Tuesday, November 19, 2019

JULIE LONDON - "WHAT THE FUCK KEY ARE WE IN?"


The queen of the record cover girls was and is Julie London, the former Nancy Peck.

A bombastic beauty, she was coaxed into becoming a singer,  fortunately finding, as Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby did, that an intimate delivery could be a remedy to not having a powerful voice. She chose songs that effectively masked her shortcomings, and paved the way for Rebecca Paris, Astrud Gilberto and Claudine Longet.

Just about EVERY album Julie made had a cover that made the vinyl a bonus. In the days when men's magazines were pretty tame, and some didn't even have nudity, Julie's pictures were a delight. They still are. The first one even made it seem like she was totally nude:



Julie indeed appeared in magazines, with ESQUIRE offering a "wet t-shirt" variation...a soaking wet dress. She began making movies, too.



Following an amicable divorce from Jack Webb, Julie married Bobby Troup, and being a musician, he was able to guide her  musical career. For a while, Julie wasn't taken that seriously as a singer. She was a record cover girl. But gradually, with her film work helping, as well as the excellent arrangements Bobby supervised, some critics realized she was deceptively good at what she did. Still, her record label made sure that each album was eye-catching. One of the best is "Round Midnight," which you might try to find in a record store. If you can find a record store. The originally pressing used some kind of special process that made the gold of her tight pants and pillow actually shimmer. Move it back and forth in your trembling hands, and you might start moving something else back and forth.



In middle age, long after her record career and film work had simmered, Julie had an unexpected second career when Jack Webb cast her for his TV show "Emergency" (1972-1978). A few years later, and the fad for "lounge" and retro-music saw an increased interest in her out of print vinyl. While these are still preferable as eye candy (and some have been re-issued on expensive designer vinyl for the in crowd) her albums are also available on 2-for-1 CDs.

A long time smoker, Julie had a debilitating stroke in 1995, and spent her last days in a wheelchair, passing on October 18, 2000. Her husband Bobby Troup had died the previous year, leaving the stoic star to be cared for by her daughter and professional help. One thing people remarked on back then, was how tough she was, compared to her sex kitten image. Indeed, she was a "broad" in the best sense of the word...the way Lauren Bacall and Ava Gardner referred to themselves. She could curse like a sailor, and in this outtake from an early recording session, she amusingly does.

I Can't Stand It! SHIT! listen online or download. No password, Paypal request, or creepy malware-porn website involved.

Ouch: PUNCH AND JUDY LOVE from TONY BENNETT - or has it been banned?


For many, a beloved childhood memory is "Punch and Judy." Whether in book form, or a live show, this was an early example of hilarious comic violence. Mr. Punch was a kind of like Marty Feldman with W.C. Fields' mean streak. He took great delight in kicking dogs, being mean to babies, insulting his wife, and bashing policemen.

Judy: "Where's the child?"
Punch: "I tossed him out the window. I thought you'd catch him." 

Usually a "Punch and Judy Show" as seen at a British seaside resort, was no worse than a Three Stooges short. For kids, it was just a lot of silliness, with puppets hitting each other over the head and causing no real damage. Compare it with the traumas kids suffer today, when they go to a movie and it's prone to have bloody violence, and the TV news will have worse. And yet...you guessed it...the Punch and Judy puppeteers have lost work over the years. Typical of the hassle: 



“Punch and Judy Love” is a peculiar B-side Tony Bennett recorded well over 60 years ago (September 24, 1954). It's the work of Philadelphia's Bob Merrill who also wrote “How Much is That Doggie In the Window,” “Mambo Italiano” and “If I’d Known You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake.” Oh yes, he also penned the irritating “Honeycomb,” a hit for Jimmie Rodgers. With a resume like that, you expect the worst. At best, he wrote the sweet and sappy "Love Makes the World Go Round" (the hit song in the now-obscure musical “Carnival,” originally sung by Anna Maria Alberghetti.)

Bob Merrill doesn't seem to know much about "Punch and Judy," as the lyrics that Tony Bennett brays in that naggy voice of his, are pretty mild:

It’s a Punch and Judy love you hand me


Kiss and run, touch and go.
Like a Punch and Judy show

And I do whatever you command me

For I must have your kiss or I’ll die
Though a Punch and Judy show is fun, dear


Pay a dime and you’ll learn

Every time the tables turn
Are you smart to break my heart and run, dear
?

