five Towns in Long Island. They taught her “how to blow my hair out. I always came home wishing I was from the Five Towns,” she recalls.
That wish did not last long. By high school, Ludwig shunned the world of coiffed hair and embraced bell bottoms and platform shoes. A major turning point in her life occurred when she attended the prep school Choate for a year and had a nervous breakdown after a teacher caught her cheating on a history test. “I knew then I wasn’t going to be the doctor or lawyer my parents wanted me to be,” she says.
In college, Ludwig further distanced herself from the archetype of the nice Jewish girl when she got kicked off a UJA mission to Israel for university students. Ludwig says that she ate something from a Bedouin camp that led to hallucinations and accusations that she purposely ingested drugs. She subsequently spent a year studying in London and began to dye her hair the colors of the rainbow. There, she experienced another major turning point by conducting an independent study on the social origins of punk. “I didn’t relate to the violence of punk music but I loved that in punk, anyone can get up and express themselves and I loved the wittiness and sarcasm. The essence of punk made sense to me,” she says.
Two years after graduating college, Ludwig, who had been working in the skin care industry in Philadelphia, took a trip to San Francisco. In her hotel room, she wrote down her goals, made them into a paper airplane and sailed them out of the window. Afterwards, she returned to New York, began writing songs and took voice lessons. Four years later, in 1988, she got her first gig. “It never ended. Somehow, we’d always get a gig, there would always be a new lead, something that would prevent me from giving up,” Ludwig says of Black Flamingo.
Although thankful for breaking into the local music scene despite her relatively late start, Ludwig, like any self-respecting aspiring musician, yearns for more. “If my songs were played on the radio and really got out there, they could help people. I’ve seen that my songs have an ability to help people,” she says. “I want to help people accept themselves.”
To show that’s she’s more than just talk, Ludwig picks up her guitar and plays her song “Imperfect Girl.” Imperfect girls/they’re everywhere/living in the world/I am the most imperfect girl you’ll ever see. “I had originally called the song ‘Jewish Girl,’ ” she explains after finishing the song, “but my friend told me that came off as anti-Semitic. So I changed the name of the song but I don’t mind being known as the Jewish girl who’s into punk. I don’t mind standing up for everything I am.” n
Black Flamingo’s next performance will be April 4, at 9 and 11:30 p.m. at Dennis’ Rhythm Club, 137 Franklin Street, Manhattan. Tickets are $12. Call (212) 925-7822 for more information.
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MOMS WHO ROCK HARD
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When Lissa Ludwig, a mother of two, isn't at home making her daughter's beds, she's on stage making ...When Lissa Ludwig, a mother of two, isn't at home making her daughter's beds, she's on stage making music. This punk princess is the latest in a new musical movement -- moms who rock.
"I think being a mom makes me want to be a better role model as a human, so I want to do things that are honest to myself, so my kids can be who they really are," Ludwig said.
"My kids come home from school and I either run to a PTA meeting and run right home -- and then grab my guitar and either walk to rehearsal or walk to a gig," Ludwig said about her band, Black Flamingo.
Being a rock mom was simply more than balancing jam sessions with jam sandwiches -- the delights and frustrations of motherhood became an endless source of musical inspiration.
"I just remember the day we were in the apartment, and they were driving me nuts, and I ran into my room screaming, freaking out, and this song just came to me -- it's called 'Sometimes I Cry, But I Still Love You."
Her children have even learned a thing or two from mom's rock ethics.
"I guess it taught me to be kind of independent, because I have to take care of myself when she has to go out."
Hastings On Hudson mother of four Joy Rose may not look like your average 46-year-old suburban mom, but her message would ring true to any.
"I was a disco diva before I moved to a small, middle-of-nowhere -- oh how did I get there?"
"I looked around me in the suburbs and I realized everyone was struggling, everyone was stuck in the middle of life, in the middle of their job, children -- and we were all looking for ways to get happy, and for me music is my happiness," Rose said.
When Rose found herself debilitated with lupus and taking anti-rejection medication, she decided to form the six-woman band House Wives On Prozac.
"I'm here to be colorful, enjoy myself and remind others 'Hey, let's live it up,'" Rose said.
© 2004 by WNBC.com. All rights reserved
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Black Flamingo by Samuel Barker
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Black Flamingo has a great feel to her music. It's a nice blend of punk attitude, folk-rock, pop, an...Black Flamingo has a great feel to her music. It's a nice blend of punk attitude, folk-rock, pop, and intellegence. Her songs are delightfully poppy yet have some serious themes. This EP is a great view into the influences Black Flamingo has had over her lifetime. This is a very enjoyable EP.
The opening track, "Imperfect Girl" is a wonderful track. It's got a great folk-rock feel. You can feel the pop influences on Black Flamingo in this track. It's got a strong Go-Gos influence mixed with a Ani DiFranco-ish folk styling. The song is a humorous look at knowing very few people are perfect and just trying to be the most perfect imperfect person you can be.
"Rushing" has an almost older western feel to it. The female vocals give you a Nancy Sinatra feel. This is a great testament to the vast musical tastes held by Black Flamingo. It's a short track, but the stripped down accoustic folk sound is a nice touch. The lyrics get redundant, but that's part of the song's theme. It's nice addition to the EP.
"Everything I Do Is 4 You" is a wonderful track. The vocals are harmonized well and the mood of the song is great. This was my favorite track on the album. I enjoyed the songwriting and loved the sound.
The final two tracks were lacking in mix quality. They were good, but I would have personally liked the music to be a little higher. But as with the other tracks, the lyrics to "On The H20" and "I Don't Wanna" were interesting and fun. The poor mix gave it a similarity to a female version of a song from Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska."
I hope this EP gets Black Flamingo a lot of positive exposure and a chance to record a full length. I loved the songs and the sound. The mix of sounds from bands like The Waitresses, The Go-Gos, and various folk artists made for wonderfully interesting music. I can't wait to hear of a full length for this artist, it's well deserved. Be sure to check out her websites!
supersonic
