Marilyn / bio

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Marilyn's CD
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What would she have done if it
weren't for rock 'n roll?
" Assuming that I managed to avoid the nuthouse,
I would have been an athlete or an
astrophysicist or both."
East Village Eye

is one of the underground stars of the fabled Mudd Club. The night after the Rock ‘n’ Roll Funeral Ball, she became the only act featured there regularly when Steve Maas, the club’s brilliant owner, offered her an enormous sum to appear exclusively at the Mudd. At that funeral gala, Marilyn appeared in black silhouette with a Miss America banner draped across her body. Only instead of the usual beauty queen drivel, Marilyn’s banner said Death. Armed with a two-foot hourglass, she sang Sex Means Nothing When You’re Dead . Evidently, Steve liked what he saw.

Before striking out on her own, Marilyn had been the lead singer of Kongress, a band formed by Otto von Ruggins and Von LMO, who had already left to form his own band when Marilyn arrived.

Sex Means Nothing When You’re Dead, Marilyn’s first single, became an instant cult classic when it was released in 1980. Then came the EP So Disgraceful, released by Marilyn & the Movie Stars in 1982, which charted on Billboard . “It all sounds a bit decadent but it’s great,” is what Billboard had to say about So Disgraceful. Marilyn & the Movie Stars featured Webster Smith on synthesizers, drummer Hari Viderci, who also played for the Sickfu*ks, and bassist Tommy Victor, who went on to form Prong. She played the lead in Mark Kehoe’s 1982 film, Destroy All Blondes. Marilyn also turned her mordant wit to writing—about subatomic particles, outer space, high-risk adventure, and the like—for New York newspapers and magazines, which came as a bit of a surprise to those who figured this blonde nightclubber had nothing between the ears.

Marilyn then went to Paris to perform and spent the next several years appearing in France, Switzerland, and Italy. She returned to New York to pursue her writing. Along with working for the rights of pedestrians and cyclists in New York, she’s active in the civil rights movement for Ireland’s men, women, and children still under the thumb of the British invaders who have oppressed that country for the last 800 years .

In 2002, Marilyn appeared in Ned Ambler’s movie Illusions of Broadway, singing her incomparable I Survived. (No relation to the Gloria Gaynor song). She stars in Ned Ambler’s new movie Astin Valentine: Unrestricted, which opened March 2, 2004 at Film Anthology Archives in New York City.

Marilyn has just released a CD, Sex Means Nothing When You’re Dead, with the original versions of the songs she recorded in the early 80s. (To order, click the link at left)
She has a CD of all new songs coming out at the end of 2004

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