"It's going to be a lot different with a baby around."
As I've said in the past, I read about Ed Wood's movies long before I ever actually saw any of them. The same is true for John Waters' movies. Thanks to books like Cult Movies (1981) and Midnight Movies (1983), I'd read detailed descriptions of John's work, but the films themselves were difficult to access in suburban mid-Michigan in the 1990s. This was pre-streaming and pre-DVD. The internet was primitive in those days, too, but I eventually found someone in a newsgroup selling crude VHS bootlegs of the Waters movies. They were of abysmal quality, but they were better than nothing.
Today's nativity-themed comic adapts some memorable dialogue from Waters' most famous film, Pink Flamingos (1972). In the film, two lesbians, Merle (Jackie Sidel) and Etta (Pat LeFaiver), buy a baby on the black market from the villainous Marbles (Mink Stole and David Lochary) and name him Noodles. TRIVIA: The purloined baby is portrayed by Max Mueller, the real-life son of Pink Flamingos cast member Cookie Mueller. The baby's name is a punning reference to Mueller's Pasta, famous for its egg noodles.
School is in session again. Your music teacher is John Waters.
I recently promised that, if my first article about John Waters' liner notes received a positive response, I would compile a second one. Well, it did, and I have, so here it is: Volume 2, ready for your perusal. Be gentle. The notes below come from the soundtrack album for Waters' 1998 feature film Pecker as well as two compilation albums he did for New Line Records in the 2000s: A John Waters Christmas and A Date With John Waters. These notes contain all the twisted wit and demented scholarship one would expect from Baltimore's notorious Pope of Trash. These are obviously songs he loves, and he wants you to love them, too.
And, yes, to the best of my ability, I have once again attempted to preserve all of the spelling, punctuation, and grammar from the notes exactly as they appeared originally. My spellchecker may not like it, but it's important to present history as it truly was. Along the way, see if you can spot any lines that have also appeared in Waters' screenplays. If you know his movies backwards and forwards, some of what you're about to read should seem eerily familiar. You'll also learn a few interesting tidbits about Waters' own life and films.
UPDATE: I have now added Waters' liner notes to Invasion Of The B-Girls, a 2007 album by Texas-born new wave singer Josie Cotton. It's a concept album, consisting of cover versions of cult movie theme songs, including those of Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Your Music Appreciation 101 professor, John Waters.
A stack of John Waters soundtracks on CD.
This will seem impossibly quaint to you youngsters, but music used to be bought and sold as a tangible, physical commodity. In other words, it was a thing you had to go get. In actual, brick and mortar stores, no less! First came the wax cylinder, then the vinyl record, followed by the 8-track, the cassette, and finally, the compact disc. Nowadays, music is all just ones and zeroes to be uploaded and downloaded in the twinkling of an eye over the internet.
For the most part, this change has been a good thing. More music is available to more people more quickly than ever before. But we have lost a few things along the way as we've abandoned physical media. Liner notes, for instance. Remember those? Yes, albums used to come complete with little explanatory essays that told you something about the music contained within. To me, the king of liner notes was cult movie director John Waters. He took obvious delight in penning the notes that accompanied the soundtrack albums for his movies, explaining exactly what these songs meant to him and even giving his listeners instructions on how to listen to the albums for maximum effect.
Much of Waters' writing has been collected and anthologized in book form elsewhere. But, to my knowledge, his soundtrack album liner notes have never reappeared anywhere. So before they vanish from memory completely, I thought I'd showcase them here. I had to scour through my musty, dusty underground storage locker to retrieve these little items, which I present in roughly chronological order. Notice that Waters' texts become more elaborate over time, from a humble paragraph for Hairspray in 1988 to a 450-word essay for A Dirty Shame in 2004.
This collection is not complete. I have yet to transcribe the notes for two compilation albums curated by Waters: A John Waters Christmas (2004) and A Date With John Waters (2007). Perhaps if the reaction to this article is positive, I will dig those up, too. (Update: I have.) In the interest of historical accuracy, I have tried to present these notes exactly as they originally appeared, with all spelling, punctuation, and grammar intact.
Divine carries Mary Vivian Pearce in this ad for John Waters' "gutter film," Mondo Trasho.
Little Richard, the film's patron saint.
After several years of making experimental short films like Hag in a Black Leather Jacket and Eat Your Makeup in the mid-to-late 1960s, Baltimore filmmaker John Waters finally took the feature-length plunge in 1969 with his dreamlike, almost plotless epic Mondo Trasho. But in those days, Waters was operating on such a low budget that he couldn't even afford to record synchronized sound as he was filming. His first full-length talkie, Multiple Maniacs, was released in 1970, a full 43 years after The Jazz Singer. But just because Mondo Trasho was shot silently, that doesn't mean it's a silent film. In fact, the 95-minute comedy has an incredible soundtrack pieced together a few seconds at a time from records in John Waters' personal music collection. The trouble was, he never got permission to use any of this stuff, meaning that Mondo Trasho has never seen legitimate release on DVD or any digital format. It never will.
The range of music used in Mondo Trasho is stunning. Waters clearly has an ear for rock and R&B, stuff recorded back when the music was raw and vital. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, James Brown, and Ike and Tina Turner are all represented here. In fact, Little Richard, Brown, and the Turners can be said to dominate the soundtrack. But Waters uses plenty of classical and operatic music, too. Among the composers who unwittingly contributed to Mondo Trasho: Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner. And then there are total oddities, like Lyda Roberti's "Take a Number From One to Ten" and Mae West's "Treat 'Em Right." And who can classify such recordings as "Visage" by Luciano Berio?