You may cry when the curtain goes down
.
That’s the danger of 
Punch and Judy love

Punch and Judy shows may not outlive Tony Bennett! And yes, Tony is STILL performing. If you were over 90, would YOU go through the misery of flying out to obscure towns in Indiana for a few gigs? Tony Bennett would.  


Tony was at The Victory Theater in lovely Evansville, Indiana on November 1st, and the Embassy Theater in charming Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's one thing to visit Chicago, Vegas, Los Angeles, or other places where you might have old friends to see, and tourist attraction sights and museums to view. But...Evansvile, Indiana? Really, Tony? 


A little more sane is Tony's next stop: Florida for dates on November 30th and December 3, 5 and 8. Go ahead, shout out a request for "Punch and Judy Love."

PUNCH AND JUDY LOVE - listen online or download - No creepy Eurotrash website with porn pix, malware or spyware. No password. No whine about wanting a Paypal tip

HUNTERS KILL THEIR FRIENDS AND LOVERS - TOM LEHRER LIVES! NPR LIES!


Above, the elusive Tom Lehrer. He's the guy who never put a photo of himself on the cover of his albums. He rarely appeared on TV (due to the "sick" nature of his songs) so it's something of a miracle that a video performance in Denmark was recorded AND preserved. He retired soon after, choosing the security and pension of being a professor to the iffy world of singing the same songs over and over in smelly nightclubs. Not everybody enjoys "touring."

Just what people enjoy...is often pretty peculiar. Some would say that enjoying Tom Lehrer is peculiar, as some of his songs are grim with black humor. Or black with grim humor. This particular number, "The Hunting Song," merely takes a poke at the peculiar joy that hunters get from killing. Hunters are really killers. They're joy is NOT the hunt, it's the KILL. Once in a while, they kill one of their own. Awwwwww. Oh deer....


NPR recently broadcast Lehrer's Denmark show, declaring that this was something RARE, and you could ONLY get to see it thanks to Public Television. Sad to see NPR lie like that. You expect it from the other NPR : Nasty Prevaricating Republicans. The little white lie here is that Tom's show has been available on YouTube for over seven years. NPR chose to interrupt Tom's skimpy (well under an hour) program for their usual agonizing, tedious fund-drive whining. If you pledged $100 or whatever, you'd be given a copy of the show on DVD. A show most anyone knows how to copy (removing the pledge drives) for FREE. 

Of course the point is to support public television, so tossing in a "treat" for a donation is just human nature. Still, NPR didn't have to keep claiming (erroneously) that their DVD was rare, and the FIRST TIME the show was being made available to the public. Your honors, submitted as evidence, is the page on AMAZON for an item called...


It's a double-disc set. The first CD is audio. The second is, yes, a DVD with EVERYTHING that NPR claimed had never been available for sale before. Fer Chrissake, this thing came out in 2010. It's been available for NEARLY A DECADE.

NPR, why did you have to lie?


At least the lying was for a good cause. NPR is a fine, fine network. I know for a fact (as I got the tedious fucking phone calls from friends and relatives) that a lot of people had not seen Lehrer before. "Hey, are you watching PBS? They got Tom Lehrer on! A rare TV special that's never been aired before!"

If a few people actually decided to throw $100 or whatever to NPR, fine. It was just a white lie. (Or is that a "lie of no-color?") These days, it's a bit of a surprise that ANY station would offer Lehrer, as his material, even after 50 years, is STILL pretty sick and offensive. To some. 

The best thing about the broadcast is that they were able to get Tom to do a voice-over, a restrained little bit of a shill for public television. It was nice to hear Tom's voice. He didn't sound 91.He sounded like he could easily belt out "The Hunting Song." It's still a killer!  

Of course, hunters killing friends, relatives or other hunters is just a spit in the toilet compared to the other "hunters" who use their fabulous automatic weapons to mow down shoppers in Walmart, school kids in a school, dancers in a disco, or people watching a C&W concert in Las Vegas. Then we have the ever-present threat of bombs blowing shit up, and some suicidal hacker managing to activate the button on a Nuke supposedly in a fail-safe location. And so...here's a download of WE'LL ALL GO TOGETHER WHEN WE GO. 

