This is a "featured" topic! — From here you can jump to the « previous or next » featured topic.
New topic 
Printable
Yep. At least part of it was available (for a while). | |
- E-mail - orgNote -  Report post to moderator |
Part of what? To save me looking back through several pages on here. | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Hopefully they will in time or another company gets the rights & releases them. They could add bonus tracks with 12'' versions, demos, unreleased tracks, etc and have text in booklet about the making of the album, etc. She began work on a 3rd album and I think some songs were recorded for it but the album was never finished, I think Jam&Lewis produced some of them - so they could be bonus tracks too. Though Denise Matthews renounced the name Vanity, many still have her records or tapes and would like to buy a remastered CD. 'The Last Dragon' soundtrack is out on CD but she only sings one song on it '7th Heaven'.
[Edited 2/19/16 18:22pm] | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Video from the first Melboune show, including some of Prince's talk about Vanity. | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
[img:$uid]http://i65.tinypic.com/1551dac.jpg[/img:$uid]  will ALWAYS think of  like a "ACT OF GOD"! N another realm. mean of all people who might of been aliens or angels.if found out that wasn't of this earth, would not have been that surprised. R.I.P. | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Kool, where did you get that pic from "Lack of home training crosses all boundaries." | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Steven Ivory talks about Vanity:
http://www.eurweb.com/2016/02/steven-ivory-grammys-kanye-vanity/
Finally, while watching the Grammys, I got the sad word that Denise Matthews passed. She was 57. Also known as Vanity, the stage name given her by Prince. Ontario, Canada-born Matthews was a muse of the artist and lead singer in his girl group, Vanity 6, which hit in 1982 with the Prince-produced single, “Nasty Girl.” According to legend, Prince actually considered naming her Vagina, but she balked. Vanity left Prince’s camp in 1983 and signed with Motown. Vanity was always kind to me. We first met one afternoon in 1984, in the office of Motown Publicity head Bob Jones–I interviewed her there for the fanzine Black Beat in support of her debut solo Motown album, Wild Animal–and we hit it off immediately. I still have the huge Vanity poster she signed for me. The only thing more obvious to me than Vanity’s stunning physical beauty was her sadness. Hers was a story in Hollywood that is typical but which I never become used to witnessing: the person who comes to this town and gets caught up and then used up. Regrettably, I never met Denise Matthews. I only knew the flirty Vanity, a tragic parody Matthews lived until the persona died, so to speak, in 1994, after an overdose of crack cocaine. It was while in a hospital on life support for three days that Denise Matthews disavowed the Vanity character along with the recordings and films she made under that moniker (The Last Dragon, 52 Pick-Up, Action Jackson, among them), and became a born-again Christian and minister. Denise spent the rest of her life helping others, attempting to heal her spirit of assorted demons and repair her body—-she had a kidney transplant in 1997—-of years of drug abuse. She lost the physical battle on February 15, succumbing to renal failure.
Vanity mentioned on The Talk:
http://www.cbs.com/shows/the_talk/video/Q87mHoCufY_w7C_ozrqTEej6DdeRj3We/the-talk-how-do-you-honor-someone-who-has-passed-away-/ [Edited 2/19/16 22:51pm] "Lack of home training crosses all boundaries." | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
That pic just touched me. Just Music-No Categories-Enjoy It! | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Never saw it before. Man still hard to believe...
