22 February 2014 Dr Sketchy Set List

/ Behind the Candelabra: Insanely beautiful young Catherine Deneuve /

Saturday 22 February was a gloriously sunny early spring day in London. I spent the whole afternoon of it inside a darkened windowless boozer (the sublimely seedy Royal Vauxhall Tavern, to be precise) playing a putrid assortment of vintage musical sleaze and necking pints of lager. (I find inspiration in liquid form). While women took their clothes off onstage.

The reason for the daytime drinking was a Saturday afternoon Dr Sketchy. The first Dr Sketchy of 2014 was a triumph – and this one pretty much matched it. We’re on freaking fire at the moment! Dr Sketchy has most definitely got its mojo back.

It helped that toilet-mouthed bad girl of cabaret Ophelia Bitz was emceeing again and in filthy “blue” mode (she made a great “fanny fart” joke – you really had to be there). The audience (including a hen party) were raucous and up for a laugh. (In fact, I stuck around DJ'ing for longer than I strictly needed to because the crowd was so fun and appreciative). And the two guest burlesque performers were top-notch. Showgirl deluxe Annette Bette did a vivacious bunny girl routine: she entered to Bugs Bunny intro music clad in a white old-school Playboy Bunny outfit complete with powder puff rabbit tail, wielding a carrot. At a climactic moment she invited a guy from the front row to unfasten her corset– and received the most stony-faced and mortified reaction to audience participation I've ever seen at a Dr Sketchy! (Like Jayne Mansfield with her Chihuahua, Annette was accompanied by her adorable little dog Dorothy. She’s a real scene-stealer: at one point, while Ophelia was speaking, Dorothy poked her head through the curtains and the entire audience ooohed and aaahed).

The glamorous Amelia Kallman made her Dr Sketchy London debut at this one. She did an elaborate and spectacular Bride of Frankenstein act. I was sweating bullets over her ultra-detailed stage directions, with nerve-wracking music and lighting cues. (One cue was to kill the stage lights as soon as the Frankenstein puppet reached for her crotch!). The scale for things going wrong was huge and there was no time to rehearse it beforehand – but it came off seamlessly! All the 1950s and 60s macabre Halloween novelty -style tracks were for her pose (I didn't even know about her number beforehand – it’s just sheer luck I like ghoulish graveyard rock music and had it packed in my DJ bag already. My only regret is I didn't have any songs by Tarantula Ghoul handy).

Intermezzo - Korla Pandit
Chuncho (The Forest Creatures) - Yma Sumac
Quiet Village - Martin Denny
La-ba c'est naturel - Serge Gainsbourg
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Church Key - The Revels
Not Me - Robert Mitchum
Accentuate the Positive - The Bill Black Combo
Beat Generation - Mamie Van Doren
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
I Can't Sleep - Tini Williams and The Skyliners
Chop Suey Rock - The Instrumentals
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
Uptown to Harlem - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Little Miss Understood - Connie Stevens
Intoxica - The Centurions
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Beat Girl - Adam Faith (Beat Girl soundtrack)
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
Night Scene - The Rumblers
That's a Pretty Good Love - Big Maybelle
Tall Cool One - The Wailers
Cadillac Jack - Andre Williams
Fever - Nancy Sit
Drums A-Go Go - The Hollywood Persuaders
Bop Pills - Macy "Skip" Skipper
I Was Born to Cry - Dion
Train to Nowhere - The Champs
Caterpillar Crawl - The Strangers
Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby? Ann Richards
Where Flamingos Fly - Linda Lawson
Let Me Entertain You - Ann-Margret
Petite Fleur - Chet Baker
Do It Again - Eartha Kitt
Some Small Chance - Serge Gainsbourg (Strip-tease soundtrack)
Little Queenie - Bill Black's Combo
Party Lights - Claudine Clark
Welfare Cheese - Emanuel Lanskey
No Good Lover - Mickey and Sylvia
What Do You Think I Am? Ike and Tina Turner
She's My Witch - The Earls of Suave
Rockin' in the Graveyard - Jackie Morningstar
Goo Goo Muck - Ronnie and The Gaylads
Blood Shot - The String Kings
Rigor Mortis - The Gravestone Four
Alligator Wine - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Hiasmina - Jean Seberg
A Little Girl from Little Rock - Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell
Torture Rock - Rockin' Belmarx
Summertime - Little Esther
Begin the Beguine - Billy Fury
La Javanaise - Juliette Greco
Work Song - Nina Simone
I Love the Life I Live - Esquerita
Sweetie Pie - Eddie Cochran
L'appareil a sous - Brigitte Bardot
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Hit the Road, Jack - Ray Charles
Roll with Me, Henry - Etta James
Fools Rush In - Ricky Nelson
Devil in Disguise - Elvis Presley
Rock'n'Roll Waltz - Ann-Margret
Jim Dandy - LaVerne Baker
I Would if I Could - Ruth Brown