WE'LL ALL GO TOGETHER WHEN WE GO -- Nuclear Humor from Tom Lehrer - listen online or download. No password. No dodgy foreign website full of spyware or malware. 

HUNTERS KILL THEIR FRIENDS AND LOVERS - “Molly Bond”


"She looked like a swan! So I killed her..." 
Think you could get off with that kind of defense? Wait till you hear "Molly Bond." 
It's a tragic traditional folk song resuscitated by the Irish group Oysterband.  


The story begins with a warning to hunters "that delight in a gun." Be careful, you trigger-happy dimwit of a fucking coward. You're so eager to kill ANYTHING that moves, you might just end up killing a friend or lover. Especially if you're reaching out in the dark twilight of the day. 


"Her apron flew around her. I took her as a swan. And I shot my own darling at the setting of the sun."
Yes:
"I shot my own darling, and where shall I run?" 


What else would he sing after killing a girl he mistook for a swan? "Swaneeeee, how I love ya, how I love ya...."

All seriousness aside, just run to court with your high-priced lawyer, say it was an accident, and you're fine.
What would prevent tragedies like this? How about if humans weren't so sadistic and stupid that they think killing animals is a "sport?"  
Are there any intelligent, sensitive, decent hunters? Doubtful. After all, look at who likes to kill animals: THESE two Trump assholes. Case closed.


The original version of MOLLY BOND, when the group was called "THE OYSTER BAND" not OYSTERBAND.


Saturday, November 09, 2019

POOR MARIE : Marie Laforet is Dead at 80 - so "PAINT IT BLACK" in French

I saw this album in a record store some 20 years ago. What an incredible-looking woman. I could see this was a compilation album of her hits. So, how bad could this be? On the cover photo alone, I would've taken a chance. As I checked out the record labels, I found to my delight some familiar names, like JAGGER-RICHARD. Hey, hey! She has a few covers here, in FRENCH. Like a true Gomez Addams, my eyes lit up. SOLD. 


IF I'M BEING HONEST, Marie Laforet could perform excellent covers...and some not so good ones. Afflicted with a case of Piaf Syndrome, she could gurgle and trill an "R" once in a while, and go way too nasal. Her version of "El Condor Pasa" is one you'd take a pass on. "Sounds of Silence" is pretty good. She definitely captures the emotions in "Paint it Black," which I won't keep you waiting to hear: 



SINCE SHE WAS BEING HONEST, Marie Laforet knew that her beauty is what was selling her as a vocalist: “I don’t have a voice, I have a timbre. I’m ashamed of doing what I do: interpreting pop songs in a superficial way.”

She was being a little hard on herself, although yes, the hardons were coming from her album covers and her movie images, not her singing. She began her career as a film actress, and like Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not," sometimes there was a moment that called for her to spice up the action with a pointless song. 

As the folk song boom was on in the early 60's, some of her stuff included cover versions of re-discovered old ballads like "Katy Cruel," "House of the Rising Sun" and "Go Tell it On the Mountain." She first gained film stardom in 1960 with “Purple Noon” (“Plein Soleil”) which was later re-made as Gwyneth Paltrow's "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Soon after, she was scoring hit records, and moving along like Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel from folk to rock. One of her hits was "Il a Neige sur Yesterday," about the break-up of The Beatles.

One of my favorite TV performances of Marie is her cover version of a German hit, now called VIENS VIENS. She's doing a lip sync job, but take a look at the intensity and passion in this performance. No wonder she was so successful as an actress.



Though she sold out concerts at the Olympia in France as late as 1970, in 1972 she turned down live performing, and soon was living in Switzerland, and concentrating solely on her acting. After all, she had now matured from being an exotic vixen to being a character actress who could handle a wide variety of roles. 



Laforet made a surprise return to the music world in 1993 with "Reconnaissances," an album of her own songs. In 2000 she played Maria Callas on stage in France, and was nominated for a Moliere Award. She was still taking occasional acting roles into her 70's. She actually returned to live music performance for a nostalgic tour in September of 2005. She attributed her need to emote and become a star to a sexual assault when she was three. 