Just Music-No Categories-Enjoy It! | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
She was still gorgeous. "Get up off that grey line" | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Yeah she was still a beauty. From Canadian news:Denise Matthews: The Niagara Falls beauty queen who became Vanity By John Law, Niagara Falls Review Tuesday, February 16, 2016 4:00:53 EST PM  Denise Matthews photographed in 1981, shortly before she was discovered by Prince and become Vanity. The Niagara Falls-born singer-turned-evangelist died Monday. PHOTO: Steve Landis / Special to Niagara Falls Review I almost froze when I finally got Denise Matthews on the phone. It had taken so long to talk to her, I didn't know where to start. Which life to discuss first. Her beauty queen years in Niagara Falls? The Prince era? Her lost decade addicted to crack? Her rebirth as an evangelist, forming her own ministry? It was a fascinating life, but Matthews – who died Monday – wasn't eager to talk about all of it. In fact, she hadn't spoken to her hometown paper in more than 30 years before I reached out to her by e-mail. There were unsuccessful attempts to talk over the years, but this time she agreed. It was December, 2007, and she was about to release her autobiography Blame It On Vanity. It was to be her last word on the alter-ego that made her a star. And nearly killed her. I had an old 1977 clipping from The Review in my hand as she picked up the phone. I read the headline to her - '18-year-old Westlane beauty is Miss Niagara Hospitality' – and she chuckled at this reminder of her youth. Before the drugs, before the pain. What would you say to your 18-year-old self, I asked her. "Make sure you don't do what you think you're going to do," she said with a laugh. There were more laughs over the next 45 minutes or so, but also some anger. Some awkward moments. She didn't like some questions, didn't want to revisit the woman she once was. The sultry pop star. Prince's one-time protege. The girl who once sang "I'm looking' for a man that'll do it anywhere / Even on a limousine floor." Matthews was born to German-born mom Helga Senyk and African-American dad James Levia Matthews. Friends recall her as stunningly beautiful early on, but shy and bullied at school. She frequently had to hide bruises from her abusive father. "She was very talented and beautiful," recalls Niagara Falls city councillor Joyce Morocco, who knew Matthews in high school. "When she started doing the modeling you just knew she was going to go places." Shortly after leaving Niagara Falls, Matthews put her movie star looks to work in less-than-stellar flicks like Terror Trainand Tanya's Island. In the early '80s she attended a Prince concert, and later met the singer – not quite a superstar yet – back stage at the American Music Awards. He was smitten, and created the all-girl trio Vanity 6 just for her. He then produced their debut album, which included the crude dance floor classic Nasty Girl. Shortly after, she appeared with Prince on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Then came the turning point. At 24, Prince offered her the female lead in his autobiographical movie Purple Rain. She agreed, then abruptly left the production – and Prince's life – for a solo career with Motown Records. Purple Rain went on to become a global smash in the summer of '84. Vanity 6 became Apollonia 6. Matthews, meanwhile, struggled to find solo success with her albums (Wild Animal,Skin on Skin) or movies (The Last Dragon, Action Jackson). All of it took a back seat to the drugs, as her addiction to crack cocaine took over. She hooked up with Motley Crue guitarist Nikki Sixx, whom she was briefly engaged to. Their mutual drug abuse is detailed in Sixx's book The Heroin Diaries. It isn't pretty. To outsiders, Vanity was fascinating. A beautiful girl from Niagara Falls personally groomed by Prince to be a star before she succumbed to drugs and decadence. But to Matthews, that story didn't matter any more. Vanity was dead. She was gone when she woke from a three-day coma in 1994 after her kidneys shut down from drug abuse. "I haven't seen a tape of mine in 15 years," she said. "I get calls from people saying 'Your movie's on!' That's nice, but I don't have a television. My tapes as Vanity…I destroyed those years ago." She only referred to Vanity as a cautionary tale. An evil figure from a past life. Her patience wore thin with every mention of her name, but she struggled for another reason – simply holding the telephone was causing her discomfort. Pretty much everything did. Every day she had to do five sessions of peritoneal dialysis, each one lasting half an hour. It left her drained, sore. But still alive. Then she dropped a bomb on me: She refused to go on a waiting list for a new kidney because she was convinced God would give her one. "I don't have to believe I'll do (dialysis) for the rest of my life," she said. "The doctors would like you to believe that. You can either believe that and receive that, or you can believe God. "You have to understand…I live by faith." That was alarming. I e-mailed her some treatment options after our talk, but never heard back. Some fans were concerned after the story, worried her faith was trumping common sense. In recent months, Matthews started selling many of her personal belongings and started a GoFundMe page to help pay for treatments for her final, fatal ailment: An inflammation of the intestines called Sclerosing Encapsulating Peritonitis. The goal was $50,000. She raised $6,659. Monday night, she passed away at a hospital in Fremont, Calif., where she lived. She was 57. At her final sermon Saturday, she said she was "ready to go home." On Tuesday, I reached out to Matthews' younger sister Ren in Los Angeles, who says Denise had found peace despite her physical ordeal these past 22 years. "She has been praising Jesus and in and out of the hospital, that's the best way to put it," she said. "She had a lot of side effects from issues with surgery. Infections and such. There's been a lot going on with her physically." Along with sisters Deborah and Patricia, the four Matthews girls grew up in Niagara Falls. Ten years younger than Denise, Ren watched her blossom as a model, then leave to seek stardom. "Denise was always an entertainer. Even as a little girl she would dress up and put on shows. It was inevitable." But so was her passing. During their last talk over the summer, Matthews told her sister she was ready for the pain to end. "It's just, she's had so many heart attacks and she's always come through. It was just a shock that she actually did not come through this time."
