Christmas Cocktail Capers! 10 December 2011

My brutally minimalist Christmas decor (it's the same shit every year!). Shame this photo isn't Smell-o-Vision: the Muji Christmas candle is Cinnamon and Mandarin-scented. In the background: the damned, DAMNED stereo that died mid-party.

For the past few years I’ve been holding intimate but swingin' Christmas cocktail parties chez moi at my tiny studio flat in Archway. (See photos from previous parties here and here). This year’s fell on Saturday 10 December 2011. On the Facebook events page I created, I warned potential guests in advance:

Food will be minimal, so make sure you EAT FIRST. I live in a tiny studio flat (in the heart of London’s glittering Archway) with limited seating, so you will inevitably be forced to stand and mingle. I will be playing kitsch, abrasive Christmas tunes until you beg me to stop. (Do you still want to come?).

It sounds like I was setting the bar kind of low, huh? Looking back, here’s what I learned from my 2011 cocktail party:

1) Nobody really likes snowballs, in the same way very few people actually like mulled wine or mince pies. Snowballs are so intensely sweet they’re not exactly more-ish. So in retrospect I wish I’d only bought one bottle of Advocaat. I also bought a jar of maraschino cherries to garnish the snowballs with, and wound up only using a handful of cherries. Decades from now when the police recover my decomposed remains from this flat, that jar of cherries will still be there untouched in my cupboard.


My inspiration: Nigella Lawson knocking up some snowballs

2) Campari is definitely an acquired taste! I first had it in Rome and have come to love its extremely dry, bitter almost cough syrup flavour – but I was definitely in the minority. After the snowballs were drained, rather than open the second bottle of Advocaat I switched to another Nigella Lawson Christmas cocktail recipe (not sure if it has a name): Campari, blood orange juice and cranberry juice – it makes for a festive deep blood-crimson colour. Later on, I realised most people had barely sipped these and then set them down untouched. (I mentioned the unpopularity of Campari to my glamorous Roman friend Laura Casella and she fired back via Facebook, “Campari e' molto buono!”). So next time I’d stick with flutes of icy cold Cava or Prosecco – which everyone loves. (Nigella can steer you wrong: she once suggested buying the gingerbread-flavoured syrup that Starbucks flavours their Christmas gingerbread lattes with and adding a drop to glasses of Cava, claiming it tastes like “Christmas in a glass.” In fact it instantly turns a perfectly good glass of sparkling, clear Cava murky, flat, opaque and sickly sweet! That sticky bottle of gingerbread syrup – which wasn’t cheap, by the way -- sat untouched in my kitchen cupboard for a good two years before I finally chucked it out).

3) It was also just my luck that my CD player finally broke down the night I was having a party! It’s a faithful old 1990s relic which has lasted – and sounded great -- for ages, but it’s been gradually acting increasingly erratic and unreliable. The internal “eye” has stopped reading CDs properly: they either won’t whirr into action at all, or they’ll skip in a way that’s so annoying it’s like an audio torture device straight out of Guantanamo Bay. So I had to play my lovingly-selected Christmas CDs (all my atomic era Ultra-Lounge kitsch Christmas ones, Christmas albums by everyone from Mae West to Elvis to Chet Baker, etc) via iTunes on my PC instead, which sounded muffled and tinny.

At one point I put on a “joke” Christmas tape I’ve had since my student days at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario – a cassette called Christmas Party Dancing (the cassette part of my stereo was still working. Yes, it has cassette decks. I did say it was old). It's the kind of ultra-cheap budget cassette you would have found in a discount bin at a gas station in the 1980s. I wish I could scan the cover or find an image of it online: it’s a photo of a smiling young Afro-Caribbean woman with cornrow braids (she’s meant to signify “disco") wearing a red hooded fur-trimmed Santa’s cape (which signifies “Christmas”), with the title Christmas Party Dancing in zany red and white lettering and really bad old school clip art of a burning candle. It’s the most jaw-droppingly awful collection of Christmas carols re-interpreted as the naff-est possible disco music. Anyway, I put the cassette on as a camp-y joke but people seemed to think I actually thought it was good, so after a few uncomfortable minutes, I took it out again!

4) The entire first part of the night I was so busy mixing drinks I barely got to talk to anyone! The first set of guests had to leave by midnight to catch the last tubes home (they lived as far flung as South London and West London). The next shift of guests arrived circa midnight and stayed until 2 am (one friend -- my old mucker, French rockabilly Dominique -- helped me polish off some remaining bottles of Cava until 5 am!).

In spite of the above, my party was mostly a blast, if I do say so myself. Here are some shots of my elegant guests. If you want to see more, check out my flickr page.


Julian, Mari and Anthony (just to clarify: those curtains came with the flat, OK?)


Mari, Anthony and Rob


Christopher and Lauren (who are in the art-punk band Matron together) and the unpopular Campari cocktails


Christopher and Damon


Welsh people unite: Julian and Lauren


Who knew mixing drinks was such sweaty work? The blotchy, sweaty hosty and the glamorous Mari


Were two people ever more photogenic? Julian and Mari


No, he's not giving her the Heimlich Maneuver: Lauren and Julian


Two kinky blondes: Magda and Lauren


International sex kitten Magda raises a glass


Damon and I


Dominique and I

23 November 2011 Dr Sketchy Set List

/ The astonishing burlesque queen Tempest Storm (judging by her bouffant hairstyle, circa the early sixties) /

It’s fair to say everyone at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern was blown away by this Dr Sketchy's featured performer, chanteuse and comedienne Sabrina Chap visiting from New York. Accompanying herself on keyboard, Sabrina sang three twisted, scabrous and funny torch songs so filthy they shocked even me. Afterwards Sabrina also posed: at one point she came onstage with her hair in Lolita-esque pigtails (or “bunches” as Brits insist on calling them) and posed giving the audience the finger. I wish I’d had something more aggressive and confrontational cued up to match her punk-y pose (it was Lizabeth Scott's heartbroken version of the jazz standard “Can’t Get Out of This Mood”, with its great campy and dramatic spoken introduction. Our eternally soigné emcee Dusty Limits reassured me the contrast between the music and Sabrina’s pose worked in spite of itself!).