Valentine's Day Dr Sketchy Set List 14 February 2013

/ Happy Valentine's Day, Freaks! /

The annual Anti-Valentine’s Day Dr Sketchies always rock – and this year’s was no exception. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern sold-out in advance and it felt really buzzing to play for such a rowdy and enthusiastic capacity crowd. (This was also the first Dr Sketchy since November 2012 – we didn’t do a Christmas one, sadly – so it also felt like a promising start to the New Year).

True to the anti-Valentine theme, the Scottish-accented emcee Ebenezer Valentine was in antagonistic and lairy mode throughout (think: aggressive character out of Trainspotting). The night boasted three models and performers:  the exquisite showgirl deluxe Annette Bette; Violet Strangelove performed two tableaux vivants that fit in with the anti-Valentine’s theme: angrily popping balloons in the first, then eating Häagen-Dazs ice cream straight from the tub and crying in the second; and finally male model Les (he goes by just one name, like Madonna, Prince or Cher, apparently). He posed as the anti-Cupid, armed with a toilet plunger (to pluck-out cupid’s arrows with).

Annette Bettè (a petite Ann-Margret-style redhead) has performed at a few Dr Sketchy’s before and is always good value. She certainly didn’t disappoint this time. In fact, she was wilder and more abandoned than ever! She emerged onstage wearing a sensational pink rubber dress with a heart print motif, moodily smoking a cigarette (the smoking ban be damned!). Her undulating dance climaxed with a big chunk of white cake somehow materialising. Annette crammed it hungrily into her mouth and then – in uncontrollable delight – began mashing the cake into her cleavage before flinging handfuls of cake and frosting into the startled audience, and then finally stripping down to just her g-string and heart-shaped red pasties. Brilliant! (Before the next act Dr Sketchy promoter Clare Marie had to sweep up the crumb-y debris off the stage floor).

At Home with Mamie Van Doren. Doesn't this photo have a Diane Arbus vibe? Every aspect is so pristine: her platinum blonde bouffant hair, her white dress and pumps, the all-white Atomic-era minimalist decor of her living room. But there's a subliminal bat squeak of alienation about the photo (maybe the way Mamie is isolated in the shot, emphasising her loneliness) that evokes Arbus. It reminds me a bit of this:

/ Blaze Starr at Home. Photographed by Diane Arbus in 1964 /

Anyway, anyone who follows this blog in even the most perfunctory way knows that the luscious Mamie Van Doren is essential to my aesthetic philosophy (my pantheon also includes the likes of Jayne Mansfield, Esquerita, Ann-Margret, Serge Gainsbourg, Eartha Kitt and Ike and Tina Turner). I play at least one track by her every time I DJ anywhere. I’ve already done a bit of a Valentine to La Mamie on this blog before, but while I was going through some ancient files on my PC I stumbled across this tribute I wrote in 2007. At the time a Gawker-style London website was due to launch and they were looking for potential writers. They were asking us to write a series of short blog entries on pretty much anything as sample pieces for their consideration. The website never got off the ground and the two guys behind it were prats (in other words, I didn't get shortlisted!). But I wrote this:

In the fifties Mamie Van Doren was the bullet bra’d, tight-sweatered reigning starlet of B movies. Her film titles alone tell their own story: Sex Kittens Go to College, The Las Vegas Hillbillies, Voyage to the Planet of Pre-Historic Women. Think women-in-prison flicks, lurid juvenile delinquent dramas (“desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle!”), low-budget sexploitation, the drive-in circuit.