Born Maïtena Doumenach in Soulac-sur-Mer, France (Oct. 5, 1939) she was raped by a neighbor. “For decades, it was impossible to talk about it. Had I not been raped, I would never have exposed myself in that way to the public. It went against my natural shyness. I chose a career that would provide an outlet for my feelings.” Her career actually began by accident, when the shy girl had to substitute for her sister, on short notice, in a local talent contest. 

The legendary singer-actress died November 2nd. Married five times, she summed up her music and film work this way: "“My career has been made up of odds and ends, but my life has been full from beginning to end.”


POOR MARIE - Nick Lowe and the ANNOTATED MARIE PROVOST (Prevost)


She wasn't "born yesterday." Well, actually she was: November 8, 1896. 

Popular enough, in her day, to be on a collector card, Marie Prevost is now better known as "MARIE PROVOST" via a Nick Lowe song based on a story in Kenneth Anger's book "Hollywood Babylon." 

Nick was intrigued by Anger's assertion that Marie, drunk and down-and-out, had a fatal collapse alone at home and became "the doggie's dinner," chunks of her missing down the throat of her pet. 

According to Nick's girlfriend at the time, Lowe spent hours and hours and hours working on his snickery bit of black humor, perfecting the lyrics. Since Nick was known to take a drink, is it a surprise that most of the lyrics are fiction, not fact? After all, the only facts he could go on (this was before the Internet) were the few in Anger's admittedly "gossip" loaded book. Much of what Anger wrote about had an arch, campy tone to it. "It was said..." "we all heard..." 

What was the karma here? Well, I hung out with Nick, just the two of us, for an hour, back when he was still on Columbia, and he was complaining about all the jerks coming up to him telling him disgusting anecdotes and offering gruesome song ideas...all because of "Marie Provost," and another song that mentioned a kid cutting off his right arm. 

Let's take a look at Nick's lyrics and the facts. 

Marie Provost did not look her best
The day the cops bust into her lonely nest


["Marie Prevost" is the right spelling. The cops did not “bust” into her lonely nest. A busboy named William Bogle let himself in, after getting the pass key from apartment manager Henrietta Jenks. Neighbors had complained about Marie’s dog barking. Bogle confirmed for the L.A. Times that he had seen Marie alive and well a few days before ]

In the cheap hotel up
On Hollywood West July 29


[Marie lived in an apartment called The Aftonian and it’s still standing. On Hollywood West? Fanboys and tourists sometimes wander by to see it: 6230 Afton Place, Hollywood, off Vine. The incident happened not in July but in January. The body was found January 25th.]

She'd been lyin' there
For two or three weeks



[Her body was found on a Monday (January 25th, 1937). She was last seen the previous Wednesday when William Bogle did his weekly apartment cleaning.  That means she had been dead a few days, not two or three weeks.]

The neighbors said
They never heard a squeak


[The neighbors heard her dog barking, and the coroner said she had died January 23rd, only two days earlier. Prevost was aware of her neighbors disliking her noisy dog, and posted a notice on her door: “Please do not knock on the door more than once. It makes my dog bark. If I am in I will hear you as I am not deaf.”]

For hungry eyes that could not speak
Said even little doggies have got to eat
She was winner
The became the doggie's dinner


[The L.A. Times reported: “Apparently dead two days, her body was found clothed and face down on a folding bed. Whining at the bedside was her pet dachshund, Maxie, and teeth marks on the actress’s body indicated the animal had tugged at his mistress in an attempt to arouse her.” 


Nick’s account is based on the gossip book “Hollywood Babylon” sentence: “…her half-eaten corpse was discovered in her seedy apartment on Cahuenga Boulevard. Her dachshund had survived by making mincemeat of his mistress.”]

She never meant that much to me
(But now I see) Oh poor Marie
Marie Provost was a movie queen
Mysterious angel of the silent screen



 
[There wasn’t anything very mysterious about Marie Prevost. An office worker, her good looks got her a surprise contract with Mack Sennett as one of his “bathing beauties.” She stood around in his film comedies looking cute and pretty, not mysterious. 


