TRAKIN CARE OF BUSINESS

Roy Trakin

Back in town, we paid a visit on Toronto-born funk-rocker JANE CHILD, who looked very London ’77 with a nose ring attached by a chain to her ear, and floor-length, gold-dusted corn-rows. It’s a style Child has popularized in the video from her number-one single, 'Don’t Wanna Fall In Love,” from her self-titled LP bow (Warner Bros.), which marks one of the rare times Warners has allowed a rookie artist to produce their debut album since Prince, to whom Jane’s been frequently compared.

The S&M imagery is further enforced with lyrics like 'Love cuts just like a knife/You make the knife feel good.”

There’s a very fine line between pain and pleasure, love and hate,” explains Jane. Ouch!! 'I have two extreme sides to my personality. I’m  a manic-depressive, but I didn’t realize until I wrote these songs how serious my mood swings really were. I think my music is uplifting, but the words aren’t very well adjusted.”

Jane says she’s always looked the way she does, claiming the nose-piercing has it’s origins in East India, where it was customary for a woman to attach the ring when she got married and then link it to her ear as a sign of faith. I wondered if she read the article where Sandra Bernhard joked about ripping the chain off.

She did?” says a mock wounded Child. 'I’ve always spoken highly of her. The way I look isn’t important. It’s what’s on the record that’s important. Before this album came out, people wondered how I had the audacity to look like this. They’d come up to me while I was eating and just pull on my hair to see if it were real.” 

But doesn’t the look get in the way of people listening to the music?

Does someone’s skin color get in the way?” she asks. 'Living Color plays rock ‘n’ roll. Just because they’re black, does it mean they should have less credibility as a rock band? I’m thrilled my music is crossing over and getting accepted by that community.”

 Like  Prince, she’s very much a sexual creature. 'It’s the strongest, most powerful vibration in the world,” she says. 'It’s the reason churches were created, wars were fought, governments toppled and art created.”

How about religion?

I've read the Koran, the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita,” she says. 'I was raised a Chrisitan but it’s always scared the shit out of me. The symbol of the cross is so violent and gory. I don’t know why we have to inundate our children with images of fear, guilt and horror.”

The best answer I’ve ever found was at the end of Stardust Memories,” she continues. 'Where Woody Allen asks the aliens about the meaning of life and they tell him, ‘Write funnier jokes.’”

I couldn’t think of a worthier epitaph for Trakin Care of Business.

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