Former Niagara Falls beauty queen and Prince protégé dies in California at 57
Postmedia News | February 16, 2016 10:14 AM ET  Postmedia fileNiagara Falls-raised Denise Katrina Matthews — a.k.a. Vanity — is shown in this undated photo.
A former Niagara beauty queen who was propelled to fame by rock star Prince before spiralling into a seedy world of cocaine has died. Born Denise Katrina Matthews, a former student of Stamford Collegiate and Westlane secondary schools in Niagara Falls, she was best known by one name: Vanity. She died Monday at the age of 57 at a Fremont, Calif., hospital, the same city where she was leading a ministry after turning her life around following a near fatal overdose in 1994. In Australia, Prince said Monday he’d just found out about the death of Matthews and paid tribute to his former girlfriend from the early 1980s in an emotionally charged show. “Someone dear to us has passed away, I’m gonna dedicate this song to her,” he said before playing a touching version of Little Red Corvette with a touch of Dirty Mind —songs from the era when they were together. Prince reworked his classic The Ladder to replace the name ‘Electra’ with ‘Vanity’ — so the lyrics ran “This Prince, he had a subject named Vanity who loved him with a passion, uncontested.” Matthews, the former lead singer of Vanity 6, which had a breakout hit in Nasty Girl, died following years of dialysis battling kidney failure, several reports said. A few months ago she set up a GoFundMe page stating she’d been diagnosed with sclerosing encapsulating peritonitis, an inflammation of the small intestines, reports said. In a 2007 interview with Niagara Falls Review reporter John Law, Matthews reminisced about her 1977 crowning as Miss Niagara Hospitality when then an 18-year-old Westlane student. She was asked what she wished she could have told herself back then. “Make sure you don’t do what you think you’re going to do,” she said with a sharp laugh during the first interview with her hometown paper in 30 years. “Don’t go the way of the heathen. Do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect $200. Be very careful and don’t get mixed up with boys. What else? Let’s see — don’t fornicate. Turn to Jesus and run for your life.” During the 1980s, Matthews let her destructive alter-ego call all the shots, until her body gave out. “It was the best thing that happened to me,” she said in 2007. Vanity at the time of that interview was long dead. Her Christian ministry was her new life. “My tapes as Vanity — I destroyed those years ago.”
Growing up in Niagara Falls, God wasn’t her priority, Law wrote in his story. She was more concerned with hiding bruises from classmates at Princess Margaret Elementary School. She was routinely beaten by an alcoholic father, who died in 1974 when she was 15. She went to Stamford, where her older sister Patricia became a star athlete. After moving to and graduating from Westlane, Matthews got her first taste of success by winning the Miss Niagara Hospitality pageant. Within a year, she left Niagara Falls for Toronto, and then California. She appeared in forgettable 1980 movies Terror Train and Tanya’s Island. Her fame shot to its highest point after meeting Prince at the American Music Awards. He proposed an all-girl group led by Matthews. He renamed her Vanity, made her the lead singer of trio Vanity 6. Dressed in lingerie and garters, Vanity 6 scored with its second single, Nasty Girl, which in 1982 hit No. 1 on the Billboard dance charts. Prince then offered her a major role as the female lead in his biographical musical Purple Rain at age 24. She left the film midway through shooting for a solo career, and was replaced by Apollonia Kotero. Vanity put out the albums Wild Animal (1984) and Skin on Skin (1986), and appeared in movies such as The Last Dragon (1985), Never Too Young to Die (1986), 52 Pick-Up (1986) and Action Jackson (1988). Then things fell apart. “I had found my way into the playground of the pearly white stuff called cocaine,” she wrote in her biography Blame It On Vanity. “I’d inhaled enough rock so that by the age of 35, you could light me up, smoke me and stick me in the nearest cold grave. “Easily, the devil had won me and readied my tired body for hell.” After a brief engagement to Motley Crue guitarist Nikki Sixx, Matthews in 1987 lost a kidney and started losing her vision and hearing. Her subsequent transformation in the 1990s meant doing something she thought was impossible — forgiving her father. In recent years she spoke at churches, using her life as an example. Four days after her Niagara Falls Review interview, she sent Law an e-mail: “When I think of Niagara Falls, I get a little choked up inside. I really do miss it.” With files from John Law.