I've been fascinated with Mondo Trasho's soundtrack for the last twenty years, and I've spent plenty of time in used record stores and online forums trying to identify each and every last scrap of music used in the film. Now, I'm happy to say that I have assembled a list that is as complete as I can make it at this time. I've published various versions of my Mondo Trasho soundtrack over the years, but this one makes all others obsolete.
A few notes before we begin. I have decided to catalog every distinct bit of audio that I can detect in Mondo Trasho. This includes occasional sound effects and instances of so-called "wild track" dialogue recorded by Waters and his actors, including Divine, Mink Stole, Pat Moran, and David Lochary. You will notice that many of the songs are repeated, some multiple times. Waters generally uses "Slow Walk" and "Come Go With Me" for the film's many traveling scenes, for instance. A siren and some gunshots from "Riot in Cell Block 9" are heard over and over again as well, as are some strange bleeps and bloops from "Flying Saucer (Parts 1 & 2)" by Buchanan & Goodman. I have tried to denote those instances in which a live version of a song is used. The items printed in redare the last few stragglers, the pieces I still cannot identify fully. Corrections, comments, suggestions, and additions are more than welcome.
That being said, let's have some fun.
Crucial Update for 2017: Well, ladies and gentlemen, the day of reckoning has arrived. A John Waters superfan named Tyler Henry has compileda downloadable 110-track playlist of every piece of music in Mondo Trasho. And, bless my soul, I think he's managed to track down every last scrap of audio in the film. Tyler talks all about the project in this Facebook post. After all these years, it would appear that the hunt for Mondo Trasho music is now complete. For posterity's sake, I've updated my playlist to reflect these new findings.
Prologue/Opening Credits
"Jack the Ripper" - Link Wray And His Ray-Men
Bonnie Walks to the Bus Stop and Rides the Bus
"Short Shorts" - The Royal Teens
"Life Savers Girl (from Mondo Cane)" - Riz Ortolani
"Pomp and Circumstance, March No. I" - Sir Edward Elgar
"Jambalaya (On the Bayou)" - Jo Stafford
In the Park
"I'm Following You" - The Duncan Sisters
"I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" - Elvis Presley
"Sitting In the Park" - Billy Stewart
Donizetti: Anna Bolena, Act II: "Piangete voi?" - Maria Callas
"Strangers in the Night" - Frank Sinatra
"Little Bitty Pretty One" - Thurston Harris
The Shrimping
Bloch: "Sonata for Violin and Piano (1920): III. Moderato" - Isaac Stern and Alexander Zakin
"Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)" - Perry Como
"It's Almost Like Being In Love (live)" - Judy Garland
"See You Later, Alligator" - Bill Haley and His Comets
"Remember (Walking in the Sand)" - The Shangri-Las
"Riot in Cell Block 9" - The Robins
"Combination of the Two" - Big Brother and The Holding Company
"Tell The Truth (sax solo)" - Ike and Tina Turner
"Riot In Cell Block 9" - The Robins
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, First Movement
"I Got Stung" - Elvis Presley
The Mental Hospital/Mink's Topless Dance
"We're Off to See the Wizard" - The Wizard of Oz Cast (Judy Garland and Ray Bolger)
"Visage" - Luciano Berio and Cathy Berberian
"I Feel A Song Coming On (Live at the Palace)" - Judy Garland
"Keep Your Hands Off My Baby" - Little Eva
"Visage" - Luciano Berio and Cathy Berberian
"Take a Number From One to Ten" - Lyda Roberti
Fats Gonder's intro to James Brown 'Live' at the Apollo
Take A Number From One to Ten" - Lyda Roberti
"What'd I Say (Parts 1 and 2) (live)" - Ray Charles
The Second Miracle: Escape from the Snake Pit
"Holy Holy Holy" - Alan Dean
Monologue by Divine
Sound effect: bells ringing
"Holy Holy Holy" - Alan Dean
"The Angels Listened In" - The Crests
"Earth Angel" - The Penguins
"Flying Saucer (Parts 1 and 2)" - Buchanan and Goodman
"I'm Blue (The Gong Gong Song)" - The Ikettes
"Tutti Fruitti (live)" - Little Richard
"Ready Teddy (guitar solo)" - Elvis Presley
"Come Go With Me" - The Del-Vikings
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin
"634-5789 (Soulsville U.S.A.)" - Wilson Pickett
Sound effect: phone ringing
Dialogue by Pat Moran and Divine
Getting to the Doctor and Robbing the Cab
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin (overlaid with Divine yelling, "Taxi! Taxi!")
"Woo-Hoo" - The Rock-A-Teens
"(I Need Some) Money" - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
"Life Savers Girl (from Mondo Cane)" - Riz Ortolani
"See You Later, Alligator" - Bill Haley & The Comets
"Come Go With Me" - The Del-Vikings
In the Doctor's Waiting Room
"Black And Tan Fantasy" - David Rose And His Orchestra
"You Tickle Me Baby" - The Royal Jokers
Excerpt from Justine, or the Misfortune of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade (from 1966 recording) - "Help! Help, someone!"