She eventually quit Sennett to work for Irving Thalberg at Universal, and in a publicity stunt, burned her bathing suit, vowing to star in worthwhile romantic comedies. Which she did. Sort of. “The Married Flapper” was one of those. She became a $1000 week star, and appeared in the non-mysterious “The Beautiful and the Damned” (1923) based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. She  then played a housewife in “The Marriage Circle” for directer Ernst Lubitsch. Unlike Theda Bara and some other vamps of the day, Prevost was not promoted as some mysterious creature to be found emoting in exotic movies]

She came out west from New York
But when the talkies came
Mary just couldn't cope
Her public said Mary take a walk
All the way back to New York


[Marie was born in Canada, and never lived in New York. She, her mother and step-father Frank Prevost settled in Los Angeles. The talkies had nothing to do with Marie’s decline. Misfortune dogged her before she "became the doggie's dinner." Insecurity began when she was traumatized by the accidental deaths of her father (1904, while working for the railroad), and in 1926, her mother (car crash). Having two failed marriages didn’t help. Still, she did attain fame and fortune with her film career and made some prestigious films. As her career continued to build, influential people noticed.


After the Lubitsch film she had an affair with Howard Hughes, who starred her in “The Racket” in 1928.  Her salary zoomed to $1500 a week. After The Depression hit and the stock market crashed, and she made “The Godless Girl” (1929) for Cecil B. DeMille, her weight ballooned and her fortunes ebbed. A 1930 fire destroyed her opulent home. With no big starring roles coming in, and no insurance, she had to move into a shabby apartment.  She was now 34 years old, which wasn't prime for a sexy leading lady. Consider that at that age, even a bombshell like Marilyn Monroe was considered past her prime.

Prevost simply suffered the fate of a lot of beautiful actresses who got older and heavier.  She couldn't get sexy roles anymore, and she wasn't quite old enough to play a mother or some businesswoman or society dame. She got a left-handed compliment in a 1930 issue of Motion Picture magazine. A reviewer already considering her a has-been trying to claw her way back into contention, wrote: “When Marie Prevost did that big climbing-the-stairs number in “Ladies of Leisure,” she hoisted about 138 pounds of the cutest ‘comeback’ Hollywood has witnessed in many a day.”

In “Party Girl,”  (1930, clip below) Marie is well suited to the part of a prostitute — uh, “party girl,” and as this type of whore isn’t necessarily Grade A, there’s a revealing moment where, in black lingerie, she tries to rub off a bit of her pudge on one of the dubious easy-exercise vibrating machines. A gossip column in Photoplay chortled, “And IS Marie Prevost piling on the pounds!” At least she was finding work, but she was stressed out, probably from having too little to do, and then suddenly a few assignments that may have hinged on her drying out and working herself back into shape. 

An article in Picture-Play lumped her in with other actresses who have “collapsed from overwork and spent at least a week in a sanitarium. Betty Compson, Marie Prevost and Laura la Plante are the latest to go to hospital for a rest.” 



Two years later in the 1932 Jean Harlow film “Three Wise Girls” she was just one of the wisecrackin’ broads, similar in type to Iris Adrian or Joan Blondell.  

To be fair to Nick Lowe, he got the idea that talkies did her in courtesy of Kenneth Anger's book: “Her romantic looks didn’t fit her Bronx honk.” And to be fair to Kenneth Anger, he wrote his book before Marie’s films were more widely available on VHS or DVD and people could hear her voice for themselves.]
 
Those Quaalude bombs didn't help her sleep
As her nights grew long
And her days grew bleak
It's all downhill
Once you've passed your peak
Mary got ready for that last big sleep

 
[Prevost had become a chronic alcoholic, but there's no evidence she "got ready" for self-destruction. She wasn’t using pills. Did they even have Quaaludes back then? She was still making films, and hoping to push from bit parts to more substantial roles. An ironic twist to her misery was that in 1935 she appeared in a Mack Sennett-type short called “Keystone Hotel.” She had left Sennett so many years earlier. The short is now revered by slapstick fans for having one of the best and biggest pie-fights this side of Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges. Yeah, one of those pies obliterated Prevost’s face. She was unbilled in her next film, “The Bengal Tiger,” as The New York Times duly noted.