The other model was Dr Sketchy veteran Mam’zelle Celine with the Bardot-like waterfall of long blonde hair. At the end of the night, Sabrina and Celine posed together. For one pose, Sabrina bound a startled-looking Celine’s hands behind her back – it was like something out of a 1950s Bettie Page-Irving Klaw bondage photo session! When two females model together at Dr Sketchy, I often pull out a Marilyn Monroe-Jane Russell duet from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Considering Sabrina is brunette and Celine blonde, it seemed particularly apt.

/ Mam'zelle Celine and Sabrina Chap (well, Bettie Page and victim as photographed by Irving Klaw. You get the general idea) /



I threaded a subtle gynaecological theme throughout the night: "My Pussy Belongs to Daddy", "Poon-tang", "Eager Beaver Baby", "Beaver Shot", etc. Classy, huh? Not sure if anyone noticed, but I found it amusing. On a more elegant note, I also gave things a bit of Continental je ne sais quoi by playing some songs by two great 1960s European pop divas: France’s Francoise Hardy (singing in German) and Italy’s Mina. Both songs are from arthouse cinema soundtracks. Hardy’s “Traume” (which means “Dream” in German) is from the deeply strange and kinky black tragicomedy Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000) by Francois Ozon (in a nice cross-European twist, it’s a film by a French director adapted for the screen from a play by a German (my hero the late, great maestro Rainer Werner Fassbinder) and the song is sung in German by a French chanteuse), while Mina’s “Un Anno D’Amore” (“A Year of Love”) is used in Pedro Almodovar’s High Heels (1991). “Traume” almost becomes a running joke in Burning Rocks: the film is set in the early 1970s (Hardy recorded “Traume” in 1970) and every time someone puts a record on the stereo, it always seems to be this. Listening to Hardy’s spellbinding performance of this sublimely morbid and tragic song, it’s easy to understand why she’s become a cult figure in even non-French speaking countries. Enigmatic, lush-lipped, ash blonde and fashion model beautiful, with a wispily alluring crystal tear drop voice awash in melancholy, Francoise Hardy is like a French equivalent of Nico or Marianne Faithfull without the troublesome heroin addiction.


France's exquisite Francoise Hardy singing "Traume" in German -- and channelling Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola in The Blue Angel with her top hat, cigarette and mesh stockings

“Un Anno D’Amore” is the perfect encapsulation of the artistry of Mina (aka the Tiger of Cremona). She specialises in lush, swirling ballads surging with tension and romantic agony: think of Dusty Springfield in “I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten” / “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” mode with added Italian passion. (Like Dusty, Mina had a penchant for thick black eyeliner and false eye lashes. Unlike Dusty, Mina took things a few steps further by entirely plucking-out her eyebrows for extra impact). Extremely dramatic and intense, “Un Anno D’Amore” is a slow-burning heartbreak ballad that begins measured and restrained and keeps building to crescendos of raw emotion until Mina is finally wailing the chorus; the piercing sadness of her astonishingly emotive voice creates an almost operatic sense of tragedy. Needless to say, Mina’s songs and persona are a natural fit for the films of Spain’s Pedro Almodovar. In one of High Heels’ most memorable segments, the drag queen Letal portrayed by Miguel Bose (son of beautiful Italian actress Lucia Bose – the Italian Ava Gardner, check her out in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1953 film Le Signora Senza Camelie – and Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin) lip-synchs to “Un Anno D’Amore” in his nightclub routine. In fact, it’s rumoured Almodovar’s next film is due to be a biopic of Mina. It sounds like a marriage made in heaven.


Italy's Mina in full cry. Goose bumps! (I actually prefer this version, but annoyingly the person who uploaded it on Youtube disabled embedding! Make sure to check it out).


Miguel Bose in High Heels (note: this version is "Un Ano de Amor", sung in Spanish instead of Italian. Drag-tastic!)

Love Me or Leave Me - Nina Simone
Let's Get Lost - Chet Baker
When I Get Low I Get High - Florence Joelle's Kiss of Fire
One More Beer - The Earls of Suave
Trash Can - Ken Williams
Mi Palomita - Yma Sumac
Mama, Looka Boo Boo - Robert Mitchum
Go, Calypso! - Mamie Van Doren
De Castrow - Jaybee Wasden
St Louis Blues - Eartha Kitt
The Whip - The Originals
Follow the Leader - Wiley Terry
Greasy Chicken - Andre Williams
Baby I'm Doin' It - Annisteen Allen
I Love the Life I Live - Esquerita
Love Letters - Ike and Tina Turner
Poon-tang - The Treniers
Beaver Shot - The Periscopes
Save It - Mel Robbins
Elle est Terrible - Johnny Hallyday
8 Ball - The Hustlers
Fever - Ann-Margret
Anasthasia - Bill Smith Combo
I'm a Bad, Bad Girl - Little Esther
Drive-In - The Jaguars
My Pussy Belongs to Daddy - Faye Richmonde
Womp Womp - Freddy and The Heartaches
Traume - Francoise Hardy
Mondo Moodo - The Earls of Suave
Un Anno D'Amore - Mina
Harlem Nocturne - Martin Denny
Caravan - The John Buzon Trio
Jealousy - Billy Fury
It's Legal - Shirley Anne Field (Beat Girl soundtrack)
Yogi - The Bill Black Combo
Fever - Nancy Sit
Tall Cool One - The Wailers
Teardrops from My Eyes - Ruth Brown
You'd Better Stop - LaVerne Baker
Shangri-La - Spike Jones New Band
I Love How You ... Lydia Lunch
Love - Eartha Kitt
Look-a There, Ain't She Pretty - Bill Haley (Pink Flamingos soundtrack)
Little Things Mean a Lot - Jayne Mansfield
Can't Get Out of This Mood - Lizabeth Scott
You're Crying - Dinah Washington
Let There Be Love - Diana Dors
Blockade - The Rumblers
I Can't Give You Anything But Love - Marlene Dietrich
L'appareil a sous - Brigitte Bardot
Pauvre Lola - Serge Gainsbourg
Just Two Little Girls from Littlerock - Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell
Bikini with No Top on the Top - Mamie Van Doren and June Wilkinson
The Whip - The Frantics
Revellion - The Revels
Bombie - Johnny Sharp and The Yellowjackets
Eager Beaver Baby - Johnny Burnette
All of Me - Mae West
Daddy Daddy - Ruth Brown
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Witchcraft - Elvis Presley

