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

14 February 2012 Anti-Valentine's Day Dr Sketchy

/ Happy Valentine's Day, Darling: Sophia Loren having an orgasmic reaction to a bouquet of yellow roses /

I’d been looking forward to the Valentine’s night Dr Sketchy at The Old Queen’s Head for ages. All the ingredients were in place: The night had sold out long in advance. The crowd was buzzing, rowdy and enthusiastic. The talent for the night was top notch: emcee Claire Benjamin (in character as Freuda Kahlo), two sizzling burlesque performers and models (and Dr Sketchy veterans), Sophia St. Villier and Honey Wilde.

Weirdly, for me (and I'm speaking excusively for myself!) the night wound up feeling anti-climactic, stressful, and not one of the more memorable or enjoyable Dr Sketchy nights in recent memory. For some reason the sound was murky and muffled and no one at the Old Queen’s Head seemed to know how to fix it (it improved somewhat later in the night). It got things off to a bad start for me and I stayed jangled the rest of the night. As per usual, I got one of the long-suffering Claire Benjamin’s musical cues wrong. Musically, I wasn't on top form - I suspect things sounded disjointed and abrupt rather than smooth and flowing, as I obviously prefer! In my head I had intended to go for a lush, romantic 1950s Cool Jazz-inspired set in honour of Valentine’s Day, but wasn’t feeling particularly on top of things so it didn’t wind up being that for the most part at all. (Like the 2011 Valentine's Day Dr Sketchy at The Old Queen's Head, though, I did make a point of dropping in three different versions of the Rogers and Hart standard “My Funny Valentine” at climactic moments: the Chet Baker instrumental, the Chet Baker vocal and finally Nico’s morbid dirge-like interpretation). Obviously, the main thing is, all three performers were brilliant and the audience seemed to enjoy themselves.

/ Above: Sophia St. Villier with her favourite portrait of the night. To me, it evokes Ann-Margrock (aka that other red-haired vixen, Ann-Margret) from her guest appearance on The Flintstones -- but Ann-Margrock making the rude, universal pussy-eating gesture! Photo by Honey Wilde /

Death, death, DEATH: this Dr Sketchy was after all called an “Anti-Valentine’s event”, so why not get ghoulish in this post? I recently posted about the demise of Jennifer Miro, icy platinum blonde chanteuse for pioneering San Francisco punk band The Nuns. Obviously music fans have been rocked by the recent deaths of soul legend Etta James and troubled superstar Whitney Houston since then. For me, 4 February 2012 represented two grim anniversaries: foaming-at-the-mouth Cramps frontman (front lunatic?) Lux Interior died 4 February 2009 aged 62. Snarling Russ Meyer leading lady and burlesque artist Tura Satana died 4 February 2011 aged 72. Between them these two pretty much defined for me not just timeless cool, but a whole realm (parallel universe?) of vital, lurid low-life sleaze-allure. Certainly both Tura Satana (and the films of Russ Meyer) and Lux Interior (and the music of The Cramps) shaped my worldview at an impressionable age. RIP.

/ Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of The Cramps: The much-loved Addams Family of punk. Or were they The Munsters of punk? Let's have a heated debate! /

/ Tura Satana ... awesome /

I never got to meet Ms Satana (although I know people who interviewed her). I did, however, have a wonderful encounter with The Cramps as a callow youth in 1990. They were touring in support of their Stay Sick! album (so it was the line-up featuring Bettie Page-tastic brunette Candy Del Mar on bass) and I interviewed them prior to their gig at The Rialto in Montreal for my university newspaper. I’ll never forget the heart-stopping spectacle of The Cramps arriving for their sound-check that afternoon: a zombie-pale fetish-y outlaw gang, a symphony of leopard skin, glistening black rubber and seriously insolent dark shades. These weren’t costumes or personas they wriggled-into for the stage – The Cramps lived it full-time! In fact I seem to recall the 6’3” Lux was already wearing a pair of women’s size 13 patent leather pumps when he arrived for the sound-check. Watching their sound-check gave me goose bumps, then afterwards I interviewed Poison Ivy alone. She apologized that Lux wouldn’t be joining us, but he wasn’t feeling well. I got the impression he had a thunderous hangover. Earlier I'd overheard an employee of The Rialto showing him the catering on offer. “There’s bagels, there’s doughnuts, there’s muffins ...” and Lux suddenly barked, “I just want coffee!” Sometimes only strong, black coffee (life's rich black blood) will suffice. Who amongst us can’t relate to that?

Anyway, interviewing the gracious Poison Ivy (a strikingly beautiful ageless enigma in a leopard skin coat and a pair of diamante-trimmed cat’s eye sunglasses) was a dream and a memory I treasure. I haven’t had a record player in many years, but I still have the Bad Music for Bad People and Stay Sick! albums Ivy autographed for me. The Cramps were one of those bands you assumed would be around forever. They formed in 1976; it was only Lux’s death in 2009 that split them up. Hmmm -- one of these days I should get my act together and post the interview as a blog on here.

