SINCE DAY ONE
SINCE DAY ONE, the vocalist, musician, songwriter, poet & producer known as Teena Marie had obvious talent. From 1979’s "Wild & Peaceful"; the album with no face (‘cuz back then they couldn’t handle it), to 1994’s "Passion Play", she’s HYPNOTIZED us with her music; her words; THAT VOICE! Our spirits were thus moved. Although respected for her musical genius among those “in the know”, Teena Marie is undoubtedly one of the most underrated artists of our time. Truly a force of nature, the power & passion in Teena’s voice can STOP THE WORLD in its tracks. Listen to one of her soulful ballads or JAMMIN’ grooves, and ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH. HOW CAN YOU RESIST IT? She paints a picture of her life with her words, opening a window to her spirit that leaves her NAKED TO THE WORLD. Sharing her life through song is her gift to all of us. Penned “Casper”, “Vanilla Child” and “The Ivory Queen of Soul”, Lady Tee went OUT ON A LIMB singing R&B in a different colored skin. An anomaly within the industry? YES INDEED! Holding tight to her artistic integrity, never denying her soul by “crossing over”, Teena continues to get BEHIND THE GROOVE, remaining true to herself. Teena’s gifts will be opened once more when the long awaited "Black Rain" falls in the summer of 2000. We’ll finally get the chance to see her WORK IT in the new millennium. Maybe this time around the industry will finally be ready to handle her phenomenal talent; her true artistry. TUNE IN TOMORROW for the answer, but you can be sure that “until the 6 becomes 9”, this living legend will always be number 1 in the hearts of her fans. “maybe that will express what I’ve been going through”. With Adoration . . .
(artical written by Melanie)
A VIEW FROM SMOOTHYC
We are living in a world, unfortunatly, where image goes beyond talent, I'm writting this as Im watching Divas 2000. Miss Ross is on TV singing "Endless Love", and for any of you who watched this show and saw the mess she made of that one, you will know what i'm talking about!!. I'm not saying she has no talent, but she is up there for all she achieved in the 60's and 70's, and not the lollypop music she has made since.
Nowadays its about glamour, sex,image and lollypop music that the masses will buy today and forget tommorow. You're only gonna get recognised in today's world if you follow the above formula. We are living in a fast world , and that's why we have fast food music and artists making all the money, and true talent gets left by the wayside by all the big labels.
Why else would Teena Marie be told that "Blackrain" has got at least 3 to 4 radio hits on it, and yet none want to sign her and give her the deal?.
The fact is this; all the majors are selling us short of true talent, and are scared to take on a real artist, just because she does not conform to their idea of what will sell. Its a sad industry, full of sad music and artists that are gonna be in and out, just like fast food out of a burger joint.
This years DIVAS was a disgrace to the name DIVAS, and I for one am totally relieved Teena was not in it.
One thing is a certain, in 20 or 30 years time Teena Marie will be still remembered and her music still played and everyone apart from the "talented ones" will be gone and forgotten to all future generations that have taste .
{written by Smoothyc}
STAIRWAY TO HELL
If listing this manifesto of free think in a metal guide were not so perverse In probably list it even higher, so call me gutless, but don't deny it belongs.
Side One is the hardest rock any woman's ever made, and it may welI be the on my legitimately psychedelic in' music of the eighties.
Onetime Rick James protégée Teena is a true feminist who cannot be pigeon holed into any womanly role outlined by Phyllis Schlafy or Helen Reddy or their mums .She's an open-souled soul who drinks in the whole world and refuses value judgments and omits nothing.
A white person who's spent her adult Iife entertaining blacks, a miracle offspring of Part Smith and James Brown and Robert Plant and Minnie Riperton who's been known to toboggan down moonnbeams and visit Atlantis and Neptune, she's got a batch of LPs on Motown and Epic, most of 'em rather guitarless.
Here, she hits Shangr-la and Oz and the southern tip of Spain, lustily stretching and snapping ann bending her voice, tasting life into words for alI They're worth, slipping into trances, exploding into jive asides and spit-in-your-eye taunts.
She works her scats gymnastic as a Hendrix solo, her soul leaves her body, she breaks syllables into subatomic particles like she's just learning to talk. Which she is. The lyrics are too silly. too ingenuous, to believe.
"To live inside the major not the minor chordland forget now we mane love in a '57 Ford." One song's metaphors are almost all edible-candy-coated kisses, heavenly Milky Ways, ice cream "sammiches," Beaujolais
Guests include Branford Marsalis and Stanley Clarke, the first voice you
hear belongs to Bootsy CoIlins, the excitement takes a couple minutes to get started, ann it calms nown sooner than it should, wth Brazilian bossa novas and lush torch-lulabies.
"The rhythms used on Emerald City are called Sha Sha a la Fum," says the sleeve, which also features instrument-credit hieroglyphics as crazily cryptic as any tunes Zeppelin ever devised. A whole new language.
So it's hard to figure out who plays what, but I think the guitars, fuzzers that roar toward internal-combustion culmination’s like Hawkwind helping out Funkadelic, belong to Teena and to Nikki Slick.
(Teena's ax on the cover has aquamarine paisleys, the brand doesn't matter.) "Once Is Not Enough," "Lips to Find You," and "You So Heavy" are frantically bongoed salsa-meta the latter, an instructively named ripchord-ripper dedicated to Rick James, concludes with what sounds like frets being sawed in half before the feedback's disappeared.
Since Teena hates no music, and absorbs everything she likes, the sounds hint at possibilities no one else has even considered, None of it's art, and all of it is, and no other eighties rock 'n' roll derives so much pleasure out of its singing and dancing and nombast. Nobody else is so cosmic, nobody lets so much hang out Teena's in her own galaxy, and she cannot be controlled.
(Stairway To Hell)
I thought some of you might find this intersting , its an article written by a guy who wrote a book about his top 500 heavy metal albums of all time. He put emerald City at number 9. HEAVY METAL! Well I never! But that was a very different Teena, so if that's the way he portrays that album, and was willing to write about it, fair play to him .
{"Smoothyc")
THE LEGEND LIVES ON
...And the legend lives on, lives on to captivate, illuminate, substantiate the sound of Ivory Soul!
Teena Marie is such a legend. She came on the music & lyrical scene like a little fist of dynamite & she continues to explode her audiences into the arena of passion & playfulness.
Her voice is as seering & soulful as a million bright lights up in the sky...and I thank Miss Tee for sharing it all with us...WE LOVE YA, TEENA!!
written by dianna 6/07/2006
If you want to contribute to this page please write your article here in ..HAVE YOUR SAY ON LADY TEE..
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