"Riot in Cell Block 9" - The Robins
Excerpt from Justine, or the Misfortune of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade
Sound effect: whistle
"Comedians Gallop" - Kabalevsky
"Remember (Walking in the Sand)" - The Shangri-Las
Excerpt from Justine, or the Misfortune of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade
"Rumble" - Link Wray
"Coronation March" - Giacomo Meyerbeer
"Rumble" - Link Wray
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, First Movement
Dr. Coat Hanger's Dreadful Experiments
"Trouble (live from 1968 comeback special)" - Elvis Presley
"Jenny, Jenny (live - stage patter)" - Little Richard
Dialogue and narration from Justine, or the Misfortune of Virtue by the Marquis De Sade
WOMAN: These monsters are going to use me in one of their dreadful medical experiments!
MAN: Care for a girl? Ha ha. My dear fellow, I thought you knew me better than that! Ha! My extreme taste for certain pleasures causes me to sacrifice at whatever altars are available. And I often imagine that a girl is actually a boy and use her accordingly.
SECOND MAN: Let me inspect your veins.
"True Fine Mama (live -stage patter)" - Little Richard
"Fantasie in F Minor, KV 608" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mink Stole (left) and Mimi Lochary in Mondo Trasho.
As a little bonus, here is a transcription of the dialogue between the two gossipy ladies played by Mink Stole and Mimi Lochary at the end of the film. Mink provides her own, post-dubbed voice, but Mimi's lines are done by her son, David. In this scene, the two ladies stand at a bus sop and pass judgment on Mary Vivian Pearce's character, who has just materialized in front of them.
LADY 1: Is that a boy or a girl?
LADY 2: Is it a faggot?
LADY 1: It's a dyke.
LADY 2: No, it's a hippie.
LADY 1: A communist?
LADY 2: Perhaps it's a drag queen.
LADY 1: Or a wash rag queen.
LADY 2: It's probably a speed freak.
LADY 1: Or a pothead.
LADY 2: Or a muffin queen.
LADY 1: Look at her. It's just a whore.
LADY 2: Or maybe a gold digger.
LADY 1: She's a hustler.
LADY 2: Yeah, or some sort of intellectual.
LADY 1: She's probably a rimmer.
LADY 2: Hmmm. Maybe a speed freak.
LADY 1: A chicken queen.
LADY 2: Or a shrimp freak.
LADY 1: But, but it could be a narc.
LADY 2: Yeah, or maybe a beatnik.
LADY 1: Or a junkie.
LADY 2: Yes or an acid-head.
LADY 1: Or a spade.
LADY 2: Or just a gigolo.
LADY 1: Just a flower child.
LADY 2: Yeah, a shit-kicker.
LADY 1: Or a red.
LADY 2: Yeah, or a glamour girl.
LADY 1: Maybe she's some just sort of snob.
LADY 2: Yeah. Maybe just some Polack.
LADY 1: Or a warmonger.
LADY 2: Yeah or an S&M queen.
LADY 1: Oh, it's just a teenager.
LADY 2: Yeah, maybe it's one of those Hell's Angels.
LADY 1: You think it's a baby butch?
LADY 2: It could be a fag hag.
LADY 1: Or maybe it's a b-girl.
LADY 2: Yeah, or a closet queen.
LADY 1: A hair hopper.
LADY 2: Yeah, maybe a movie star.
LADY 1: Well, she's a dropout of some sort.
LADY 2: Yeah. What is that word? Uh, dingleberry.
LADY 1: Or a draft dodger.
LADY 2: Yeah, or maybe just a runaway.
LADY 1: Or some sort of, you know, peacenik.
LADY 2: Yeah, or a hooker.
LADY 1: Or she's one of those Yippies.
LADY 2: Mmmm. Maybe it's one of those jet-setters.
LADY 1: But I'll bet it's just a whore.
LADY 2: Yeah, or maybe a dinge queen.
LADY 1: A rimmer.
LADY 2: Yeah, or a size queen.
LADY 1: A hustler.
LADY 2: Oh, she makes me sick.
LADY 1: Whore.
(Having heard enough, Pearce's character clicks her heels together, a la Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and magically disappears.)
LADY 2: What is that?
LADY 1: Oh my god! Isn't that disgusting?
LADY 2: Let's wait for the bus somewhere else!
LADY 1: This whole thing has just made me sick.
LADY 2: Me, too. Let's move up here. Maybe we can wait for the bus in peace.
A Pink Flamingos family portrait, modeled after a Diane Arbus photo (right).
What's in my filing cabinet.
Probably the oldest thing I have in my apartment, other than what's in the refrigerator (that's a joke; my fridge is empty), is a large gray filing cabinet that I keep in my bedroom/home office. It's an ugly, ungainly monstrosity that dates back to, I'm guessing, the 1950s. There's nothing elegant about it. In fact, it has sharp metal corners that have injured me several times. Why do I keep it around? I don't know. Sentimentality, I guess, though I can't say for sure where the cabinet came from or how it came into my possession. I used to have two of them, but I threw one out. So what's in the one remaining filing cabinet? Junk, mostly. Old CDs and VHS tapes take up the top three drawers. The fourth is filled with manila folders, containing assorted papers from the late 1980s and 1990s.