Just Music-No Categories-Enjoy It! | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
| |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
[img:$uid]http://i68.tinypic.com/abh845.jpg[/img:$uid] will ALWAYS think of like a "ACT OF GOD"! N another realm. mean of all people who might of been aliens or angels.if found out that wasn't of this earth, would not have been that surprised. R.I.P. | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Me, too. I haven't seen this. She looks so young and fresh faced with her whole life before her... "Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." --Plato
https://youtu.be/CVwv9LZMah0 | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
rip vanity theres also this photo on her facebook of a polaroid that was taken of her when she was working as a camera assistant and the photographer needed her to test the light. how dumb was that photographer for using her as an ASSISTANT.. I'm feeling a bit fammy™ | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Tribute article (with further links at bottom) :
http://www.thelastdragontribute.com/video-memorial-denise-matthews-vanity/
Photo with Prince I don't think I'd seen before.
Video in article :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veOKns2lY4c
[Edited 2/20/16 18:51pm] | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
| will ALWAYS think of like a "ACT OF GOD"! N another realm. mean of all people who might of been aliens or angels.if found out that wasn't of this earth, would not have been that surprised. R.I.P. | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
2015 Interview Taimak Talks Denise: Just Music-No Categories-Enjoy It! | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
|
This doesn't look like 1981 pre-Vanity to me!
|
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
lol nope. Just Music-No Categories-Enjoy It! | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Denise Matthews, winning Miss Niagara Hospitality in 1977.
she was a natural beauty from the beginning. i can understand how prince was smitten by her. “Transracial is a term that has long since been defined as the adoption of a child that is of a different race than the adoptive parents,” : https://thinkprogress.org...fb6e18544a | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
i keep thinking of elvis' spanish eyes when i see these young pictures. what elvis songs come to your mind? I'm feeling a bit fammy™ | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Man this breaks my heart again. Dang. Just Music-No Categories-Enjoy It! | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Ebony Eyes By Rick James. Just Music-No Categories-Enjoy It! | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Prince, in you I found a kindred spirit...Rest In Paradise. | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
[img:$uid]http://i.imgur.com/WMrjlih.jpg[/img:$uid]
Prince dedicated Purple Rain to Vanity at his latest show. He is really torn up. It's not like him to be this emotional.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/prince-makes-it-all-right-on-a-saturday-night-with-gig-full-of-emotions-at-opera-house/news-story/73308eafa5a24e0e597cc5e007b77f8c "Lack of home training crosses all boundaries." | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
KCOOLMUZIQ said:
I love this quote! Powerful and anointed woman, Denise Katrina Matthews!!👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾😘 "A united state of mind will never be divided
The real definition of unity is 1 People can slam their door, disagree and fight it But how U gonna love the Father but not love the Son? United States of Division"     | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
The Last Dragon era interview, she seemed so happy there without a care in the world :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIOpbyN0yuA
(how do you embed videos on here? I've tried clicking on link chain sign but it does nothing, maybe my settings) [Edited 2/22/16 6:51am] | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
You paste the link to the thread, type [youtube] directly before the link and [/youtube] directly after it, highlight and copy the whole thing, click on the left chain link above, and when the box pops up you past the link in there and click "insert" [Edited 2/22/16 7:16am] "Get up off that grey line" | |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
|
I know she became a different woman, but I was wondering if Nikki Sixx said anything about her passing? He changed a lot too. |
| - E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
New topic Printable This is a "featured" topic! — From here you can jump to the « previous or next » featured topic.