Beautiful dreamer.With a new CD and a strong self-vision, gay-loved disco siren Janice Robinson Janice Robinson, born and raised in Garfield, NJ, gained worldwide success in the early-mid 90's with the Eurodance/Hi-NRG/Italo House group Livin' Joy as the lead singer before going solo in 1999. is the diva du jour du jour adj. 1. Prepared for a given day: The soup du jour is cream of potato. 2. Most recent; current: the trend du jour. Call it the night the DJ saved Janice Robinson's life. It was 1994, and the singer was on the dance floor at New York's famed Sound Factory when equally famed DJ Junior Vasquez Junior Vasquez, born Donald Mattern in 1949 (some sources say c. 1946) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is a famous New York City club DJ and remixer/producer. Career played "Dreamer," the club anthem she had recorded that year as lead singer of the dance music act Livin' Joy Livin' Joy is a house music group from Italy who released two successful dance hits in the nineties. In 1994, fronted by American lead singer Janice Robinson, they hit number one on the U.S. Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart with "Dreamer. (and which wound up topping charts in 26 countries). "I saw 3,000 men dancing to my song," she says, marveling at the memory. Although the singer had performed at or attended every circuit party under the Red, White, and Black and Blue rainbow Blue Rainbow was a Canadian Children's television series created and hosted by Lutia Lausane who was always dressed in a pink dress and told stories while playing her harp. , it was then she realized she had truly amassed the Big Gay Following that constitutes diva status. The experience wasn't just an ego boost--it motivated a vision. "I thought, I need to reach a bigger audience," says the straight,talking 28-year-old. "Maybe a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota needs to hear that she's a dreamer." Growing up in Garfield, N.J., a town populated mainly by Italians and Poles, Robinson was a fairly wistful teen herself. Teased for being different in school--her father was also a Baptist minister--she yearned to "be like the other kids," she confides. Well, if you can't join 'em, beat 'em: In high school, Robinson jumped into a local performance troupe and impressed an audience with a rendition of Bill Withers's Lean on Me. After college she joined a pop group called Ric West and Lady Soul (their biggest claim to fame was opening for New Kids on the Block New Kids on the Block (later NKOTB) was a boy band that enjoyed enormous success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Assembled in Boston in 1984 by producer Maurice Starr, the members consisted of brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, and Danny ) and then was picked to replace the lead singer of the England-based groove group Snap! But after globe-trotting with them and Livin' Joy, Robinson came home and did something bold--she went solo--and something bald--she shaved her head. Her searingly autobiographical debut CD, The Color Within Me (Warner Bros BROS Brothers BROS Benefits and Retirement Operations Section (King County, Washington) BROS Barnes and Richmond Operatic Society (London, UK) .), rocks to a soul-purging alternative beat that might disappoint those circuit fans. Not to fret. "It's not like I'm finished with dance," she says. "I'm just taking a new road." Jones is a senior editor at E! Online. |
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