I was more of a pack rat back in the '90s. I was also more fanatical about my pop culture obsessions: Rocky Horror, They Might Be Giants, Spinal Tap, John Waters, Phantom of the Paradise, A Clockwork Orange, "Weird Al" Yankovic, etc. I still like all that stuff, but I'm not a rabid collector the way I used to be. I have a few thick folders of newsletters, postcards, and clippings related to They Might Be Giants, dating back to about 1988 or so. Nowadays, I barely keep up with TMBG. I think I've skipped their last two or three albums, something that would have been unthinkable to my teenage self. I haven't seen them in concert in god knows how long. Sixteen years at least. Yikes.
What happened? I dunno. People get older. Ardor cools. Adulthood calls. There are bills and dental appointments and shit like that. The Internet killed a lot of my fandom, really. When I started out as a TMBG fan, it was hard finding their stuff. I had to go to out-of-the-way record stores to locate EPs and singles. Press coverage was minimal, so I obsessively clipped every magazine and newspaper article I could find. That was oddly rewarding to me. Now, with just a one-second Google search, I could find more information about TMBG than I could ever hope to get through in a dozen lifetimes. Yawn.
But every once in a while, I get the urge to go through that filing cabinet and rifle through my grunge era memories. Today I went through my personal John Waters archives. Mostly, it was articles I'd photocopied at the college library. There was a mid-1990s Polyester Odorama card, too, and it very much retained its original smell. To a fault, you might say. The oddest, most personal find was a bit of fan art I'd apparently started and then abandoned about 20 years ago. It depicted the cast of Pink Flamingos posed as if they were in a Diane Arbus photo. Drawn in pencil on fragile typing paper, it was badly faded and barely visible. You can see it at the top of this post. Other than making it darker so that it shows up on your screen, I've left it as it was back then. It reminds me of the person I used to be, the one who would do crude fan art while watching VHS tapes of his favorite John Waters movies.
Do you want REAL change in America? Peggy Gravel's the woman for the job!
Foreign poster for the film.
Folks, I have foundthe ideal candidate for the 2016 presidential election. She's tough, she's well-spoken, and she's definitely not afraid to assert herself. Better yet, she accurately portrays the belief system of millions upon millions of voting Americans. Her name is Peggy Gravel, and she's a married mother of two from the Guilford section of Baltimore.
Does it matter that Peggy Gravel is merely a fictional character played by Mink Stole in John Waters' 1977 film Desperate Living? I honestly don't think so. One of the current GOP frontrunners, Donald Trump, is essentially a fictional character invented for the media, and all of the candidates are "playing a role" to one extent or another. So why not go all the way and nominate a made-up character from a movie?
Does it matter that Peggy Gravel is a murderess with a long history of mental illness? Of course not! This is America, the land of second, third, fourth, and fiftieth chances! And, besides, you think all those previous presidents who served in the military didn't kill bunches of people? Peggy only killed one, maybe two people, tops. As for the mental illness thing, have you heard Ben Carson lately?
But don't take my word for it. Let Peggy Gravel explain herself in her own words. Here are some choice Gravel quotes for the media to pore over. (NOTE: Feel free to substitute "America" for "Mortville" and "country" for "town" when quoting Peggy.)
The Pope is visiting America right now, and all the TV channels are covering it, which means that when I make my daily phone call to my dad, I have to talk about it for a few minutes. The truth is that I haven't been a practicing Catholic in over a decade, and I haven't been a believer... ever. I went along with it for the first few decades (!) of my life to humor my parents, but I'm done now. Way done. You know what they say: "You can take the boy out of the church... and, all things considered, you probably should. Quickly." No, seriously, this current Pope seems like a nice guy, way nicer than the last couple of Popes, especially that one who looked like the Emperor from Star Wars. But, to me, he's still just a guy in a pointy hat. Hopefully, he can use his (unearned) position of (imaginary) power to do good in the world and inspire others to do good in the world. That's the best you can hope for with something as silly as the Papacy. Non-Catholics often think of the faith as a weird, bizarre cult with all kinds of spooky rituals, but the truth is that growing up Catholic was extremely boring. John Waters has written with as much humor and honesty as anyone about the "Catholic kid" experience. He can remember sitting through mass and fantasizing about the roof of the church caving in. That still makes me laugh, because I had very similar thoughts as a kid. Our church, in fact,had these big ceiling fans hovering over the congregation, and I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if one came plummeting to the floor. That's how boring Catholic church really is.
In these troubling and uncertain times, it is more important than ever to have role models, people whom we can admire and whose behavior we can try to emulate. Towards that end, I have selected as my personal pop culture mentor Mrs. Beverly Sutphin, the homicidal hausfrau portrayed so memorably by Kathleen Turner in John Waters' 1994 dark comedy Serial Mom. This is a woman with numerous positive qualities and useful skills, both domestic and interpersonal, and I think she sets a fine example for the rest of us to follow. But rather than just tell you why I think Beverly Sutphin is so great, I thought I'd actually show you a few examples of the lady herself in action. Please do read on and discover why this fictional character is, in modern Internet parlance, my spirit animal.
1. She has a colorful, diverse vocabulary. 2. She isn't intimidated by celebrities.
3. She's not afraid to express herself.
4. Her dental hygiene? Above reproach. 5. She respects tradition. 6. She knows the value of a friendly wave.
"Can you relate to Lesley Gore's music?" -dialogue from John Waters' Hairspray (1988)
I feel I should say something about Lesley Gore, who passed away today from lung cancer at the age of only 68. It's not a topic to which I have given a great deal of thought, but I suppose it's fair to say that I've been a fan of Ms. Gore for most of my life, from the time when I first started hearing her songs on the radio until today. Due to laziness on my part, I don't claim to be familiar with much of the music she wrote or recorded after that initial burst of hits in the 1960s, but those hit records from the JFK/LBJ era still resonate with me.