12 November 2011 Dr Sketchy DJ Set List

/ Kitsch icon Mamie Van Doren, Hollywood's Ultimate 1950s Bad Girl /

This Saturday afternoon Dr Sketchy at The Old Queen’s Head in Angel featured Dr Sketchy veteran Marianne Cheesecake as the burlesque performer and model, Claire Benjamin in character as Freuda Kahlo as the emcee and Trixi Tassels on stage-managing duties. We also had comedian Jeff Leach as an unexpected bonus male model. He showed up with a camera crew to film him for an upcoming BBC Three documentary to be entitled Am I a Sex Addict? – and proceeded to pose stark, raving bollock naked, which really made an impression. Let’s just say he has porn star characteristics, and swiftly move on. (Having seen him pose at Dr Sketchy, I for one would personally be glad to help Jeff Leach in his research into determining whether he is indeed a sex addict. This was one of the Dr Sketchy’s where we really needed a photographer present!).

The vivacious Claire Benjamin always brings an element of genuine theatrical performance art to Dr Sketchy when she emcees – which keeps me on my toes and sometimes finds me wanting. She had three different pieces of music for me to play at specific times: introductory music to come onto the stage to, and backing tracks for the two songs she sang (one of them – her big finale – the Carmen Miranda standard “I Yi Yi Yi Yi Yi (Like You Very Much)”, for which she dons a plastic fruit-covered turban). I managed to get all three music cues wrong – without exception! Not some of my better moments. Hey, I was drinking lager all afternoon. Thankfully (and luckily for me) Claire is so smoothly professional (and so infinitely forgiving!) she just took it in her stride, and the audience seemed none the wiser. Yikes!

Like I said earlier – a shame we didn’t have a photographer at this Dr Sketchy. For one thing, Marianne Cheesecake’s costumes were dazzling. For her first pose she was styled as a 1920s flapper with a Louise Brooks pageboy wig. Later, for her performance she wore an astonishing Marie Antoinette get-up with a huge exploding black and white-streaked wig (think of a Cruella de Ville-Lily Munster-Bride of Frankenstein -Marge Simpson hybrid and you're on the right track) with a mask like a crystal chandelier hanging over her face. My description doesn't do it justice! It looked indredibly decadent and striking. I'll see if I can hustle some photos of Marianne in this costume (she showed me some on her phone, so they exist) and post them later, but in the meantime here is a tease-o-rama clip of Marianne Cheesecake paying tribute to the great Josephine Baker.



Spinning a few tracks by quintessential 1950s B-movie bad girl Mamie Van Doren always feels de rigeur when I DJ at Dr Sketchy. Van Doren was a voluptuous platinum blonde contemporary of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield in the 50s, but unlike them she never managed to graduate to big budget A-list films, instead finding her natural habitat in kitschy drive-in exploitation films (her irresistibly bad filmography includes the likes of The Girl in the Black Stockings (1957), Sex Kittens Go to College (1960), The Las Vegas Hillbillies (1966) and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1966)). Van Doren seemed to play teenage juvenile delinquents well into her twenties (in Girls Town (1959), even with her perky ponytail and tight Capri pants, the 28-year old Van Doren seems pretty overripe, fleshy and mature for a high school student).

/ Bullet-bra'd sweater girl Mamie Van Doren /

In 1956 Van Doren’s rival Jayne Mansfield would appear alongside rockabilly legends Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran in The Girl Can’t Help It, the deluxe Mercedes Benz of rock’n’roll musicals (and a key film for John Waters). Van Doren herself would go one better: an interesting footnote to her career is that she can genuinely claim to be the first female Hollywood star to sing rock’n’roll onscreen. In Untamed Youth (1957) her songs were written by rockabilly legend Eddie Cochran (he plays guitar on them, too) – and they’re not half bad (although it’s been pointed out that it’s a crime against music that the doomed Cochran – who’d be dead by 1960 – was only permitted to perform one onscreen song in Untamed Youth, while Van Doren has four!). Van Doren’s musical output is compiled on the highly enjoyable CD The Girl Who Invented Rock’n’Roll. It’s campy as hell, undisputed Queen of Rockabilly Wanda Jackson's reputation is secure, and for someone famous for her sensationally ample rack Van Doren’s singing is oddly flat, but Cochran’s tight, twangy songs pack a wallop, and Van Doren (in a punky display of enthusiasm over ability) delivers them with verve, conviction and a genuine feel for rock’n’roll . (Needless to say, I always play some of Van Doren’s 50s rockabilly songs when I DJ at Cockabilly, too). In High School Confidential (1958) – probably Van Doren’s best film – she doesn't sing, but it features an unhinged Jerry Lee Lewis pounding-out the title tune on his piano over the opening credits – a timeless rock’n’roll moment.



/ The trailer for Untamed Youth – the kind of lurid juvenile delinquent film that inspired John Waters’s Crybaby (1990). In the trailer you see snatches of Van Doren performing “Salamander” and “Go, Calypso!” – two tracks I play frequently at Dr Sketchy /

Now a zaftig 80-year old, Van Doren remains an unrepentant scantily-clad and platinum-haired exhibitionist. Still a publicity-hungry starlet, she's active on the Hollywood social scene and parties at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion (Van Doren herself posed for Playboy in 1963). In 2006 she was photographed in a dual portrait with her spiritual heiress Pamela Anderson for Vanity Fair magazine. On her outrageous website sells autographed nipple prints (yes, she puts lipstick on her nipples, presses them onto paper and sells them) and cavorts for carefully-lit, heavily-retouched soft-core nudie photos and videos. In 1987 Van Doren unleashed her memoirs Playing the Field, in which she gleefully spills the beans about all the male Hollywood stars she slept with over the years and rates their sexual performances. (I haven’t read the book in well over twenty years, but I’ll never forget her describing dropping acid with Steve McQueen and having sex with him while tripping. Her prose turns psychedelic: “You you. Me me. I’m your dancing Mamie doll ...”).

