Word of Mouth

Word Of Mouth was the moderately successful debut album by street dancing/ video pioneer/ choreographer/actress/ singer Toni Basil. A Jacqueline of all trades for sure, mistress of none and the video age's first proper casualty!! Toni directed, choerographed, edited the white studio background bound mega-hit "Mickey", a song that polarizes opinion to this day! For some an endorphin rush, to others aural pocks!! Great pop can split a room and though an anachronism in 1982 with its 70's bubblegum stance and farisa organ lead chorus, Basil saw her fortunes soar as the public in every major continent took the cheerleading anthem to its collective heart!! Briefly she was the glamourpuss Queen of the new wave!!

Eyes on stalks, pigtailed, rah rah skirted, Basil was baby MTV's reigning Monarch in 1982 at the ripe old age of 39!! "Charmingly eccentric" was the general consenus and the video was exuberant, exciting and original!! Such was La basil's charisma that when the album and Lp Word Of Mouth was released simultaneously on lp and video on RadialChoice in the UK in 1981, Basil got two BBC specials of her own!! They were a hit with the after-pub set so despite WOM's initial single Nobody being a comprehensive flop it was decided Mickey should be released!! It took some time but soon Basil was on Top of the Pops locking and pirouhoetting to the tune that was a surprise hit peaking at #2 and selling 547,000 copies.

Word of Mouth peaked at 15 and the pattern would repeat throughout the world! The video album format never caught on and WOM is the genre's reigning failure! Video simply cost too much for Joe Public and the concept, at the time, too lofty!! But content is a factor too……see Blondie's Eat to the Beat! Mickey kicked you in the nuts but the mother album stalled at a lower chart position!! In fact the album flopped in Australia!! After 21 weeks on the hot 200 in America it peaked at just #22 when Mickey reached #1!! Mickey shifted 2,000,000 copies!! WOM just 500,000!! It was certified Gold

Mickey made cheerleading an artform!! The video is minimalistic and highly creative!! However subsequent releases diddnt capture either executive or public imagination and Basil's meteoric rise from stagehand to popstar more or less evaporated overnight!! She was a videostar and not a public sweetheart so lo and behold she went back to her dayjob as top chereographer

A re-released Nobody hit #52 in the UK despite the popularity of her TV specials where the song was featured and the US the catchy but DREADFUL Shoppin from A-Z (co-written by Basil and Alle Willis of the Friends theme fame) was a major disappointment reaching #77. Third single Time after Time (a favorite of mine) made no impact at all!!

Word of Mouth, in hindsight, is a great record! Even if the videos suck slightly, to an eye nourished by Madonna et al there is always a flourish, an instance, that make them interesting!! What interests me about Basil is that shes the Van Gigh of the early video peroid! A trailblazer that never got her dues!! WOM might not excite you so much as the 4 min video clip of Mickey but its an important artefact!! It was original and punk insofar as she did all she could with a limited budget

Mickey and several other videos were done on the sane day!! Maybe it shows!! But I totally respect where she was coming from!! The 30 min vid has an ad hoc charm!! And the total antithesis of the over-produced wank we see at the moment!!

Her second eponomyous release was a disaster that killed her career!! Though she was a goddess on the Gay scene, Basil gave so much and got so little recognition!! A pity!! Outside of Mickey you get a pile of minoe new wave gems but they are a pile worth panning through!! Highly likeable and after 14 years after discovering this forgotten, never relaeased on cd hit album, songs you will spend the rest of you rlife listening to and admiring!!