The audio and visual quality isn't great (this is the only version I could find on Youtube), but "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns" is one of The Cramps's essential statements, and it dates from when I interviewed them in Montreal.



I Only Have Eyes for You - The Flamingos
Life is But a Dream - The Harptones
Willow Weep for Me - The Whistling Artistry Of Muzzy Marcellino
Melancholy Serenade - King Curtis
Dansero - Don Baker Trio
Anytime - The Bill Black Combo
Town without Pity - James Chance
Sea of Love - The Earls of Suave
Drive In - The Jaguars
Wiped Out - The Escorts
Train to Nowhere - The Champs
Jungle Drums - Earl Bostick
Pass The Hatchet - Roer and The Gypsies
Dance with Me Henry - Ann-Margret
Born to Cry - Dion
Sweetie Pie - Eddie Cochran
Follow the Leader - Wiley Terry
Baby, I'm Doin' It - Annisteen Allen
I Ain't Drunk - Jimmy Liggins
Rockin' Out the Blues - Musical Linn Twins
Green Mosquito - The Tune Rockers
The Mexican - The Fentones
Pretty Good Love - Big Maybelle
I Love the Life I Live - Esquerita
Are You Nervous? The Instrumentals
Czterdziesci Kasztanów (Forty Chestnuts)- Violetta Villas
Virgenes Del Sol - Yma Sumac
Cherry Pink - Bill Black Combo
Sexe - Line Renaud
My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker (instrumental)
Deep Dark Secret - Lizabeth Scott
Lonely Hours - Sarah Vaughan
You're My Thrill - Dolores Gray
La Javanaise - Serge Gainsbourg
Handclapping Time - The Fabulous Raiders
Vesuvius - The Revels
What Do You Think I Am? Ike and Tina Turner
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
Khrushchev Twist - Melvin Gayle
Drummin' Up a Storm - Sandy Nelson
Fever - Timi Yuro
Anasthasia - Bill Smith Combo
My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker (vocal)
You're Crying - Dinah Washington
I'm Through with Love - Marilyn Monroe
My Funny Valentine - Nico
I Walk like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
Caterpillar Crawl - The Strangers
Boots - Nero & The Gladiators
Sick and Tired - Lula Reed
The Flirt - Shirley and Lee
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard

In conclusion: my good friend Sparkle Moore recently posted this video on my Facebook wall, suggesting the berserk operatic Austro-German diva Marika Rökk could be an alternative for much-missed berserk operatic Polska diva Violetta Villas (death -- again!). Watching this, Sparkle might have a point! It's from a 1958 German musical called Bühne frei für Marika (which translates as something like The Stage is Set for Marika -- so in theory she's playing herself!). Sadly, I somehow doubt this title is available on LOVEFiLM. This clip of Rökk as a sexy alien singing "Mir ist so langweilig" ("I'm So Bored", according to Google Translate), crash-landing her space ship on earth -- and then wrestling with a snake and cavorting with a group of spear-carrying Africans in the jungle is so trippy, bizarre and kitsch ... it's beyond words! You have to experience for yourself ...



As an added bonus, listen to a track by Rokk on The Homoerratic Radio Show blog

A Violetta Villas Valentine's Day!

To everyone who finds themselves single on Valentine's Day -- Violetta Villas feels your pain! Listen to the late, great Polska diva (1938 - 2011) cast aside boring concepts like "nuance" and "restraint" and tear the weepy Barbra Streisand ballad "Free Again" a whole new *sshole on her ultra-campy 1970 TV special. She really RAMPAGES through the song for almost five whole minutes (I especially love how Violetta punctuates the song with bitter little laughs). This posting is timely in more ways than one: Violetta's last-ever public concert was on 14 February 2011 (exactly one year ago today), after which she retired from performing and was dead by the end of the year.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day 2011 Dr Sketchy Set List

/ Slick it back: Chet. Oh, Chet /

For the Valentine’s-themed Dr Sketchy at The Old Queen's Head I’d intended to use Chet Baker as my template and base the whole night around lush, romantic, lingering 1950s Cool Jazz. Even the most cursory glance at my set list shows I didn’t remotely stick to that idea! It would have felt too slow, downbeat and same-y if I had, but in honour of Valentine’s Day there are definite pockets of elegant swirling 50s make-out music amongst the more usual sleaze and kitsch musical selections.