She’s had a remarkable life; there’s a revealing interview with her on Salon.com from 2000 in which Van Doren holds forth on her life and career and emerges as an intelligent and sensitive woman. She recalls the sensual and cougar-ish older woman Marlene Dietrich giving her an appraising eye up and down backstage in 1957 (Van Doren didn’t realise at the time Dietrich was bisexual, otherwise she would have taken her up on the offer) and says the most meaningful work she ever did was long after her Hollywood career had fizzled out, risking her life to entertain American troops in war-torn Vietnam in the late 60s. “I have had more of a sex life than a love life,” she admits in the interview, “Love was secondary to me” and concludes, “My best asset is my brain. Without my brain, I don’t think the rest of me would be too hot.” Rock on, Mamie van Doren – the Jayne Mansfield who survived to see old age.


/ Singing in the shower: A clip of Van Doren in Girls Town (1959)which apparently got deleted from the final film for censorship reasons /

D-Rail - The Flintones
Mama Looka Boo Boo (Shut You Mouth - Go Away!) - Robert Mitchum
Rolling Stone - Mamie van Doren
Don't Be Cruel - Bill Black Combo
Unchain My Heart - Florence Joelle's Kiss of Fire
Oui je veux - Johnny Hallyday
Sea of Love - The Earls of Suave
Caterpillar Crawl - The Strangers
Dance with Me Henry - Ann-Margret
Kruschev Twist - Melvin Gayle
Work with It - Que Martin
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - 5,6,7,8s
Dragon Walk - The Noble Men
Comin' Home, Baby - The Delmonas
That's a Pretty Good Love - Big Maybelle
Bacon Fat - Andre Williams
This Thing Called Love - Esquerita
Mambo Baby - Ruth Brown
Cherry Pink - Bill Black Combo
Vírgenes del Sol - Yma Sumac
Je Me Donne A Qui Me Plait - Brigitte Bardot
Some Small Chance - Serge Gainsbourg (Strip-tease soundtrack)
Lullabye of Birdland - Eartha Kitt
Crazy Horse Swing - Serge Gainsbourg (Strip-tease soundtrack)
Do It Again - April Stevens
You're My Thrill - Chet Baker (instrumental version)
A Guy What Takes His Time - Marlene Dietrich
Harlem Nocturne - The Viscounts
Take it Off - The Genteels
Tony's Got Hot Nuts - Faye Richmonde
The Strip - The Upsetters
The Whip - The Frantics
Beat Party - Ritchie & The Squires
Revellion - The Revels
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Denise Darcel
The Beast - Milt Buckner
Rockin' Bongos - Chaino
Give Me Love - Lena Horne
Sexe - Line Renaud
The Good Life - Ann-Margret
La Javanaise - Juliette Greco
The Stripper - John Barry (Beat Girl soundtrack)
Un Jour Comme Un Autre - Brigitte Bardot
I Feel So Mmmm - Diana Dors
Kiss - Marilyn Monroe
Angel Face - Billy Fury
Night Walk - The Swingers
Black Coffee - Julie London
Sometimes I Wish I Had a Gun - Mink Stole
The Bee - The Sentinels
De Castrow - JayBee Wasden
Bewildered - Shirley and Lee
No Good Lover - Mickey and Sylvia
Crawfish - Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin
Stop and Listen - Mickey and Ludella
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Groovy - Groovey and The Groovers
Bossa Nova Baby - Elvis Presley

I haven’t posted a tittyshaker video in a while. To remedy that, here is an eye-popping clip from the ultra-sleazy 1960 British sexploitation / juvenile delinquent flick Beat Girl (aka Wild for Kicks). I’ve posted before that its suave Cool Jazz-inflected John Barry soundtrack is an endless source of inspiration for my DJ’ing at Dr Sketchy. In this clip, jailbait teenage bad girl Gillian Hills (painstakingly styled to look exactly like Brigitte Bardot) has snuck into a Soho strip club and stares bug-eyed at exotic café con leche-skinned performer Pascaline’s burlesque routine – and who can blame her, when it mostly seems to consist of crotch-thrusting, floor-humping and ponytail twirling? (By the way: this nice piece of quasi-Mambo music that Pascaline dances to isn’t actually on the Beat Girl soundtrack – weird. Makes me wonder if this sequence was added after the film was completed to spice things up? We get glimpses of other striptease numbers in Beat Girl, but Pascaline's is by far the raunchiest.)

Cockabilly DJ Set List 2 November 2011

/ (I’m currently reading Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade by Justin Spring. The book is an eye-popping revelation, lifting the lid on the subterranean pre-Stonewall gay social history, and in particular the astonishing life of Samuel Steward (1909-1993) – who packed enough different identities and adventures for several life times. Read the NY Times review here for more juicy details. One of Steward’s most intriguing aliases was re-inventing himself as a tattooist in the 1950s called Phil Sparrow (who’d be a key mentor for godfathers of tattoo culture Ed Hardy and Cliff Raven. And it was Phil Sparrow who tattooed the word LUCIFER on Kenneth Anger's chest in the 1960s -- how cool is that?!). A connoisseur of firm male flesh, this is one of “Phil Sparrow”’s own photos of his handiwork adorning a sexy young sailor or juvenile delinquent. Get the book -- it has plenty more photos like this!) /

Was this perhaps the best Cockabilly (London's only gay rockabilly night) ever? The crowd at The George and Dragon was buzzing, sexy, well-lubricated and bohemian. For once, most of my friends who said they were going to come actually turned up: Swedish Therese, Christopher and Paul from red-hot art punk band Matron, Jim (who turned up with his dog Daisy, who is now apparently part of my DJ’ing entourage. It’s certainly more fun when she’s there, and people invariably fall in love with her sweet demeanour and adorable face).

(For once I brought my camera and actually used it. Although I waited until so late in the night Therese, Jim and Daisy had already left).