Everyone remembers "It's My Party" and its soundalike sequel, "Judy's Turn to Cry." But don't forget "Maybe I Know," which was covered decades later by They Might Be Giants, the chilly and dramatic "You Don't Own Me," which turned up in John Waters' Hairspray (1988), and the ridiculously cheerful "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows," which was used to hilarious effect on The Simpsons once and which I semi-jokingly, semi-sincerely named as my "recovery anthem" when I was hospitalized for depression in 2012. I actually listened to that song dozens of times back then. Yes, I could relate to Lesley Gore's music. She had a clean, strong, solid voice and sounded like she really meant everything she said. When she told her boyfriend he didn't "own" her, brother, she wasn't kidding! I like emotional directness in music, and Lesley had it to spare.
If you want to remember Lesley Gore today, please watch her (typically stellar) set from the best concert film ever made, 1965's The T.A.M.I. Show. Study it, and see how female pop singers used to be able to comport themselves. Fifty years later, Lesley's still a great role model. Johnny wasn't good enough for you, honey.
Man with a turtleneck: Rod McKuen on the cover of one of his many, many, many albums.
Rod McKuen died this week at the age of 81. He is mostly remembered as the creator of very popular, very corny poetry that was loved by the general public in the 1960s and 1970s but mocked and hated by literary critics. As a songwriter, his tunes were covered by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra to Madonna. But he's best known for Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun," a maudlin but catchy tune about death that occasionally turns up on lists of the worst and most detested hit songs of all time. (Once, on a long car trip, that song came on the radio, and I improvised my own alternate lyrics: "We had joy, we had fun, we had fingers up our bums.")
John Waters made sure to include McKuen's name in his article "Hatchet Piece (101 Things I Hate)." In its obituary, NPR somewhat uncharitably called Rod McKuen "the cheeseburger to poetry's haute cuisine." Clearly, for such a gentle and easygoing guy, McKuen attracted a lot of vitriol. Personally, I don't really care one way or the other about McKuen's hippy dippy poetry. It has had no real effect on my life, and if others have derived comfort from his words, well, more power to 'em. What I learned as an adult, however, is that Rod wrote and recorded two of my favorite songs of all time. And they were on opposite sides of the same 45 RPM record, no less!
I've written about this before, but my real introduction to popular music came through a stack of very worn-out vinyl records my mother had owned as a child. Her own parents had operated some bars and restaurants in northern Michigan, and she got the records from the jukeboxes when her folks were done with them. Those same 45s were eventually passed down to me and my sister. I still have them -- or most of them (kids are tough on records) -- neatly alphabetized in a shoebox in my bedroom closet.
Anyway, one of my favorite platters was a novelty number from 1959 called "The Mummy," credited to "Bob McFadden and Dor." McFadden (1923-2000) was a cartoon voice man. You may know him as Snarf from Thundercats. Dor, naturally, was the backwards-running pseudonym of Rod McKuen. "The Mummy" is a weird damn record -- not quite a song, not exactly a skit. McFadden plays a meek, neurotic mummy ("I was born one-thousand, nine-hundred, and fifty-nine years ago!") who terrifies everyone he meets... until he encounters McKuen, who portrays an unflappable and utterly unimpressed beatnik. I can still recite every word of their strangely low-key conversation. ("Aren't you afraid of me? Aren't you gonna scream?!" "Oh, yeah. Like, help.") In retrospect, this record also serves as a snapshot to late-'50s culture, with references to Dave Brubeck, George Shearing, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb."
The flip side of "The Mummy" is maybe even better. It's called "The Beat Generation," and it's a musical manifesto for beatniks everywhere. Like the A-side, it's written by Rod McKuen and credited to Bob McFadden and Dor, but this time I can't hear McFadden anywhere. It's all Rod, man. I honestly don't know how sincere this song is. For all I know, it's meant as satire, intentionally playing up every negative stereotype about beatniks in order to exploit "square" people's fears about them. But when I was a kid, I took it 100% literally, that's for sure.
When I was four or five, this song seemed very adult to me and more than a little dangerous. Suave, confident McKuen coolly expresses disdain for everything Americans are supposed to want: a wife, a nice house, and a good nine-to-five job. I still don't want any of that stuff either, and maybe this record is to blame for my lack of material success. I certainly listened to "The Beat Generation" enough during my formative years to have it permanently affect my thinking. Give it a listen and make up your own mind.
Child thespians imitate Mink Stole and David Lochary in John Waters' Kiddie Flamingos.
