Friday, February 19, 2016
Mylene Farmer – L'Autre (Polydor France, 1991)
There was plenty of evidence in the '90s that Sinead O'Connor or Kate Bush might've been way more compelling if they'd grown up in the land of "Je T'aime…Moi Non Plus." For example, Jeanne Mas, a blindfolded Joan Of Arc who recited Baudelaire poetry, Arctic art songs, and eulogies for war babies amid Latin mass moans, guillotine guitars, circling vultures, and choruses of lost children; or Pauline Ester, with a synthetic X-Ray Spex name and a conehead Lene Lovich beehive, jumping from Malian chants to Caribbean rhythms to scatted catcalls and piano woogie. But singer Mylene Farmer — born in Quebec, but a suburban Parisian since elementary school, and one of France's all-time top sellers — has towered above the chanteuse pack since the mid '80s. L'Autre, which sold nearly two million copies in France, thanks in part to violent videos featuring co-ed boxing matches, labor-camp riots, and wolves lurking around vampiric lesbian makeout scenes, is her testament. Ornate ivory runs serve as a bed for clanking mechanical melodies dissolving into air; cloudland trip-hop moods that outdo P.M. Dawn ("Je T'Aime Mélancholie") and the Pet Shop Boys ("Désenachantée"); cathedral-bell synthesizer riffs mimicking the opening of Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer"; moods as heavy and Medievally Catholic as goth metal would be later in the decade ("Agnus Dei"). Centerpiece "Psychiatric" opens with a snip of the Elephant Man doing his Johnny Rotten-in-"Bodies" imitation, saying he's human not an animal, after which the hellfire-haired Farmer whispers that she's losing her mind — like it happens every day.
Johnny Lewis, 'Sons of Anarchy': Another synthetic drug crime like Rudy Eugene?
Two people look upon the Johnny Lewis death scene site following the "Sons of Anarchy" actor's death.
David Livingston/Getty Images
Johnny Lewis, Sons of Anarchy actor and murderer or an 81-year-old woman on Wednesday may have been using a new synthetic drug called Smiles, according to the NY Daily News.
Miami Police believed that Rudy Eugene, formerly dubbed the "Causeway Cannibal" for his attack on homeless man, was also originally thought to be on a synthetic drug at the time of his brutality.
A toxicology report is pending to verify what substances, if any, were present after the brutal blunt force trauma beating sustained by the victim at her residence. And, unfortunately, the violent end to an elderly victim could have been avoided, since the former actor's last two probation officers were not fooled when it came to his violent tendencies.
In fact, both officers wrote in their last reports of the violence the actor continued to exhibit, and they also spoke of his mental health issues as well as his drug and alcohol dependencies.
Fox News reports records reveal that beginning January 2012 Lewis began his meltdown that would end with his own suicidal jump from his home after literally beating to death his aging landlord--and after he used his hands to strangle her last breath.
Before that violent fatal episode, which also left a cat dead in the home--dismembered dead cat, according to the NY Daily News, the Sons of Anarchy cast member had taken on two men with a bottle, doing damage to both and resulting in one of three arrests made against him. The other two included a burglary attempt at an occupied residence and resisting arrest of an officer.
Despite the fact that two probation officers predicted danger in advance of the lethal attack that claimed the life of Catherine Davis, with one stating he was "very concerned for the well-being of not only the community but that of the defendant," the violent man was left to his own devices.
And those violent tendencies, aided with a declining mental health thanks in part to what police now believe included strong drug combinations, Johnny Lewis finally claimed the life of an innocent victim when he decided to take his own.
And that, according to one probation officer, was what he feared would transpire for the relatively homeless man that even his own family was unable to get to seek help. A man who had, as late as 2006, dated Katy Perry.
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