/ Christopher and Paul from the band Matron /

There were four DJ’s this time: Mal and Paul (the brains behind Cockabilly), myself and guest Emma La Wolf from Twat Boutique (who instantly dazzled me by playing the title track to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! by the Bostweeds as her first song). I played a tight 45 minute set (and yet my friends still managed to sneak out for cigarette breaks outside while I was playing. Yeah, don’t think I didn’t see you. Couldn’t you have waited until I was finished?!). My set encompassed rockabilly (Charlie Feathers, Wanda Jackson), some punk (X, Sid Vicious), girl group, hillbilly (Hasil Adkins), sleazy grinding instrumentals (Link Wray, the Rumblers, The Revels) and a 1957 rock’n’roll number by Robert Mitchum (my all-time favourite actor). Playing some tracks from John Waters’s soundtracks (“Chicken Grabber” by the Nite Hawks and Queen of Rock'n'Roll Little Richard's “The Girl Can’t Help It” from Pink Flamingos, the title track by the Honey Sisters from Cry-baby) always seems de rigueur, because John Waters is the patron saint of Cockabilly, and from the DJ booth you can see a big framed poster of Divine.



/ Cockabilly's Mal Nicholson and Paul Dragoni /

From there, things unravelled. I was pounding back pints of lager on an empty stomach (one of the perks of DJ’ing is free drinks. I’d be insane to turn them down. And they tasted sooo good!). While DJ’ing I accidentally dropped a CD and it fell down a crack in the DJ booth. Retrieving it involved writhing and squirming on the floor amongst the tangles of cables and generations of thick grungy dust bunnies – luckily I found it, though (it was Copycats, the 1988 album of retro duets by Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin. It’s one of my DJ’ing staples. No freakin’ way was I letting that go). It’s always swelteringly hot at the George and Dragon: in a sweaty and drunken stupor I removed and left behind a black Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender sweatshirt (that sweatshirt dates back to 2003! Technically that’s almost vintage – or at least well and truly irreplaceable. Fortunately it was found and kept for me behind the bar at the end of the night, and I was eventually re-united with it days later).

Then when I was meant to be leaving, I encountered my friend (and fellow Canadian ex-pat) Erika standing outside talking to this dreamy Brazilian “Boy from Ipanema”-type (tall and tan and young and handsome ...). She introduced me to him. I sure wish I’d met him several drinks earlier – I would have made a better impression, or at least a less swaying and slurring one. His name is lost in the mists of time, and I was wracking my brains trying to impress him with my very limited Portuguese vocabulary (it doesn’t extend much beyond asking “Tudo bem?” and ordering a Caipirinha). He definitely told me his last boyfriend was Canadian, and I said mine was Brazilian. From there somehow he was trying to give me his phone number. I have a flashback to him taking my phone out of my hand and typing his number into it -- but the next day when I scrolled through the names on my phone, there were no new or unfamiliar ones, and certainly no Brazilian-looking ones. Ah, well. Maybe he was shining me on? If it’s meant to be I’ll bump into him again. Anyway, the night was so fun it was worth the crippling hangover I had at work the whole next day.





/ Two shots of the insanely photogenic Erika /

Deuces Wild - Link Wray
My Honey's Lovin' Arms - Robert Mitchum
Salamander - Mamie van Doren
Elle est terrible - Johnny Hallyday (French-ified version of Eddie Cochran's Somethin' Else)
C'mon Everybody - Sid Vicious
Dancin' with Tears in My Eyes - X
Shake a Leg - Margaret Lewis
One Hand Loose - Charlie Feathers
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Vesuvius - The Revels
I Stubbed My Toe - Bryan "Legs" Walker
I Was Born to Cry - Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin
Rock-A-Bop - Sparkle Moore
Boss - The Rumblers
Comin' Home - The Delmonas
Save It - Mel Robbins
Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby - The Earls of Suave
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Crybaby - The Honey Sisters
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao & The Quests
Chicken Walk - Hasil Adkins
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
That's Why I'm Asking - Carl Dobkins Jr with Lew Douglas His Orchestra & Chorus
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard

I referred to Pope of Trash John Waters earlier. Another beloved cinematic influence of mine is the twin brother outsider artists / filmmaking duo George and Mike Kuchar. In the 1960s, alongside contemporaries Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith and Andy Warhol, the Bronx-born Kuchar brothers were the demented and inspired borderline idiot-savants of American underground cinema. In labour of love no-budget masturpieces (sic) like Hold Me While I'm Naked and Sins of the Fleshapoids (which I have fond memories of seeing at the much-missed Scala cinema in the early 1990s), the Kuchar brothers revelled in a totally idiosyncratic and irresistible kitsch, queer sensibility that would have a huge impact on the oeuvre of their successor John Waters.

The Kuchar brothers initially made films together, and then independently. George Kuchar died 6 September 2011; Mike survives him. Watch Mike Kuchar’s torrid 1967 melodrama The Craven Sluck below. Seemingly channelling Jayne Mansfield, leading lady Florain Connors gives an anguished, hot pool-of-woman-need, cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof performance. The Craven Sluck has it all: raw emotion, infidelity, a suicide attempt, a dog taking a crap, a hideously unconvincing drag queen, flying saucers -- crammed into just under 21-minutes. Enjoy!

Reflections on Fish Tank (2009)

In Fish Tank (2009), the follow-up to director Andrea Arnold’s striking debut Red Road (2006), Katie Jarvis portrays 15-year old Mia. In her uniform of tracksuit with hooded sweatshirt and gold Argos hoop earrings, hair scraped back into a ponytail, Mia outwardly conforms to the social type of “chav” geezer bird. Hip hop cranked up on her iPod, her coltish adolescent limbs hunched into defensive body language and her default facial expression set to perma-scowl, Mia is a spicy, volatile and complex combination of tough, vulnerable and hurt. A product of poverty and parental neglect, the wary and wounded Essex council estate urchin has a bubbling inner inferno of rage (we see her head-butting another girl, breaking her nose) which she tempers with vodka and cider-drinking binges.

More constructively, Mia finds escape, creative release and emotional expression in urban dance: Arnold shows her dancing alone to rap music in a sun-drenched abandoned flat in her council building, lost in her own world. (Don’t worry: this is nowhere near as Flashdance as I make it sound). Mia seems to have stoically minimal expectations from life – but her dancing (fluid, introspective and athletic) could be a pathway to something better, if she doesn’t jab the self destruct button first.