John Waters has not directed a movie in ten years. This is the biggest-ever gap in his filmography, eclipsing even the seven-year drought between Polyester and Hairspray in the 1980s. It hasn't been for lack of trying, however. Waters just hasn't been able to convince anyone to give him the money, especially since his last two efforts (Cecil B. Demented and A Dirty Shame) were not exactly box office bonanzas. In 2008, he seemed on the verge of finally making Fruitcake, his long-promised Christmas film about a boy who "runs away from home during the holidays after he and his parents are caught shoplifting meat, then meets up with a runaway girl raised by two gay men and searching for her birth mother." The cast was to have included Parker Posey and Dirty Shame veteran Johnny Knoxville. Once again, though, the financing fell through. Waters, however, has always had backup careers. He's spent much of the last decade as a busy public speaker, author (Role Models, Carsick), and multimedia artist with dozens of solo exhibitions. Strangely enough, John's still-vital art career has temporarily revived his moribund movie directing career. His current show, cheekily titled Beverly Hills John, is running at New York's Marianne Boesky Gallery until February 14 of this year. Along with his visual art, it includes a new film called Kiddie Flamingos: A John Waters Table Read, in which children read a more family-friendly version of the script for John's 1972 cult classic, Pink Flamingos. A wonderful teaser trailer can be seen here. The kids, dressed in pint-sized versions of the costumes and wigs from the original film, really get into the spirit of the old Dreamland Studios productions, yelling and snarling at each other in the grand Waters tradition. I could not be happier about this project.
Doing what they do best: Ike and Tina Turner, tearin' it up onstage.
The record:Live!The Ike & Tina Turner Show (Warner Brothers, 1965 - WS 1579)
The artist(s): Ike and Tina Turner, with Jimmy Thomas, Venetta Fields, and Jessie Smith
Live! The Ike & Tina Turner Show
History: If anyone ever compiles a list of horrible human beings who were nevertheless essential to the history of modern music, surely Ike Turner would rank near the top. Born in Mississippi in 1931, guitarist-songwriter Ike was responsible for what many musicologists consider the first rock record ever made, "Rocket 88"(1951), which was credited to the song's lead vocalist, Jackie Brenston, instead of Turner and his band, the Rhythm Kings.
Ike went on to be a top R&B session guitarist and talent scout, but his career took a major left turn when he met an aspiring young singer named Annie Mae Bullock at a club in 1956. He rechristened her "Tina" and made her a permanent part of his act. In 1962, they married for professional, rather than romantic, reasons. Annie had already been calling herself "Tina Turner" for two years by that point.
As Ike & Tina, they scored a string of hit R&B singles, three of which reached the pop Top 40 as well, in the early 1960s but didn't make a dent on the album charts until they recorded a live disc for Warner Brothers in 1965. They continued recording for a wide variety of labels and toured steadily throughout the Sixties and into the Seventies, until Tina could no longer stand Ike's abuse and escaped from their hotel room in 1976 with less than a dollar in change to her name.
While Tina rebuilt her career and became a solo star in the 1980s, Ike's reputation was irrevocably damaged by Tina's harrowing accusations of abuse, which ultimately overshadowed all of his musical accomplishments, including the induction of Ike & Tina into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. His long-term cocaine addiction finally killed him in 2007, and today his name is all but synonymous with spousal abuse.
Recorded at Fort Worth's Skyliner Ballroom (demolished in 1969) and Dallas' Lovall's Ballroom (fate unknown; its only claim to fame is this album) and edited for release by "Bumps" Blackwell, Live! The Ike & Tina Turner Show captures the couple at roughly the midpoint of their 20-year association. They were hardly newcomers, but they still hadn't reached a "crossover" (read: white) audience quite yet. At the time, the act was still controversial because of the raw sexuality of Tina's onstage presence. Their one big mainstream hit, a Top 10 cover of CCR's "Proud Mary," was still five years away.
All Music Guide says: Four stars. "The recording is primitive and raw, with considerable distortion, but that only adds to the excitement." - William Ruhlmann [link]
Was it a hit: It reached #126 on the Billboard charts in February 1965. Ike and Tina released a second live album for Warner Brothers that same year but were recording for other labels by 1966.
Choice excerpt from the liner notes: Disc jockey Curtis (Gene) Pierce of KGFJ, at the time an influential Los Angeles soul music station, gives Ike and Tina a breathless, semi-incoherent rave review. Example: "Namely, listen to 'Let the Good Times Roll' and 'Twist and Shout' on Side Two. That's where Tina sings with especially a lot of soul." [The songs he mentions are both on Side One.] Later, he advises us: "Whenever the Ike and Tina Turner Show is in your town or city, do like me. Make the scene." Trivia note: according to Pierce, Tina was often called "The Human Bombshell."
A young John Waters.
The listening experience: Hot and bothered, low-fidelity bliss. There's scarcely a wasted second in this album's roughly 34-minute playing time. I was introduced to the music of Ike and Tina Turner by director John Waters, who used their songs heavily in his 1960s films Roman Candles and Mondo Trasho. In fact, I first discovered this LP in a used record store while trying to assemble my homemade Mondo Trasho soundtrack. John has always insisted the best records Tina ever made were the ones she did with Ike. He's right. If all you know is "What's Love Got to Do With It" and "We Don't Need Another Hero," you haven't really heard what Tina can do.
You can almost feel the sweat beading up on the musicians' foreheads as they barrel through the 12 tracks represented here. Compared to the sporting arenas where live albums are usually recorded today, the venues on this LP are incredibly intimate. The photos on the front cover show Ike, Tina, and their various backup singers and musicians huddled around microphones on cramped stages under low ceilings. The audience is just a few feet away. Indeed, you can hear their individual shrieks, gasps, and words of encouragement throughout the recording. The music is primal and urgent, and at the center of it all is Tina, half-singing, half-shouting with an intensity that suggests both a religious epiphany and an orgasm.
