80s Soft Ear Porn: Vanity 6

When I was a kid my parents were on a mission to make sure that we knew the human body was a natural not a shameful thing. I think they even said as much. The execution of that notion unfortunately misfired and tended to reinforce objectification. One such example is that my mom would go out and buy playboy for my dad, which he would then read on the deck by the pool. I remember several times, my sister gave my dad a playmate calendar for Christmas. I am not sure where he put the calendar. It wasn't in the garage or anywhere in the house. My assumption was that he brought it to work. I suppose you could've gotten away with that in the 80s. Thus I remember the joking confusion when my sister got Vanity 6 from my parents for Christmas. Dad:"Oh I thought that was for me!" I remember only catching a glimpse of it myself. I was nine, so for me it was all so confusing and one of those things that was embarrassing because I was ignorant. The same way kids at that age snicker at the word sexy.

There are a couple things of note about this era in my musical taste development. One is that my sister had, for where we lived, a really advanced musical pallet. This will show up later in my record collection for sure. The flip side to that coin is I faced utter demise if I touched her records. This made them more mysterious. She was a tremendous influence on the music I consumed. Though not being allowed to touch her tunes, she would make me a tape of certain records. Which was why I could be seen at 10 or 11 singing along loudly to the Violent Femmes on my walkman while raking the leaves.

See where one record takes you.Though I never heard much of it from her copy. Not being allowed in her room under threat of further demise prevented this.  I bought this from the thrift shop because my sister had it at 13.

As far as the music goes, if your sitting around thinking, "Man, I wish Prince had made more music in 1982." Then there you go. Chances are if you are sitting around thinking that, you know more about Prince & Vanity 6 than I ever will. This record is soft core audio erotica set to a Prince beat.  I don't think, I'll listen to this record around the fire on a cold winter eve to wind down.

With that said there are several tracks that I would use in an 80s mix or an electro mix.  Track 3: (the first two are straight up Prince tracks) Drive Me Wild would be good for an electro mix. It would work well with Kavinsky, artists on the Italians Do It Better label,He's So Dull, reminds of an 80s movie montage music, that is if you needed a montage to point out how lame some dude is.

and some Kraftwerk, etc.
Side B: If a Girls Answers: ooh its a girl fight. The song is not a favorite, but there might be a good loop at the end where's its just the beat, light synth, bass, and the chorus of "Don't Hang Up." Make-up is a good track, more of the electro feel. Its ripe for a beat loop, or just mixing in an 80s set. Bite the Beat is a peppy synth track with claps that has hints of GoGos or B52s. 3x2=6 is the slow dance. So all in all there's a couple of fun things here. If you see it at a thriftstore/yard sale for $1, pick it up, otherwise skip it.

Here is the whole album on Youtube. Youtube has quite a bit of content on Vanity 6.

A few interesting notes about this group. After having seen A Star is Born, with Streisand and Kristoferson, Prince was initially looking to put together a female pop ensemble that performs in lingerie, but he wanted to call them The Hookers. He wrote all of the music for their album but gave them writing credit. After Vanity tired of performing in her undies, she found religion and quit music, movies, and modeling.

If you want a copy of this record, don't go to amazon for this one. Check out ebay.

This is the second in a series of posts where I listen to a record from my collection and write something about it.