Mia lives in an abject high-rise council estate with Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths), her sewer-mouthed, tough-as-nails little sister, and Joanne (Kierston Wareing), her booze-sodden thirty-something single mother. Joanne – a blowsy slattern in a denim micro mini-skirt – is a real piece of work, apt to warn her daughters, “I’m having my friends ‘round later. Either stay in your room or get out. No kids!” Later she confides to Mia, “Did I ever tell you I nearly had you aborted? I even made the appointment.” It’s an appalling thing to say, and yet the exchange is the closest thing to intimacy we’ve seen between Mia and her mother.



The arrival of Joanne's charismatic new boyfriend, Irish charmer Connor, awakens in Mia an aching and confusing craving for a paternal figure in her life, for the male tenderness she’s never known – feelings she probably didn’t even know she had. (There is not a single reference in the film to whoever Mia and Taylor’s biological father(s) may have been). In her interactions with an emaciated horse belonging to a local gypsy family, we’ve already seen Mia has a great but thwarted capacity for affection. But Mia and Connor’s nascent relationship is complicated by a smouldering and antagonistic mutual attraction, and the potential for adult betrayal and disappointment seems inevitable. (As portrayed by the sinewy and frequently shirtless Michael Fassbender, Connor is certainly sexy as hell).

I’m determined not to give away any spoilers, but there is a virtuoso, heart-pounding scene towards the end where one character breaks into another character’s house and uncovers the secret of their hidden double life. The skin-prickling suspense of them potentially getting caught is intertwined with the primal fascination with uncovering the unknowable secrets of other peoples’ lives. The sequence recalls the mesmerising scene in Arnold’s earlier Red Road, where the female protagonist crashes a house party thrown by a man she’s stalking, and can be favourably compared to Jeffrey sneaking into nightclub singer Dorothy Vallen’s apartment in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986).

For a Brit film set amongst the council estate-dwelling under classes, Fish Tank is never once “gritty” in the clichéd and predictable sense – it’s lyrical and sensitive. Arnold’s eye is sensual, grungy and tactile, finding desolate beauty and scuzzy poetry in unexpected places: sites of urban decay, scrubby wastelands, overcast skies, chain link fences, a bulging-eyed dying fish gasping for air. This is exciting modern filmmaking by any standards – Arnold tells Mia’s story in jagged shards, using jittery hand-held camera and jarring jump cuts to plunge us into the drama.

Arnold has been compared to Ken Loach and Lynne Ramsay, two British filmmakers I’m ashamed to say I’m not terribly au fait with. Interestingly, The New York Times compared Fish Tank to The 400 Blows, Francois Truffaut’s 1959 nouvelle vague study of maladjusted adolescence. What Fish Tank reminded me of is Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini’s early hard-edged social realist tragedies Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), updated to the present-day council estates of Essex. Arnold shares Pasolini’s clear-eyed compassion for her deeply-flawed and impoverished characters, and her long takes depicting Mia isolated and alienated in her gray concrete surroundings recall how Pasolini presented Franco Citti as his doomed anti-hero in Accattone.

Like the Italian neo-realists, Arnold frequently casts non-professional actors in her films. The acting in Fish Tank is naturalistic and nuanced without exception. Professionals Fassbender and Wareing are certainly deserving of kudos, but Katie Jarvis – who had no prior acting experience before Fish Tank -- is a heartbreaker, affecting in the way only an untutored “amateur” can be. (There’s no “technique” to her performance and no drama school could teach Jarvis’ ability to suggest mute hurt and curiosity. She’s pure animal grace and innate sensitivity). As well as Jean-Pierre Leaud in The 400 Blows, Jarvis evokes wild child gamine actress Linda Manz. Manz famously never went on to have much of a film career after her powerful early impact in Days of Heaven (1978) and Out of the Blue (1980). Not to sound overly pessimistic, but Fish Tank probably represents a once in a lifetime opportunity for Jarvis, who is unlikely to ever get another great role like Mia again. But then did Ettore Garofolo (the boy who played Anna Magnani’s son in Mamma Roma ) ever act in another film again? And his sole performance remains haunting and memorable almost 50 years later; so, inevitably, will Jarvis’s.

Fish Tank is frequently wrenchingly painful and a tragic conclusion seems imminent from its opening frames, and yet (again being scrupulous about no spoilers!) it ends on a note of cautious but genuine optimism and hope for change. One of the last songs we hear on the soundtrack is by the rapper Nas, with the repeated refrain “Life’s a bitch.” Nas isn’t wrong, but one of the compelling qualities in Andrea Arnold’s films is that people do reflect and learn from their mistakes.

19 October 2011 Dr Sketchy Set List

/ And God Created ... Brigitte Bardot /

Happily, my jinxed period at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern has definitely has come to an end – this Dr Sketchy was smooth sailing and a really enjoyable night. My friend Jim (who I go to Viva Las Vegas most years with) turned up with a surprise guest: his Staffordshire bull terrier Daisy. Daisy was beautifully-behaved, nestling on the floor in the corner of the DJ booth. It was an added, unexpected bonus to get to kneel down and kiss a dog on the forehead while DJ’ing.

/ Sweet face: Daisy photographed at my place in February 2011. She's a bit bigger now. Who's a good girl? Who's a good girl? You are, Daisy /

The emcee this time was Dusty Limits (Weimar Republic decadence personified), and we had two burlesque performers/models: brunette Australian minx Sarina del Fuego and the frankly very fit Spencer Maybe. For once I kept the tone a bit classy and elegant (relatively-speaking), at least during Sarina’s pose. After her performance, Sarina had stripped down to just black lace lingerie and a kinky black lace eye mask. Her musical selection for her striptease was the dreamy finger-snapping instrumental “Perdita” by Angelo Badalementi, from the soundtrack to the 1990 David Lynch film Wild at Heart. Inspired by the song and Sarina’s outfit, rather than crank-up the sleaze and tittyshakers, I played some moodily lingering 1950s cool jazz-inflected make-out music: Dolores Gray's minimalist bongo drum-propelled "You're My Thrill", Julie London, Chet Baker, Eartha purring “I Want to Be Evil.”



