“I could make a transformation as a rock & roll star”
Back on April 9th, we had the pleasure of attending the V&A for the Boy George talk with Paul Gorman, wherein they both endeavoured to explore the impact and influence of the Bowie style on George himself and the New Romantic scene of the 1980s and beyond.
Our personal guest on the night was one Danie Cox of The Feathers, who made an immediate impression on George before the start of the show with her striking Ziggyesque appearance. Read about that encounter here.
In fact, George was so impressed with Danie, he demanded she parade herself onstage and gave her a part in the video for his next single, Coming Home.
Fast forward a few weeks to Paul Morley’s residency at the V&A during the last weekend of April, when he was installed to write a Bowie book over two days.
We published exclusive extracts at the time and you may remember this particular excerpt:
Saturday, April 27, 12.23pm
And then someone comes up to my desk to ask me to fix their phone. And then someone comes up to my desk to ask me to turn the music down – there is a DJ in the Entrance, playing music by and inspired by Bowie, which just happens to be my favourite, from Magazine and Joy Division to Philip Glass turning ‘Heroes’ into a symphony made of blown glass and steel. It all sounds perfect to me. She is livid; her world is falling apart, busted by the decadence of these rude intruders into her calm, collected and soothing sanctuary.
I do not want to be too rude and suggest that of those in the museum she is on the older side, but she is not shall we say the type who will talk of the moment she first discovered David Bowie. She has yet to discover Bowie. She is right now not in the mood to ever discover Bowie. “We don’t expect this racket in here!” she explodes during the particularly sensational and for some legendary Mike Garson piano solo on ‘Aladdin Sane.’ I toy for a moment with trying to explain why the music should not be turned down or off but UP, especially during this particular beautifully berserk solo, which is joyously harmonising with the light pouring from the skies into the vast entrance, but decide she looks in the mood to have me deported if I oppose her in any way. Bitterly disappointed that I am in fact of no use to her, she charges off to search out those in control who might get rid of this horrific noise, so that she can enter the Med and Ren, and appreciate all those quiet, settled centuries without Garson’s startling piano. A few minutes later a young lady in a scarlet Bowie wig wearing cut off denim shorts draws the attention of everyone in the Grand Entrance by dancing the slowest, look-at-me-but-don’t-look Moonage Daydream daydreamy movement to ‘Moonage Daydream,’ as though this is actually a happening, a wonderful breaking through decades of tightening formality, and I think that by now the older lady not wearing the scarlet wig and threatened by Garson’s piano is planning her own counter-revolution, or feeling that she is sitting in a tin can far above the earth.
Well you probably guessed it already, but the ‘young lady in a scarlet Bowie wig wearing cut off denim shorts’ was none other than 22-year-old Danie Cox. Except it wasn‘t a wig. Danie is committed to the look and it’s her very own crowning glory.
Anyway, Danie sings for a band called The Feathers who are a very exciting glam/punk three-piece based in London, with a line-up consisting: Danie Cox – Lead vocal + guitar, Molly Spiers MacLeod – Vocal + bass, Dazzle Monroe – Drums
The band are known to cover one or two Bowie tunes at their shows and will be issuing their debut single on Charles Of London’s new record label, Rock ‘N’ Roll Star/When Was The Last Time You Had Sex?
You can catch The Feathers for free in London tomorrow night (25th May) at The Forge in Camden.
And if you want a flavour of what they sound like, here’s a track that isn’t on the new single, Takes One To Know One.