Marianne Nowottny

Marianne (pronounced Mah-ri-ah-na) Wilhelmine Nowottny created some of the boldest and bizarre music of her generation; her deep, voluptuous voice and torchy, cabaret-style songwriting were separated by an unbridgeable gap from the MTV-purveyed, homogenized strip-mall music that the majority of her peers devoured. In the eighth grade, Nowottny, who busied herself writing poetry, met a like-minded and classically trained pianist named Donna Bailey. The two soon began collaborating musically under the name Shell, experimenting with a cassette recorder and a Radio Shack keyboard ...