Later I compensated when our male “boylesque” performer Spencer Maybe posed, and then he and Sarina posed together, spinning my raunchiest single-entendre novelty songs like “Tony’s Got Hot Nuts” by Faye Richmonde and Filthy McNasty’s “Ice Man”. I also incorporated exotica (Yma Sumac, Martin Denny), rockabilly, rhythm and blues and some 1960s French pop (Brigitte Bardot, more than one song by Johnny Hallyday!).

During Spencer’s pose I also played a track by Lizabeth Scott, the most haunting and enigmatic of 1940s and 50s film noir actresses. Because of Scott’s languid mane of ash blonde hair, smoky eyes, sultry and insolent demeanour and raspy low voice “that sounded as if it had been buried somewhere deep and was trying to claw its way out” (John Kobal) she’s been frequently (and unfavourably) compared to the more famous Lauren Bacall. In fact, Scott was a much stranger, more intense and harder-working actress than Bacall, and made more interesting choices.

A true actrice maudite, Scott has traditionally been disparaged or overlooked by mainstream film historians. An all-too typical assessment is writer Penny Stalling’s: “Scott ... churned out twenty-two films between 1945 and 1953, but few are memorable.” In fact Scott’s filmography between 1945 and 1957 (when she abruptly retired), is studded with obscure gems, and virtually all of them are films noir, partnering her with many of the greats of the genre: Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan. It’s only in recent years that Scott has emerged as a genuine cult figure for old film obsessives (like me!) and her career has been more generously reappraised. In particular, search out 1949’s Too Late for Tears (aka Killer Bait) to see Lizabeth Scott at her most mesmerising, almost serpentine as a suburban Los Angeles housewife with a treacherous and homicidal dark side.

/ Separated at birth: Lauren Bacall and Lizabeth Scott /

By the mid-50s the film noir cycle was coming to an end as public tastes changed, and so were Scott’s days as a leading lady. What certainly was a contributing factor to her abrupt and premature retirement was scandal magazine Confidential “outing” her as lesbian in 1955 – making her what must be one of the first victims of tabloid homophobia. In the article Confidential gloated “In recent years Scotty’s almost nonexistent career has allowed her to roam further afield. In one jaunt to Europe she headed straight for Paris and the left bank where she took up with Frede, the city’s most notorious lesbian queen and operator of a nightclub devoted exclusively to entertaining deviates just like herself.” (In fact the shadowy Frede was the proprietoress of the posh Parisian nightclub Carroll’s, where key figures of French show business performed to a presumably mixed clientele. A very young Eartha Kitt, for example, launched her singing career there in the late 1940s. In her 1989 memoirs Kitt describes Frede (a former lover of Marlene Dietrich’s) as “the most beautiful manly-looking lady in the world”).

/ An intriguingly butch study of Lizabeth Scott. The safety pin makes a punk statement /

Scott took legal action against the magazine, but the damage was done and shortly afterwards she quit the film industry – and withdrew from public life. To date, Scott has never publicly acknowledged the gay rumours – certainly the general consensus was that she had been the mistress of (married) film mogul Hal B Wallis, who’d guided her career in the 1940s at Paramount. Now 89, the elusive Scott never married and lives in deep seclusion in her palatial Hollywood Boulevard mansion, declining all interview requests as the enigma around her grows. We can only hope Scott writes an autobiography before she dies or gives one last genuinely revealing interview – but at this point it looks likely she’s taking her secrets to her grave.

After completing her last major film role (in the 1957 Elvis Presley musical Loving You, incongruously enough!), Scott’s one last gasp at a show business career was re-launching herself as a torch singer with the album Lizabeth in 1957. (Weirdly, Scott frequently played nightclub singers in her films – but always lip-synched over another singer’s dubbed voice!). It’s an alluring and credible album, with Scott warbling jazz standards like “Willow Weep for Me” and “Can’t Get Out of This Mood” in a husky 40 cigarettes-a-day voice over stylish arrangements courtesy of Henri Rene and his Orchestra (he’d previously collaborated with Eartha Kitt, so knew a thing or two about chanteuses with idiosyncratic voices). Sadly, Lizabeth wasn’t a hit, and Scott didn’t pursue singing but I love to drop in an occasional track from it when I DJ.

/ The cover of Lizabeth Scott's 1957 album Lizabeth /



/ Lovely and dramatic: Lizabeth Scott singing "He is a Man" on television in 1958 from her album Lizabeth. The guy leaning against the lamp post in a trench coat whistling is such a nice touch /

Watermelon Gin - Florence Joelle's Kiss of Fire
Town without Pity - James Chance
Pas Cette Chanson - Johnny Hallyday
Because of Love - Billy Fury
Early Every Morning - Dinah Washington
Beauty is Only Skin-Deep - Robert Mitchum
Too Old to Cut the Mustard - Marlene Dietrich and Rosemary Clooney
Virgenes Del Sol - Yma Sumac
Exotique Bossa Nova / Quiet Village Bossa Nova - Martin Denny
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Contact - Brigitte Bardot
Rockin' Bongos - Chaino
Greasy Chicken - Andre Williams
Follow the Leader - Wiley Terry
Love Letters - Ike and Tina Turner
Whisper Your Love - The Phantom
I'll Drown in My Own Tears - Lula Reed
The Fire of Love - Jody Reynolds
It - The Regal-Aires
Miss Irene - Ginny Kennedy
Give Me a Woman - Andy Starr
Don't You Feel My Leg - Blue Lu Barker
Night Scene - The Rumblers
Woh! Woh! Yeah! - The Dynamos
Drive-In - The Jaguars
You're My Thrill - Dolores Gray
Shadow Woman - Julie London
Sexe - Line Renaud
I Want to Be Evil - Eartha Kitt
Lonely Hours - Sarah Vaughan
Shangri-La - Spikes Jones New Band
Little Girl Blue - Chet Baker
Crawfish - Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin
I Learn a Merengue, Mama - Robert Mitchum
Go, Calypso! - Mamie van Doren
Rock-a-Hula - Elvis Presley
Honalulu Rock'n'Roll - Eartha Kitt
Elle est terrible - Johnny Hallyday
L'appareil a sous - Brigitte Bardot
You Can't Stop Her - Bobby Marchan
Roll with Me Henry - Etta James
Man's Favourite Sport - Ann-Margret
Cat Man - Gene Vincent
Tiger - Sparkle Moore
Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad - Betty Hutton
He Is a Man - Lizabeth Scott
The Strip - The Upsetters
Tony's Got Hot Nuts - Faye Richmonde
Ice Man - Filthy McNasty
Ford Mustang - Serge Gainsbourg
Seperate the Man from the Boys - Mamie van Doren
Beat Party - Ritchie & The Squires
Kruschev Twist - Melvin Gayle
Wino - Jack McVea
Summertime - Little Esther
La Javanaise - Juliette Greco
Fever - Hildegard Knef
Work Song - Nina Simone
Beat Girl - Adam Faith
You've Changed - Billie Holiday

