Sylvie Simmons
(Author)In "Pussy," the girl singer of the eponymous band cracks up after her
lover and the band's creative center dies. When her manager tracks her
down she is living anonymously in an East Village tenement, rarely going
outdoors, and hoarding her own discarded hair, dead skin and other
physical castoffs.
In "Greetings from Finsbury Park," a British rock star comes home from
L.A. only to find that the customs agent going through his suitcase is
an embittered ex-schoolmate whose wife once slept with the star before
he was famous.
In "A Happy Ending," a deeply shell-shocked ex-superstar (think Brian
Wilson) struggles to keep the voices in his head quiet during a meeting
with a hot new producer for a comeback album the A&R boss envisions as
an unholy alliance of Neil Young and Public Enemy.
"Love Stain" charts the emergence of devotional offerings, cottage
industries, and a pecking order of proximity to the spot where an up and
coming young rocker dropped dead on speedballs outside a London
club--and his best friend chats up a rock journalist about the tragedy
and the conspiracy to murder his friend, all while trying to get her to
cover his own band.
In "Rhinestone Tombstone Blues," country music singer-songwriter LeeAnn
Starmountain copes with the disappearance of her inspiration--the
violent fantasies of her abusive mother's death, which she can no longer
indulge in after her mother actually perishes, cooked to death by her
electric blanket after a stroke.
In "Close to You," a cult devoted to Karen Carpenter springs up after
the singer's image appears in the paint on the wall of a London kebab
shop.
In "From a Great Height," controversy erupts when the frontman of
America's biggest rock band urinates off his hotel balcony, soaking a
crowd of adoring fans.
In "And Alien Tears," a California limo driver with a gift for Jim
Morrison impersonation becomes a star in his own right in Germany,
hosting a talk show as "Jim."
The hottest band of cock-rockers in America finds their tour going off
the rails in "Allergic to Kansas" when the misogynist lead singer starts
growing breasts.
In "Diet Cola Cancer" Pussy, the lead character in the first story,
returns--post-breakdown, and racking up the younger boyfriends--and even
gets sued when one of said boyfriends commits an indiscretion at an LA
rock club, and Pussy douses the paramour in "carcinogenic" Diet Coke.
In "I Kissed Willie Nelson's Nipple," LeeAnn visits England on command
performance for the Queen, and tells the story of her many marriages,
the "greatest hits" of her abusive relationships, and the
self-explanatory Willie Nelson film role that put her career back on
track.
In "Spitting Image (The '80s Retro Track)," the famous British
television show (they made the puppets for Genesis's famous "Land of
Confusion" video) agrees to sell one of their puppets to the star it
comically represents--but when the puppet is "kidnapped" on the way to
its new home, and someone sends the star the puppet piece by violently
detached piece, he finds himself cracking up.
In "Too Weird for Ziggy (A Dream of Holes)," a famous rock god is dead,
and MTV isn't content to let him rest. So in an unprecedented live
television seance at the palatial home of one of LA's most
overcompensated rock managers, they hire a voodoo practitioner to raise
him from the dead, on live television.
In "Jeremiah 18:1-10" the band from "From a Great Height" returns and
now the drummer has a stalker, who claims God has commanded her to
become his wife. The trouble is, she seems so innocent and naive, no one
takes her seriously until the drummer's stripper fiancee suddenly turns
up dead.
In "The Audience Isn't Listening," the bass player and guitarist from
the same band cope with the rumor that the megalomaniacal singer is
planning to dissolve the band and keep the name--while the guitarist's
wife has secret designs of her own on the singer.
In "Baudelaire's Do