The Times, in their 1936 piece, “Sometimes They Do Come Back,” reported Marie as one of the many still trying to stay in the business: “The siren of Mack Sennett days had been successful with a reducing course and had got herself a job as a contract player. She was put to work almost immediately, in a small part in The Bengal Tiger....Miss Prevost is unbilled in The Bengal Tiger: She has only three lines to say, and those short ones. But she is back at work, skipping arc-light cables and dodging camera dollies on the set once more. ...A few more parts of a few lines each and the studio may find bigger and better things for her to do." 

The implication was that 1937 might be a good year for Marie. But she didn't make it past January of 1937.]

The cops came in
And they looked around
Throwing up everywhere over
What they found


[No newspaper reports, and not even Kenneth Anger, suggested cops threw up because they found a corpse. Or a barking dog and some empty liquor bottles. They also found an IOU that Marie wrote to Joan Crawford. Crawford paid for Marie’s funeral. Though Marie had not made a talkie anyone could remember that well, she did earn a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her death was ultimately attributed to alcohol poisoning.] 


Ready for some horrors? 

Among the many amateurs who’ve taken a stab at Marie Prevost, here’s lispy “Timmybear,” who earns points for mentioning that Marie wasn’t from New York and so…he “corrected” Nick’s lyrics  -- into something that doesn’t rhyme: 

“They said Marie take a walk. All the way back to ONTARIO.” Good one, Mr. Bear. Oh, and let’s applaud the iconoclast YouTubers who refuse to use decent lighting when they do their one-shot Beaudine videos:  




Runners up are The King Prawns, who earn points for having somebody do a hand-held video, rather than just put it on a fucking tripod…and no compensation made for over-peaking vocals. You’ll love the chick on bass who provides the hilarious oohs and ahhs. Also check the clankmeister behind the drums, and some beer-drinker who just happens to position himself on camera behind the vocalist. Somebody actually left a comment: “Good choice of material.” But that may have been referring to the drummer’s white t-shirt; probably 100% cotton. 




Lastly, we have the Cliffdivers, led by an earnest Aussie who assures his live audience that this is the true story of a silent film actress who overdosed on quaaludes and got eaten by her dog. No mention made that this is a Nick Lowe song.  For some odd reason, these guys, who are the most proficient musicians of the three #meToobers you’re sampling, has the LEAST amount of hits: under 100 as of today's November 9th posting. You’ll note the lead singer sweats very well, while the hefty and older bass player seems unsure of why he’s here, and the drummer acts like took a few pills without being sure what they were. 



JUDE KASTLE - "PRETTY PURPLE PANTIES"



Remember PANTIES?
They used to be worn by sexy chicks. A glimpse thanks to a shirt skirt on a windy day was quite a thrill. 
But as the Internet photos reveal, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton pie-oneer'd the no-panties LOOK, and almost none of today's tarts wear undies.
Taylor Swift does. She might be the only one!
Most cunts go around bald-faced.

Is it that in today's unsubtle and impatient world, the idea is to GET DOWN TO IT? 
Or is it that with the bad economies in most nations, it's a NO FRILLS world where women can't afford such a luxury? 

Women shave their twats now, which they might think means there's no reason to wear panties. There's no embarrassing bush to see. Think about it. If a woman is sans-cuntottes (the French term for briefs) all anyone sees is a Barbie Doll crotch — just blank flesh. A woman who isn't exposing pubic hair, and is simply part of the "blank generation," might not fear being exposed if the wind  blows. 

Victoria's Secret isn't the force it used to be. Ratings for their dopey shows have tanked, and even 4 for $5 sales on slut-scivvies can't keep the profits up. Maybe profits began to go bare when they decided it was a good idea to have Bob Dylan singing "Love Sick" in a TV ad. Women are always bitching that it's more expensive to be female than male, so going without underwear gives them a little extra money to spend on something more important, like a nose ring, another tattoo, a pedicure, or whatever Crayolas the Kardashians are selling as make-up.   Men's magazines have tanked in recent years. Go to your newsstand and you'll barely find a copy of Barely Legal. No Penthouse. No Nugget, Gent, Rogue, Dude, Swank, etc. etc. The glowering Indian behind the counter would rather sell you some vape shit and Lotto cards. But what you'll find if you do find a magazine, or a sex magazine's "website only" latest issue, is BALD CUNT and LOTS OF IT. Almost every picture. In the old days, the first few pages of a photo spread would have the teasing strip, and lingering views over those last items: stockings, garterbelt (that's suspender belt in the UK and freakenhosen in German), bra, and PANTIES (that's KNICKERS in the UK and TWATZENMOPPERS in German). 