Discovered by Howard Hughes, the platinum blonde starlet was groomed as a Marilyn Monroe successor. Don’t dismiss Van Doren as another Monroe manquée, though: she exuded her own sleazy, rock’n’roll appeal,  portraying tough pony- tailed teenaged bad girls well into her late 20s.

Now 77 (she's now actually 82) , Van Doren is more than the Jayne Mansfield who survived to old age. The woman who, in the 1960s, penned salacious kiss-and-tell memoirs like My Naughty, Naughty Life and I Swing now blogs about current events and politics. She’s a wise, witty and incisive writer, and maintains her own entertaining website herself.

Van Doren’s blogs are anti Iraq, anti Bush, impeccably left wing, but as a younger woman she considered herself a Republican. Her political awakening came when, her film career long snuffed out, she travelled to the frontlines of Vietnam in the early 70s to entertain American troops and witnessed horrors.

Today Van Doren seems blissfully unconcerned about acting her age. She continues to party at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion. On her website she sells autographed "nipple prints" (she applies lipstick to her nipple and blots it into paper) and posts her own home-made soft porn short films. The "dumb blonde" is having the last laugh.

/ No one comes off well being compared to Marilyn Monroe. Ideally the likes of Van Doren and her contemporary Jayne Mansfield would be appreciated as talents in their own right /

I’ve probably posted this clip before, but it captures Mamie in her fleshy, blowsier 1960s element so here it is again. I played “Take It Off” by The Genteels (one of the archetypal tittyshaking tunes) towards the end of the night while Les the male model posed. Here’s Mamie shaking it like a Poloroid to it in the 1964 film 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt.

Another fun musical number (and another great acrylic wighat) from 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt. Boy, this movie looks rancid.

 

Jungle Madness - Martin Denny
Là-bas C'est Naturel - Serge Gainsbourg
Vírgenes del Sol - Yma Sumac
Black and Tan Fantasy - Duke Ellington
Safari - The El Capris
I Can't Sleep - Tini Williams and The Skyliners
The Slouch - Ray Gee and His Orchestra
Kansas City - Ann-Margret
Spring, Sprang, Sprung - Jack Fascinato
Begin the Beguine - Sammy Davis Jr
Commanche - The Revels
You'd Better Stop - LaVerne Baker
Wiped Out - The Escorts
Baby Come Back - Esquerita
He's the One - Ike and Tina Turner
Torture Rock - Rockin' Belmarx
Torture - Kris Jensen
There'll Be No Goodbyes - Susan Lynne
Night Scene - The Rumblers
Bewildered - Shirley and Lee
Endless Sleep - Jody Reynolds
Strollin' - The Shades
That's A Pretty Good Love - Big Maybelle
Khrushchev Twist - Melvin Gayle
Rompin' - Jerry Warren
Cherry Pink - The Bill Black Combo
Shangri-la - Spike Jones New Band
Make Love to Me - June Christy
The Beast - Milt Buckner
You're My Thrill - Dolores Gray
Misirlou - Martin Denny
Kiss - Marilyn Monroe
Unchain My Heart - Florence Joelle
Madness - The Rhythm Rockers
Jaguar - The Jaguars
Bang Bang - Janis Martin
Drums A Go-Go - The Hollywood Persuaders
Dragon Walk - The Noblemen
Boss - The Rumblers
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
Take It Off - The Genteels
Seperate the Men from the Boys - Mamie Van Doren
The Strip - The Upsetters
Ice Man - Filthy McNasty
A Guy Who Takes His Time - Mae West
Big Man - Carl Matthews
Pussycat Song - Connie Vannett
Sweet Little Pussycat - Andre Williams
My Pussy Belongs to Daddy - Faye Richmonde
Let's Go Sexin' - James Intveld
Little Girl - John and Jackie
Nosey Joe - Bull Moose Jackson
Beat Party - Ritchie and The Squires
Crawfish - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Pass the Hatchet - Roger and The Gypsies

11 June 2011 Dr Sketchy Set List

/ Photo of me, selecting what records to play at Dr Sketchy. No, seriously it's 1950s vintage beefcake physique model (winner of Mr Muscle Beach 1951) and sometimes actor (his filmography includes Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), Wild Women of Wongo (1958) and Colossus and The Amazon Queen (1960) Ed Fury: he looks like a right laugh, huh? I wonder if he's a distant relation of Billy Fury's? /

