Welcome, you, as promised here's the blurbs and songs and stories of of our first show's content, what you've been enjoying.
Bit of nonsense kicks us off, from men's best friends over a the Dogville Shorts collection to warm a singular cockle. Suiting us up and booting us off properly, we shall commence this whole endeavour with some dancing music, as implied. Tap dancing counts, yes. In a totally appropriate move, we thwack on the swoonsome Singin' Sadie . We must be careful and handle the album sleeve delicately, as it still has the big pink lipstick kiss on the back of it planted from the lady herself ff f fff f This causes funny feelings and must be put away to enable things to continue smoothlee.
We’ll shift attention across to the welcoming bosom of Amanda Randolph, with "I’ve Got Something In My Eye" (1920). AND I THINK IT’S YOU, Meatcutters Dance fans! A hot tune from the days when jazz were still half-decent, before all those dreadful farty bastards got involved with their trumpets and ruined it (gurning in your direction, Coltrane, Davis, all that mob – yeck.) But never mind those awful thoughts, here’s some more real music: it's the incomparable Yma Sumac. For the sake of avoidance of doubt, "incomparable" is the opposite of "gocomparable". You live a little, you learn a little! Yma, winner of Peru's Got Talent 1951; Inca princess if you believe the hype and not the backwards name thing; Jack of 17 octaves, master of all. There'll likely be something from this frisky momma in every show, so get yourselves used ter' it. This song is called Zana (Moises Vivanco), for your fyi.
Tell you, if our girl Sadie's been knocking around here, our man, the guv’nor, Al Duvall can't be far behind. "My Insides Are Shot" is from Feathers And Tar, one of the trickier slabs to ger'a hold of, and more worth it than anything has ever been worth anything. His seven records are the favourite seven records in the world here at the Meatcutting HQ. Again - get used to this crack, there's something coming from him in every show due to being bestest thing ever.
"Part vaudeville rapscallion, part historical satirist, part straw-suited banjo minstrel, and very possibly one of the most engaging songwriters of recent years, Al Duvall is a bona-fide treasure. In a vintage-music setting, his painfully funny (sometimes painfully sad) and deceptively catchy songs draw on 1930's jug band music, folk-song, sea shanties, ragtime and olde English music-hall... and his laugh-out-loud lyrics -- which address topics as disparate as mermaids, shoemakers, sexual reassignment, kleptomania, bare-knuckle ballerinas, foot fetishes, raw capitalism and that olde chestnut, unrequited love -- will quietly blow your mind. He has just released his six-and-a-halfth album "Recluses Unite!" on the legendary Australian label Dualplover (Deerhoof, Justice Yeldham, Toxic Lipstick amongst many, many others)." - RADIO FREE
If Al is your trusty tour guide down the dark hollers, marshes and slack back alleys, then you might as well dry your boots here a while and get some grueltastic slathers of American Primitive laid ‘cross tongue. Taking not a jot of note whether or not your silky ears feel mauled by proto-gangster rap linguistic reappropriation
, it’s a double mugging here with Geeshie Wiley’s “Pick Poor Robin Clean” (1931) pinning you down, and Tommy Settlers rifling your watch pocket with “Shaking Weed Blues”. No-one said it would all be one long picnic up Plumperchum Hill. Just mop your lip and keep it stiff.
Now then, don't be full of alarm - you haven't been shanghai-ed and barrelled off to the colonies in the boot of a melon barge; we're just having an exploratory jaunt of the further ("Godforsaken", some would have it) extremities of the continents to see what's heading down up their end. Feel free to slip into a feathered skirt and pile in with some crazy dance moves. You won't summon nothing, have a pop!
Via our fellow peddlars of the exotic oddity, Awesome Tapes From Africa, Hamid Al Mou with, well, whatever song that is on side two, and then his good Iraqi buddy Abdul-Wahad Ahmad with whatever that is. Going waa waa waaa waaa. Actually, sorry, this is really a blooming irritating radgey racket isn't it. Some of you will be delighted to hear that I've already got this sampled and mashed for a new DiW track which is set to be even more Please-God-Make-It-Stop-Won't-Someone-Ever-God-Please than normal. Ah, temper your tiny squawking, you loves it. Will a bit of a jiggle through a bit of the Pom Poko soundtrack settle you down? Here then.
LUNCH! Be back here in thirty minutes, you dawgs.
Hope you're not too choc-full of beans, because we're keeping it continental and dunking straight into our rumba-linga-ding-dong section; first up, it's more pup-themed fun as Eduardo Davidson's rythm-based LP Le Chien gets flipped onto its back and tummy tickled - lo, out pops, lipstick-style, the party-souring ditty Con Sol Y Sal. (google translation: “With Sol Y Sal”. Cheers google translation!)
Here comes Richard Nixon’s “Ambassador of Love” (position currently vacant), Pearl Bailey, waxing lyrical about the delights of visiting Haiti on holiday. Sun Shine! Warm evenings! Niiiice people! Hmmm Jungle! Relaxing! Sounds lovely, we’ll pop on jet2.com after this and see if there’s any cheap flights heading out, could do with some beachbound hammock chillaxing with cocktails brought out by oiled locals served in coconuts with little umbrellas sticking out and perhaps a sparkler IS A SPARKLER TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR. How man, feckless fruit-waster Carmen Miranda, with bint cohorts The Andrews Sisters have the right idea, they’re packing right now for their hols whilst belting out the sunny anthem "Cuanto Le Gusta" (1948). While they all seem very excited, do you think they’ve got their appropriate jabs, visas and travel insurance all in hand? Doesn’t sound much like it to these ears. It is all too inevitable they'll be in for a sobering down at the passport control document validation. Let it be a lubed lesson.
Well it’s all very good daydreaming about contracting malaric maladies in far-flung peninsulas, but you’re falling behind with your pian-ee lessons. Professor Chico will be disappointed – sit up straight and crack knuckles, we’ll have a run through. Thumbs on C everyone, say the notes out loud if you need to.
Time to wind down, sleepy peepies. Now, this is a couple weeks two late to count as a proper tribute but have it anyway, Norman Wisdom teaming up with Joyce Grenfell provide an un-resistible comedic tour of force, before The Caretaker creeps up behind both and smothers them with his old undies in paw, chloroformed. Hope it's a spare pair James! And that's how it all ends. Have an onion, you made it through!
Back at the start of December for show #2, it will cork you.
This month's hugely recommendable purch-ases:
