This article has been translated from Dutch and typed by Andre de Koning. He also scanned the picture.

 

I won't make no godforsaken dull records any more
by Gert Jonkers

The time that Cyndi Lauper scored hit after hit, is already a decennium behind us. And if we have to believe the reports, since that time it is not going so well with the mad girl from New York. Depressions, a long illness and even a suicide attempt would have disrupted her pleasure in life. "Not true at all," she says now, shortly after she has been shaking her head while watching how the three ladies of her band are playbacking themselves through the song "Sally's pigeons" in front of the TV-camera's. "Dreadfully boring," she finds what is shown. "But if it's nothing, you can always try to make something off it. Just as life."

Cyndi (41) now has bright yellow hair, and if you ask her about the recent silent years she starts enthousiasticly on a confused sum-up of activities. She made some albums that sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly flopped, wrote a soundtrack, appeared in a play, married, got her driver's licence, played in a movie, worked on new recordings, directed her own video's, did a remix, made another movie, regularly went to her record company to curse a while, did another three video's, went looking for a new management, appeared in another play, etcetera. And when she after a carreer of fifteen years finally agreed with the idea to release a greatest hits-album -Twelve deadly Cyns... and then some- she decided to give her old hit _Girls just want to have fun_ a new arrangement. Which was easier said then done: in a New York studio she recorded 'Girls' in a reggae-arrangement, after which the company sent her to Jamaica. There she worked with Sly & Robbie, two old professionals for who Cyndi has a lot of regards, but with whom the cooperation was very difficult. "They just sat there blowing and jamming night after night and they already saw me coming in with my own tube microphone in my suitcase," she says. The Jamaicans didn't understand much anyway from the lady that was sitting all day on the tip of her chair chatting and making jokes. Busy. So busy ! A nervous breakdown later Cyndi was in the plane back home, without usable recordings. "Anyway, I learnt from it that some people just can't understand each other," she says. In New York she made the final danceversion of 'Girls'. About as well the version as the videoclip -Cyndi between transvestites, filmed on the Gay Games- she for a change had an argument with the record company. But now the CD is in the shops she is happier than ever. She says: "The times that I made godforsaken dull records like _A night to remember_ are far behind me. I go towards the future with a lot of pleasure. 'Keep the channel open' is what my dancer Martha Graham wrote, that's my motto now. Let the inspiration blow. I am going to write stories, I have a lot of ideas for new music, and I will direct movies, and I'm drawing and painting again..."
We are holding our hearts.