On a couple of tracks, supporting players in Ike and Tina's revue are allowed to sing lead (most impressively, Jessie Smith), but there's no question about who the star is. Ike may have been a controlling monster offstage, but he's a generous performer in concert, giving Tina a muscular musical backing but never ever overshadowing her. Most of the songs on this LP are covers, all of which the Turners make thoroughly their own, but the album kicks off with "Finger Poppin'," an original that Ike wrote for Tina. This astonishing song is a triumphant declaration of economic independence by a woman who has escaped from a bad relationship. Given the nature of their real-life relationship, this is mind-boggling. Instead of hiding their marital problems, Ike and Tina air them publicly... to a dance beat, no less! Here, take a listen.
Ike and Tina wisely borrow from the Ray Charles playbook in their act. They end this album with a searing cover of Charles' "To Tell the Truth" and perform lurid, sensual R&B re-arrangements of country songs like "You Are My Sunshine" and "I Can't Stop Loving You," both previously done (to great commercial success) by Brother Ray. But Mr. and Mrs. Turner take these songs even further away from the white mainstream than Ray did. You won't hear any soothing strings or Caucasian backing choruses here the way you will on Ray's waxings. While Ray Charles aimed for theaters and nightclubs, Ike and Tina are firmly rooted in the roadhouses and juke joints of black America. To illustrate my point, here's Ray's #1 hit remake of Don Gibson's "I Can't Stop Loving You" from 1962:
And now here's Ike and Tina's version from 1965:
They're both great records, but the Turners' version is much more erotic and not nearly as pop-friendly as Ray's. It was this uncompromising quality of their music that largely kept them off the Top 40, even though they were one of the most potent acts of their time. Tina herself addresses the issue in the spoken monologue that prefaces their one big crossover hit, "Proud Mary" (which is not part of this album):
You know, every now and then I think you might like to hear something from us nice and easy. But there's just one thing. You see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy. We always do it nice... and rough!
With her smash Private Dancer album in the 1980s, Tina finally hit the big time with a sound that was indeed "nice and easy," mid-tempo, adult-contemporary pop-soul that was perfect for MTV and Top 40 radio. She had more than earned her day of triumph, but it's still exhilarating to hear "the Human Bombshell" back when she was nice and rough. Overall grade: A
I don't know why exactly. It's not like I'm an obsessive Martha Plimpton fan or anything. I mean, sure, she's a delightful character actress whose quirky, offbeat presence has brightened many a film and television program. But I haven't actively followed her career. I don't even watch Raising Hope, although I've heard the show is pretty good. But, nevertheless, I had a dream about Martha Plimpton.
In the dream, I was at a restaurant, and you'll never guess who I met there. Martha freaking Plimpton! No shit. She was just sitting at the bar, waiting for a table like everyone else. I recognized her immediately. She has a pretty distinct look, after all. I debated whether or not to approach her, but only for a second or two. I figured, "What the heck? When am I going to meet Martha Plimpton again?" So I went up to her and said something clever like, "Are you Martha Plimpton?" And she said, "Yes, I am." "I love your movies," I replied. (This dream was a few years ago, before Raising Hope.)
Naturally, I started off by mentioning Parenthood and The Goonies, but the movie I really wanted to ask her about was Pecker, a John Waters film from 1998. She was really happy to be asked about that movie. I think she gets a lot of Goonies questions because people grew up with that movie and have such fond memories of it, but she's really hilarious in Pecker as the title character's remarkably gay-friendly older sister. I don't know what the real Martha Plimpton is like, but the dream Martha Plimpton was very down-to-earth and friendly. Anyway, when I woke up the next morning, I was very disappointed to realize that I had not really met Martha Plimpton.
So that was my Martha Plimpton dream. What did you think of it?
At last, this "gutter film" has a "gutter soundtrack."
Hello, moviegoers!
I'd like to share with you the result of a project I've been working on since the late 1990s at least. That was when I first started getting into the films of Baltimore's one-of-a-kind cult auteur John Waters. In 1969, Waters completed his first feature-length film, a surrealist comedy called Mondo Trasho. It's a dreamlike, almost arty black-and-white film about the misadventures of Bonnie (Mary Vivian Pearce), a vacant blonde "fashion fanatic" who staggers into the path of an oncoming '59 El Dorado Cadillac driven by Divine, the plus-size, cross-dressing star of most of John Waters' films from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Waters couldn't afford to have synchronized sound when he made Mondo Trasho, so he shot 90 minutes of silent footage and then assembled a soundtrack from dozens of snippets of records -- rock, R&B, classical, country, and more -- along with a few bits of dialogue recorded by his actors. The result was an incredible sonic collage that has fascinated me for years. I tried to identify all the songs he used and piece together an unofficial "soundtrack album" one song at a time. I'm still not done with it, but I have a version that is thorough enough to share with the public.