No more of THAT. Just center in and look at bare crotch. Or as that old kiddie song "Farmer in the Dell" used to say, "The cheese stands alone."

Now, who is Jude Kastle? She was on CD Baby before it became the last resort for all kinds of oddballs like Raun MacKinnon, Gunhill Road and Ron Nagle...major label talents having nowhere to go because nobody buys music unless it's rap crap or utter shit from Sam Smith and Adele. 

Hey, Jude's two albums for them were made long ago: "Ghost of a Girl" in 2002 (which featured "Pretty Purple Panties" and "Junkie For Fire" in 2004.  The last we've heard of Jude Kastle, however, isn't that long ago. She guested on "Beautiful," a song written by the U.K. pianist who calls himself Lach. It's available from...oh, what an improvement on CD Baby...BANDCAMP. 

https://lach.bandcamp.com/track/beautiful-live-w-jude-kastle

It was recorded (Jude on vocals, Lach on piano) at the Sidewalk Cafe's "ANTIHOOT" in NYC

Meanwhile, here's Jude singing about the time she found her boyfriend's dirty magazines under the bed...and one of the slutty models wearing...PRETTY PURPLE PANTIES!!

PRETTY PURPLE PANTIES - download or listen online - no Passwords, no whining for Paypal donations, no creepy malware-shit from a Eurotrash download server


PHIL OCHS - "ONCE I LIVED THE LIFE OF A COMMISAR"


     Part of the “folk tradition” is taking well known melodies and grafting new, updated lyrics onto them. Phil Ochs fascinated John Lennon by demonstrating it via Phil's "Joe Hill" song, which was based on an earlier melody. Phil also adapted Johnny Cash's "Give My Love to Rose" for a bit of "Gas Station Women," and turned another Johnny tune into "How High's the Watergate, Mama?"

      Another "folk tradition" involves parodying the older songs. You might remember Allan Sherman’s “My Son the Folksinger.” Before Allan, there was “The MTA Song," a hit for the Kingston Trio. It was written by Will Holt, who grafted new lyrics about a transit fare hike and a hapless commuter onto a well known folk song.

    Even Phil Ochs, early in his career, grabbed a melody for parody. It’s not only an easy alternative to making a tune up, the audience is already familiar with how the music goes. This lubricates the lyrics, for as we all know, songs often take a few listens before they become “catchy.” Having the catchy melody already in place means that the words will pop a bit faster, and that’s important when you’re live on stage doing a topical satire.


    “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” was a familiar blues number that Phil probably heard dozens of times, especially when Judy Henske began covering it. She fronted Dave Guard’s “Whiskeyhill Singers," and it was the highlight of their set. It's also the high point of their lone album for Capitol. Phil’s new lyrics reflect the Cold War:


Oh once  I lived the life of a commissar

Ran a collective, rode a state owned car 


 Taking my comrades to the Kremlin bar 

Buying that high priced vodka, caviar


Then I began to fall so low


Trialed and convicted in old Moscow


If I ever get my hands on that party again


I'm gonna hold on to it just like, East Berlin


Because nobody knows you when you're purged and out


In my pockets not a five year plan


I better join all those students rioting in Japan

But if I ever get back on my own to feet again


I'm gonna purge all those comrades that turned me in

It's mighty strange without a doubt


Nobody knows you when you're purged and down


But if I ever get back on my own to feet again


I'm gonna purge all those comrades that turned me in

It's mighty strange as far as I can see

Good old Red China is the place for me


PHIL OCHS - listen or download - no ego password, no Paypal request, no dodgy website with porn ads, no skunky Eurotrash music cloud service