It's interesting that Andrew should give Apollo Smile a starring role in his six-panel Rocky III, because my first exposure to the self-made "live-action anim? girl" haunts me to this day.
For whatever reason, little Jamie Furdell was bored enough during the summer of 1990 that I listened to the cassette for the Days of Thunder soundtrack over and over. And over again. (That and Mariah Carey's debut album seemingly never left my walkman. Go figure. I have no regrets, only embarrassment.)
One of the throwaway B-side tracks was Apollo Smile's song "Thunderbox." It was certainly the most unique track on a soundtrack that featured past-their-prime artists like David Coverdale, Cher, Chicago, and maybe Tina Turner or something.
Unlike those vanilla-bland artists, Apollo offered a fresh sound that was hard to describe. The track was very heavily produced, I assumed sampling liberally from various songs and movies I had never heard. Apollo herself approached the vocals with what seemed to be a Courtney Love-esque ennui, but before Love and the rest of the grunge kiddie vocalists popularized the "I'm too strung out right now to really sing properly" sound. Apollo switches between talking (in an attempt at seductive girlishness, I guess) and singing, with the singing being not quite on-key, and she doesn't quite come in at the proper time.
So little Jamie thought this was an interesting, fresh sound. I had no idea who or what "Apollo Smile" was; maybe it was a band, maybe it was just the breathy vocalist. But that was the track I kept rewinding and playing over again; the ironically lazy and off-key performance seemed to fit in with my outside-the-mainstream, anti-establishment mentality, and whatever songs they had sampled gave it a funky, soulful kind of kick.
It was only much, much later that I realized how wrong I was about Ms. Smile.
Andrew and I attended the Atlanta science fiction/comic book/other terminally nerdy convention called DragonCon in 2000. Giving a concert there was none other than Apollo Smile, the same vocalist who had warbled her way into my heart 10 years before. Only now, she had seemingly re-branded herself as a "live-action anim? girl." Her specialty had become singing at these conventions, especially songs from a video game she had voiced ("Space Channel 5") and soundtrack items from anim? movies and things. And, it was sitting in this concert that Apollo broke my heart. For it became apparent to me then that she really, really couldn't sing.
Not a lick.
Every awful song was worse than the last. More off-key, more off-time, more messed up.
All that ironic off-key crooning from "Thunderbox?" Was not ironic in the least. The section where she sings "there's nowherrrrre left to runnnnn-nnnnn" and comes in a shade too early? Is due to her lack of talent, and was not a conscious choice. My heart sank, for Apollo Smile, the sultry, detached siren who haunted my teenage years, had no musical talent. Perhaps I should have known better; my ear for pop music maybe wasn't as developed then as it was now. And the whole anim? role was just counter to the image of Apollo that I had built up in my mind, of a pre-grunge, slightly punky, maybe drugged-out chanteuse.
So there you go. Hearing Apollo Smile was, like, the end of the innoncent for yours truly. Listen for yourself, and maybe you too will become infatuated with an anim? girl who really couldn't sing.