Prologue/Opening Credits
"Jack the Ripper" - Link Wray
Bonnie Walks to the Bus Stop and Rides the Bus
"Short Shorts" - The Royal Teens
Sound effect: dogs barking
"Pomp and Circumstance, March No. I" - Elgar
"Jambalaya (On the Bayou)" - Jo Stafford
In the Park
"I'm Following You" - The Duncan Sisters
"I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" - Elvis Presley
"Remember (Walking in the Sand)" - The Shangri-Las
"Why Does Everything Happen to Me? (live)" (aka "Strange Things Happen") - James Brown
On the Run with an Unconscious Girl
"I Want You To Be My Girl" - Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers
"It Only Hurts For a Little While" - The Ames Brothers
"I Want You To Be My Girl" - Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers
"Riot in Cell Block 9"- The Robins
"No Particular Place to Go" - Chuck Berry
"I'm a Lonesome Fugitive" - Jerry Lee Lewis
"Come Go With Me" - The Del-Vikings
"Two Faces Have I" - Lou Christie
Shoplifting Shoes from the Thrift Store
"Finger Poppin' (live)" - Ike and Tina Turner
"Riot In Cell Block 9" - The Robins
"Come Go With Me" - The Del-Vikings
"The Girl Can't Help It (live)" - Little Richard
"Come Go With Me" - The Del-Vikings
"Night Train (live)" - James Brown
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin
"Marche Slav" - Tchaikovsky
The Laundromat and the First Miracle
"Under the Moon of Love" - Curtis Lee
"Poor Fool" - Ike and Tina Turner
"Rite of Spring" - Igor Stravinsky
"Holy Holy Holy" - traditional hymn
Monologue by Divine
Sound effect: bells ringing
"Holy Holy Holy" - traditional hymn
"The Girl Can't Help It (live) - Little Richard
"The Angels Listened In" - The Crests
"You Turn Me On" - Mae West
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin
The Cadillac is Stolen
"Rip It Up" - Elvis Presley
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin
"Riot In Cell Block 9" - The Robins
"Treat 'Em Right" - Mae West
"Remember (Walking in the Sand)" - The Shangri-Las
"Oh Lonesome Me" - Don Gibson
"Waddle, Waddle" - The Bracelets
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin
"It's Almost Like Being In Love (live)" - Judy Garland
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin
Mink Stole/Mental Hospital Dragnet
"Visage" - Luciano Berio
"Riot in Cell Block 9" - The Robins
"I Got Stung" - Elvis Presley
Tosca: "Presto, su! Mario!" - Renato Tebaldi
"I Almost Lost My Mind" - Pat Boone
"Remember (Walking in the Sand)" - The Shangri-Las
"Riot in Cell Block 9" - The Robins
"Combination of the Two" - Big Brother and The Holding Company
"Tell The Truth (sax solo)" - Ike and Tina Turner
"Riot In Cell Block 9" - The Robins
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, First Movement
"I Got Stung" - Elvis Presley
The Mental Hospital/Mink's Topless Dance
"We're Off to See the Wizard" - The Wizard of Oz Cast
"Visage" - Luciano Berio
Excerpt from a Judy Garland performance: "Whatever you said, it's all right with me!"
"Keep Your Hands Off My Baby" - Little Eva
"Visage" - Luciano Berio
"Take a Number From One to Ten" - Lyda Roberti
Fats Gonder's intro to James Brown 'Live' at the Apollo
Take A Number From One to Ten" - Lyda Roberti
"What'd I Say (Parts 1 and 2)" - Ray Charles
The Second Miracle: Escape from the Snake Pit
"Holy Holy Holy" - traditional hymn
Monologue by Divine
Sound effect: bells ringing
"Holy Holy Holy" - traditional hymn
"The Angels Listened In" - The Crests
"Earth Angel" - The Penguins
"Flying Saucer (Parts 1 and 2)" - Buchanan and Goodman
"I'm Blue (The Gong Gong Song)" - The Ikettes
"Tutti Fruitti (live)" - Little Richard
"Ready Teddy (guitar solo)" - Elvis Presley
"Come Go With Me" - The Del-Vikings
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin
"634-5789 (Soulsville U.S.A.)" - Wilson Pickett
Sound effect: phone ringing
Dialogue by Pat Moran and Divine
Getting to the Doctor and Robbing the Cab
"Slow Walk" - Sil Austin (overlaid with Divine yelling, "Taxi! Taxi!")
"Woo-Hoo" - The Rock-A-Teens
"(I Need Some) Money" - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
Sound effect: dogs barking
"See You Later, Alligator" - Bill Haley & The Comets
"Come Go With Me" - The Del-Vikings
In the Doctor's Waiting Room
"Black And Tan Fantasy" - David Rose And His Orchestra
"You Tickle Me Baby" - The Royal Jokers
A woman saying, "Help! Help someone!"
"Riot in Cell Block 9" - The Robins
"Help! Help, someone!"
Sound effect: whistle
"Comedians Gallop" - Kabalevsky
"Remember (Walking in the Sand)" - The Shangri-Las
"Help! Help, someone!"
"Rumble" - Link Wray
"Coronation March" - Giacomo Meyerbeer
"Rumble" - Link Wray
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, First Movement
Dr. Coat Hanger's Dreadful Experiments
"Trouble" - Elvis Presley
"Jenny, Jenny (live - stage patter)" - Little Richard
Long stretch of prerecorded dialogue. One of the actors may be John Barrymore.
WOMAN: These monsters are going to use me in one of their dreadful medical experiments!
MAN: Care for a girl? Ha ha. My dear fellow, I thought you knew me better than that! Ha! My extreme taste for certain pleasures causes me to sacrifice at whatever altars are available. And I often imagine that a girl is actually a boy and use her accordingly.
SECOND MAN: Let me inspect your veins.
"True Fine Mama (live -stage patter)" - Little Richard
"Fantasie in F Minor, KV 608" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
P.S. - John Waters did not purchase the rights to any of these songs, so Mondo Trasho cannot be legitimately released on DVD. The cost would be prohibitive. Mondo did have a VHS release in the 1980s, though, and bootleg copies are fairly easy to find.