/ A young Nico in her fashion model days circa 1964 /

I played three versions of Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine”: the 1954 Chet Baker vocal, the 1952 Chet Baker instrumental and German angel of death chanteuse Nico’s striking 1985 interpretation. In 1964 when pre-Velvet Underground Nico was still a fashion model and occasional actress aspiring to be a singer, she scored a residency at The Blue Angel cabaret lounge on 55th Street in New York. Billed as “That Girl from La Dolce Vita!” she sang jazz standards backed by a trio of piano, bass and drums. One of her songs was “My Funny Valentine.” By then the song was already synonymous with the exquisite but corrupt James Dean of jazz Chet Baker: his version, whether sung or played on his trumpet, was so hushed, so brooding and desolate it was almost eerie. To me Baker and Nico (as an impressionable teenager I had crushes on both) always seemed like psychic twins: so beautiful and talented, so heroin-ravaged and doomed. They both exuded tragedy and ruined glamour. In his definitive Nico biography (The Life and Lies of an Icon, 1993) Richard Witts quotes Nico recalling:

“I first heard (My Funny Valentine) played by the jazz man Chet Baker. He played his trumpet and then he sang it. I thought this was very clever, like a beautiful magical trick. Do you know that Chet Baker introduced me to heroin? (Unsurprisingly, the journalist interviewing Nico asked her to clarify what she meant: did she actually shoot up with Baker?) No, no. I mean I first saw heroin. He first showed it to me. I was about 24 or so, in New York when I first started to sing – he was around. Of course everyone thinks I started when I was a baby. They know nothing. Chet Baker was so handsome, such a beauty, but he was in love with drugs too much to be in love with me. “

Young man with a horn: Chet Baker

/ Below: Baker in 1959 /



Fast forward two decades: Chet Baker died on 13 May 1988, falling to his death from a hotel window in Amsterdam; Nico would be dead by 18 July 1988, dying of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling off her bike in Ibiza. On her last album (1985’s Camera Obscura) Nico played homage to Chet Baker and her stint at The Blue Angel by recording a stunningly bleak rendition of “My Funny Valentine.” Witts notes in his biography that Nico sings it in Baker’s key of C minor – the lowest she ever sang. Death, heroin, high cheekbones, doom and gloom: hope everyone had a happy Valentine’s Day!



Das Ich Dich Wiederseh (Taking a Chance on Love) - Marlene Dietrich
Les Amour Perdues - Serge Gainsbourg
The Man I Love - Hildegard Knef
Someone to Watch Over Me - Jimmy Scott
If I Should Lose You - George Shearing
Hurt - Timi Yuro
Life is But a Dream - The Harptones
Sleep Walk - Henri Rene & His Orchestra
Don't Do It - April Stevens
Little Things Mean a Lot - Jayne Mansfield
Directly from My Heart - Little Richard
Stop Cryin' - Little Esther
Your Love is Mine - Ike and Tina Turner
Imagination - The Quotations
Tight Skirt, Tight Sweater - The Versatones
Night Scene - The Rumblers
I Fell in Love - Mamie van Doren
Bewildered - Shirley & Lee
Sea of Love - The Earls of Suave
Love is the Greatest Thing - Mae West
Ebb Tide - Al Anthony
I Fall in Love Too Easily - Angel Torsen
Blues for Beatniks - John Barry (Beat Girl soundtrack)
Dansero - Don Baker Trio
The Point of No Return - Diana Dors
It's Only Make Believe - Billy Fury
Kiss Me - Dolores Gray
Cherry Pink - Bill Black Combo
Jezabel - Edith Piaf
Makin' Out - Jody Reynolds
Teach Me Tonight - Wanda Jackson
Pop Slop - Bela Sanders
That's What I Like - Ann-Margret
Make Love to Me - June Christy
That's a Pretty Good Love - Big Maybelle
You Can't Stop Her - Bobby Marchan & The Clowns
Crybaby - The Scarlets
Revellion - The Revels
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Denise Darcel
Jungle Drums - Earl Bostick
Beat Girl - Adam Faith (Beat Girl soundtrack)
When Your Lover Has Gone - Chet Baker
Killer - Sparkle Moore (screaming version)
Take It Off - The Genteels
Let's Go Sexin' - James Intveld
Hot Licks - The Rendells
Men - Lizabeth Scott
Last Night - Lula Reed
My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker (vocal)
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - Eartha Kitt
My Funny Valentine - Nico
My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker (instrumental)
Cry Me a River - Dinah Washington
I'm Through with Love - Marilyn Monroe
I'm a Fool to Want You - Billie Holiday
I Put a Spell on You - Nina Simone
I've Been in Love Before - Marlene Dietrich
No Good Lover - Mickey & Sylvia
Moi je joue - Brigitte Bardot
Uptown to Harlem - Johnny Thunders & Patti Paladin
Hanky Panky - Nancy Sit
Czterdziesci Kasztanów (Forty Chestnuts) - Violetta Villas

/ Speaking of Violetta Villas -- here's another treasure un-earthed by the sublime Polski sex kitten on Youtube (the title translates as "There is No Love without Jealousy"). I love the little Jayne Mansfield-esque coos and squeals she makes at the beginning /