...  A southern belle named Wayne until she changed to Jayne in 1979, the year she first visited Berlin, Miss
County had mostly lived in New York in the previous decade, where she played in seminal punk venues like Max’s Kansas City, and hung out at Andy Warhol’s Factory—she performed in his play Pork, and
later toured it to Berlin. With her wild blonde bouffant, sculpted features and sometimes snarling stage presence (especially on songs like «If You Don’t Want to Fuck Me, Fuck Off»), Miss County was
said to have influenced Bowie (they shared managers) and godmother of punk, Patti Smith.
Miss County sang that she was «Man Enough to be a Woman»
(also the title of her autobiography), yet struggled for acceptance in
the US. «For a long time I was very bitter», she explained of the 1970s.
«I felt that I’d not been given credit for what I’d done. I was a pioneer
in so many ways—I was the first completely full-blown, in-yourface
queen to stand up on a rock ‘n’ roll stage and say, ‘I am what I
am, I don’t give a damn.’ But for years I was just dismissed as a crazy
trannie freak».16
In Europe, Miss County started to receive some elusive
recognition. Moving to London to catch the punk explosion in the late
1970s, she travelled sporadically to Berlin before relocating to the city
full time in 1980. Her 1979 album, Things Your Mother Never Told You,
featured the new wave/post-punk trailblazer «Berlin», a song that,
according to one reviewer, «put into words everything David Bowie
(among others) tried to convey about that city».17
«Berlin», sings Miss County in her ode to the city of exiles, «on the
deep dark plain there is a light ... Dreams for you and me, like a river
flowing free, good times are pushing back the tide ... The buildings are
brand new, there’s a place for me and you».
In her first year in Berlin, Miss County performed in the play
«Sheila» with collaborators like Romy Haag and Cherry Vanilla, a
New York-based performance-poet, rock groupie, Bowie’s PR agent
and a regular in Warhol’s plays and films. All thrived amid the surreal
tension of walled Berlin, as Miss County later described:

Fun, Fun, Fun! Getting drunk with a bunch of drag queens and go to the wall to make the Russian soldiers in the watchtowers crazy! Haha, we screamed and shouted, «Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me»! And brought out our tits and shook them in front of the Russian soldiers. Once a soldier trained his rifle at us. I screamed at him: «Go on, shoot me with your best shot»! ... I miss the divided city!

Fun, Fun, Fun! Getting drunk with a bunch of drag queens and go to the wall to make the Russian soldiers in the watchtowers crazy! Haha, we screamed and shouted, «Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me»! And brought out our tits and shook them in front of the Russian soldiers. Once a soldier trained his rifle at us. I screamed at him: «Go on, shoot me with your best shot»! ... I miss the divided city!