/ For all you glove freaks out there, as modelled by stripper and bondage / fetish model Tana Louise, aka "The Cincinnati Sinner" /

8 October 2011 Dr Sketchy Set List

Early 1960s Ann-Margret: distilled essence of sex kitten

For once I have some photos from the day to post: my old pal Melissa Houston was in attendance armed with a seriously impressive big-ass photojournalist camera, and it turns out she’s a pretty damn good photographer . Seriously – who knew Melissa had any talent? She also had a good (crotch-level) seat right by the front of the stage – oh, the sights she must have seen that afternoon!


Las Vagueness: Me behind the DJ booth, lost in thought -- or just blank?

This nicely laidback and boozy Saturday afternoon Dr Sketchy at The Old Queen’s Head in Angel featured the ever-soigné Dusty Limits as emcee, Bomb Voyage modelling and Bettsie Bon Bon performing a bump-and-grind striptease routine and modelling.


Dusty Limits

The dazzling Bettsie Bon Bon knows how to make a real impression: rather than stripping down to her pasties and g-string and stopping, she kept going ... disrobing until just a tiny glittery silver heart-shaped merkin was left to preserve her modesty!


Bettsie Bon Bon

The ornately-tattooed Bomb Voyage is definitely one of our punkier and edgier models. On this occasion she posed while wielding a baseball bat, so I cranked-up the aggression and confrontation musically. “She is My Witch” is pretty much Bomb’s theme tune; the knuckle-dragging piano and unearthly screams of Esquerita’s blood-curdling “Esquerita and the Voola” suggests the soundtrack to a Santería voodoo ritual -- or human sacrifice.


Bomb Voyage

Later, Dusty asked for a Beatnik-style art-y jazz instrumental. Needless to say I dusted-off "A Cruise to the Moon" from Lydia Lunch's 1979 death-jazz Queen of Siam album, over which Dusty improvised some finger-snapping Beat poetry. It worked dreamily, daddio.

Beatnik Poetry, Part 1 (Note: that's Uncle Fester from The Addams Family on piano -- I shit you not).


Beatnik Poetry, Part 2


Towards the end of the day, I improvised a little mini-tribute to Sylvia Robinson of 1960s rhythm and blues duo Mickey and Sylvia, who died on 29 September 2011, aged 75. Robinson had a fascinating and long career on pop’s fringes as a singer, songwriter and producer: after her musical partnership with Mickey Baker ended, the durable Robinson went on to have disco hits in the 1970s (like "Pillow Talk") and was a key figure in the emergence of hip hop in the early 1980s. Obviously it’s her early R&B I prefer. I played the snarling “No Good Lover” by Mickey and Sylvia, Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin’s cover version of “Love is Strange” and her sassy early solo song (when she was billed as "Little Sylvia")“Drive, Daddy, Drive.”


A pretty girl is like a melody: Bettsie Bon Bon and Bomb Voyage pose together

Afterwards, Mel and I went on a bar crawl, from The Old Queen’s Head to The Joiners Arms to The George and Dragon. It got messy. Let’s stop here ...

Watermelon Gin - Florence Joelle's Kiss of Fire
Little Ole Wine Drinker Me - Robert Mitchum
Souvenir, Souvenir - Johnny Hallyday
Friction Heat - Bonnie Lou
Leave Married Women Alone - Jimmy Cavallo
The Flirt - Shirley and Lee
Get Back, Baby - Esquerita
I Ain't in the Mood - Helen Humes
Greasy Chicken - Andre Williams
Fever - Nancy Sit
Baby Let Me Bang Your Box - The Bangers
Beaver Shot - The Periscopes
Poon Tang - The Treniers
Nosey Joe - Bull Moose Jackson
Eager Beaver Baby - Johnny Burnette
Cafe Bohemian - The Enchanters
I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues - Billie Holiday
You're Driving Me Crazy - Chet Baker
Angel Face - Billy Fury
Shangri-La - Spike Jones New Band
Go Slow - Julie London
Traume - Francoise Hardy
Ford Mustang - Serge Gainsbourg
Night Walk - The Swingers
She's My Witch - The Earls of Suave
The Rat - The Ventures
Rigor Mortis - The Gravestone Four
Esquerita and The Voola - Esquerita
A Cruise to the Moon - Lydia Lunch
Beat Generation - Mamie van Doren
Beat Party - Ritchie & The Squires
Elle est Terrible - Johnny Hallyday
Drums A Go-Go - The Hollywood Persuaders
My Daddy Rocks Me - Mae West
8 Ball - The Hustlers
Blues in My Heart - The John Buzon Trio
C'est Si Bon - April Stevens
Teach Me Tonight - Dinah Washington
Mack the Knife - Eartha Kitt
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Denise Darcel
Drive-In - The Jaguars
Beat Girl - Adam Faith
The Coo - Wayne Cochran
I Learn a Merengue, Mama - Robert Mitchum
Go, Calypso! - Mamie van Doren
Rum and Coca-Cola - Wanda Jackson
Groovy - The Groovers
Frenzy - The Hindus
Rockin' Bongos - Chaino
Train to Nowhere - The Champs
You Don't Know Baby - Wanda Jackson
Boss - The Rumblers
Rip it Up - Little Richard
No Good Lover - Mickey and Sylvia
Love is Strange - Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin
Drive, Daddy, Drive - Little Sylvia
Happy, Happy Birthday Baby - The Tune Weavers
Stop and Listen - Mickey and Ludella
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Devil in Disguise - Elvis Presley
Begin the Beguine - Billy Fury
Love for Sale - Hildegard Knef