HERMINE “BORN A WOMAN” (1980)
originally recorded by Sandy Posey (1966)
cover version available on Torture (Human Records 45, 1980) and The World on My Plates (Les Temps Modernes, 2006)
Quite possibly my favorite of left-field covers—Hermine’s version of dubiously feminist anti-torch song, “Born a Woman”. Twice Grammy nominated, wildly popular, though derided by “real” women’s libbers in its time, Sandy Posey’s lyrically jagged tune has been covered more than once, another version, by male Belgian proto-power punk band Hubble Bubble, to appear here soon.
Hermine Demoriane, a marginally gifted chanteuse (dubbed a new wave diva in a style similar to Cristina, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Linder [of Ludus], Vivien Goldman, et. al), has an interesting back story. My first encounter with Hermine came courtesy of Liz Berg’s program on WFMU, shortly after Les Temps Modernes’ reissue of Hermine’s singles. On unrelated business, I watched Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, where Demoriane plays Chaos who, besides maintaining a tidy squat, does a lovely, awkward tightrope act to the tune of Edith Piaf.
from wikipedia
In the early 1970s she spent time as a tightrope walker (see her book The Tightrope Walker), performing for example with COUM Transmissions (pre-Throbbing Gristle), and spending a season with Jérôme Savary’s Grand Magic Circus in Paris in 1974, acting in Copi’s play Goodbye Mister Freud. She played the character of Chaos, singing Piaf’s Je ne regrette rien, in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee. She also took part in Alternative Miss World, organised by the artist Andrew Logan.
Hermine wrote three plays: Lou Andréas Salomé (starring Richard O’Brien and Jenny Runacre), He Who Is Your Lord Is Your Child Too (starring Anne Bean) and The Knives Beside the Plates (with the Neo-Naturist Cabaret), between 1978 and 1980. From October 1980 until 1981, she performed musical interludes at The Comic Strip, a pioneering café-theatre in Soho with comedians such as Rik Mayall, Jennifer Saunders, etc. In addition, she performed and organised various evening shows of performance art.
In 1974, employed as a tightrope walker by The Moodies, she sang for the first time in public, singing a song by Nick Lowe I won’t make it without you. With Moodier, successor group to The Moodies, she performed a version of Roy Orbison’s Blue Angel produced by Max Paddison in the style of a Marlene Dietrich song.
In 1976 she played two concerts with the group The Subterraneans, composed of Nick Kent and The Damned without their singer Dave Vanian, and also recorded with both Nick Kent and Peter Perrett, the resulting single never being published. David Cunningham from The Flying Lizards noticed Hermine and recorded her for her single Torture, originally planned for Virgin Records but which was eventually released on her own label Salomé Records, with a later remastered release on Human Records. She then released a second single with Human.
Although having recorded very little since 1984, viewers of the TV series French & Saunders and Absolutely Fabulous have been able to see her as well as hear her French-accented voice in numerous musical pastiches (she sings a French version of the theme tune at the end of the episode Paris in 2001.)
