VICTIMS
Home: 87 Gentle Street




I am a genuine MTV Baby.

I was in High School when MTV first burst into the music scene during the eighties. And just like every impressionable teenager who wore Go-Go skirts and Madonna curls, I openly embraced the media revolution which would eventually change the music world as we knew it.

During that time warp when LP's were getting passe and CD's were largely unknown to the general public, I amassed quite a compilation of cassettes from groups like, well, General Public! Of course I had the standard-issue Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, DePeche Mode, Thompson Twins, and Howard Jones, among many others. But my personal favorite was far removed from the cookie-cutter British invader: Culture Club.

Indeed, the band, particularly their lead singer, Boy George (nee George O'Dowd) was so unique that it couldn't be pigeonholed into any single genre. Okay, so I confess to being a true-blue Boy George junkie in High School, still innocent of the fact that Boy George, even then, was already a junkie.

The first song I really liked from them was "Time (Clock of the Heart)" from their "Kissing to be Clever" CD (oops, I keep forgetting they were called LP's back then!), which received heavy airplay from the popular mobile DJ's at the time.

Ironically, it was through my involvement with one particular mobile outfit that I was able to convince them to play a rarely-heard song, "Victims", the obscure last track on the B-side of Culture Club's "Color By Numbers" CD. It was one of the rare ballads tthat would come from the group.

I can still remember slow-dancing to it on our Graduation Ball, with someone who would eventually be my first serious boyfriend. Listening to its haunting melody and Boy George's plaintive singing, it's no wonder a spell was cast upon us that night, within the dark, strobe-lit confines of the ballroom at the Valle Verde Country Club.

Listening to the lyrics now, the song's dark undertones of obsession and unrequited love are quite obvious. Even the title "Victims", should've clued me in at the very beginning. But I was bright-eyed, bushy-browed and barely out of High School, and did I mention infatuated with a cross-dressing British pop icon who was obviously misunderstood and heterosexual to boot?

Little did I know back then that my beloved song, that romantic ballad which would eventually become our theme song, was written by Boy George specifically for his on-again-off-again lover, the group's drummer, Jon Moss.

Oh shattered innocence of youth.


VICTIMS
Culture Club
Written by George O'Dowd

The victims we know so well
They shine in your eyes when they kiss and tell
Strange places we've never seen
But you're always there like a ghost in my dream

And I keep on telling you
Please don't do the things you do.
When you do those things
Pull my puppet strings
I've the strangest void for you.

Oh...hmmm...

Pull the strings of emotion
Take a ride into unknown pleasure
Feel like a child on a dark night
Wishing there was some kind of heaven

Oh I could be warm with you smiling
Hold out your hands for a while
The victims we know them so well.
So well.

We love and we never tell
What chases our hearts to the wishing well
Love leads us into the stream
And it's sink or swim like it's always been

And I keep on loving you
It's the only thing to do
When the angels sing
There are greater things
Can I give them all to you?

Oh...hmmm...

Pull the strings of emotion
Take a ride into unknown pleasure
Feel like a child on a dark night
Wishing we could spend it together

Oh I could be warm with you smiling
Hold out your hands for a while
The victims we know them so well.
So well.


(Taken from The Prada Mama Chronicles, May 23, 2005 entry.)