This was a typically raucous and laidback Saturday afternoon Dr Sketchy at The Old Queen’s Head in Angel. The emcee was the suave-tastic Hooray Henry Higgins and the model/performer was the ultra-glamorous Annette Bette. A very talented member of the audience took some great moody and dramatic photos of the afternoon. Here are two shots of Annette Bette in action where the photographer accidentally managed to get me looking gormless in the frame. (I love the detail of the martini glass in the foreground).

See the full set on the photographer's flickr page.

Musically I launched straight into raunch mode with the single entendre smut of “Ice Man” by Filthy McNasty. Later on just to amuse myself, I paid homage to one of my all-time favourite films (Kenneth Angers’s 1964 avant-garde homoerotic biker / occult art movie Scorpio Rising. That film really warped me at an impressionable age!) by playing a cluster of songs from its soundtrack (“Devil in Disguise" by Elvis, “Fools Rush In” by Ricky Nelson and “Torture” by Kris Jensen, in case you’re curious).

Ice Man - Filthy McNasty
Cooler Weather is A-Comin' - Eddie Weldon
Nobody But You - Mamie van Doren
The Grunt - The 50 Milers
Love Potion No 9 - Nancy Sit
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Kiss Me Honey Honey - The Delmonas
The D-Rail - The Flintales
Drive Daddy Drive - Little Sylvia
Club Delight - Jack Jolly
The Swag - Link Wray
I Only Have Eyes for You - The Flamingos
Blame it On My Youth - Ann-Margret
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - The Mallet Men
Dancing on the Ceiling - Chet Baker
Let There Be Love - Diana Dors
The Bouelvard of Broken Dreams / Fever - Sam Butera
Work Song - Nina Simone
Intoxicated Man - Serge Gainsbourg
Makin' Whoopee - Marlene Dietrich
A Week from Tuesday - The Pastels
Work with It - Que Martin
The Squeezer - Big Bob Dougherty
Cherry Pink - The Bill Black Combo
Anasthasia - The Bill Smith Combo
Summertime - Little Esther
Love Me or Leave Me - Lena Horne
Drive In - The Jaguars
Shangri-La - Spike Jones New Band
Yes, Sir That's My Baby - Ann Richards
Crawlin' - The Untouchables
Beat Party - Ritchie & The Squires
Close Your Eyes - Dolores Gray
Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend - Eartha Kitt
Womp Womp - Freddie & The Heartaches
Rigor Mortis - The Gravestone Four
Go Slow - Julie London
Sexe - Line Renaud
Town without Pity - James Chance
Teardrops from My Eyes - Ruth Brown
I Live the Life I Love - Esquerita
De Castrow - Jaybee Wasden
Devil in Disguise - Elvis Presley
Fools Rush In - Ricky Nelson
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
Torture - Kris Jensen
Dragon Walk - The Noblemen
Last Night - Lula Reed
Jezabel - Edith Piaf
Strip-tease - Juliette Greco
Kiss - Marilyn Monroe
Caravan - John Buzon Trio
Wondrous Place - Billy Fury
The Beast - Milt Buckner
All of Me - Mae West
Night Walk - The Swingers
Willow Weep for Me - The Whistling Artistry of Muzzy Marcellino
The Girl Who Invented Rock'n'Roll - Mamie van Doren
Sometimes I Wish I Had a Gun - Mink Stole
Tall Cool One - The Wailers
Daddy Daddy - Ruth Brown
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
One Night of Sin - Elvis Presley
Beat Girl - Adam Faith (Beat Girl soundtrack)
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Denise Darcel
Sweet Little Pussycat - Andre Williams
The Whip - The Originals
Esquerita & The Voola - Esquerita
Take It Off - The Genteels
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Groovy - The Groovers
Pussycat Song - Connie Vannett
The Stalk - The Giants

I don't think I've posted this tittyshaker already.

/ Ed Fury knocking up drinks behind the bar. Hmmm: Canada Dry Ginger Ale? I hope he’s making Moscow Mules /