Cinturao tem mele

Dance cha cha cha!

In unrelated news, I’m off to see The Dead Weather, so I don’t have time for in depth writing.

See you tomorrow.

Cinnamon Girl

Yes, there’s concert clips available, but none seem to date from before the aughts. Did Neil Young never have any of his shows filmed back in olden times? I didn’t want to watch any of those clips because the increasingly misnomered Neil Young looks like soggy pudding nowadays. To be fair, he was faintly hideous all along. I don’t think bad visuals should be allowed to distract from the musical enjoyment here. I won’t stand for it.

Et Dieu… créa la femme

Finally. I watched the French classic “…and God created woman”. It is a profoundly distasteful movie, I’m sorry to report. The star is Brigitte Bardot, playing a stereotypical femme fatale, a woman so sexual she literally makes men insane.  Juliette is an orphan who marries a man she does not care for in order to escape returning to the dreaded orphanage. She then wrecks havoc in the lives of her husband, his friends and family, and generally everyone in the domicile of St Tropez. Juliette is has enough self-awareness to flirt manipulatively with every man she meets, yet beyond that she has little personality. She has no concept of who she is or what she wants. She is defined entirely by her desirability. Is she a naif victimized by the libidos of powerful men? Or, conversely, a scheming whore who gets her way by leading men about by their cocks? Either image is equally offensive. Made in 1956, the movie was considered quite provocative, and launched Bardot’s career. It’s provocative all right, but not in a good way. It’s a repulsive example of the ages-old image of toxic female sexuality. The idea that a woman is a sexual object first and foremost is operative in this movie, and it’s also something Bardot herself has been defined by and struggled with in her own life. Before she came to movies, Bardot studied ballet. This background is an underreported facet of her persona. Everything about her that seems studied and provocative at first glance makes sense in the context of her balletic training. The posture, neck ramrod straight, chest thrust out. The walk, swiveling yet flatfooted. The combination of graceful, dainty gestures and broad, overtly physical ones. It is only at the end of the movie that Juliette really comes alive, and it’s in a dance sequence. Wandering a basement nightclub, she performs a sweaty, uninhibited dance, and she seems to be herself for the first time. It’s in that moment that the character of Juliette makes any sense at all, and it’s compliments to Bardot that she makes this figure of male fantasy the least bit sympathetic. It’ s completely assbackwards, of course, that the wanton French girl’s inhibitions drop like a stone in the presence of black men with bongoes – typical fifties racism on top of everything else. And it’s sad and repulsive that what happens next – Juliette’s milquetoast husband finally grows the cojones to beat her into submission – is shown as a happy ending. It’s a classic movie, yeah. Worth seeing for the youthful Bardot, a 22-year old starlet with scorching charisma. Too bad she’s trapped inside a movie that’s as backwards and insulting towards women as Birth Of A Nation was towards black people.

Cindy Tells Me

Hhhmmm, cryptic.

Cindy tells me, the rich girls are leaving,
Cindy tells me, they’ve given up sleeping alone
And now they’re so confused
By their new freedoms.

And she tells me
They’re selling up their maisonettes
Left their Hotpoints to rust in their kitchenettes
And they’re saving their labours for insane reading.

Some of them lose — and some of them lose,
But that’s what they want –
And that’s what they choose.
It’s a burden –
such a burden
Oh what a burden to be so relied on.

Cindy tells me,
What will they do with their lives?
Living quietly — like labourers’ wives…
Perhaps they’ll re-acquire those things
They’ve all disposed of.

Alternative hearings:

The rich girls are leaving == The rich girls are weeping (– R Carlberg)

Some of them lose and some of them lose == Some have the blues and some of them lose (– R Carlberg) == Some of the lose and some of them booze (– Don Ford) == Some them bruise — and some of them lose (– Tymothi Loving)

It’s a burden — such a burden — Oh what a burden to be so relied on == It’s a burner, such a burner, ooh ooh, oh what a burner to be so relied on (– Kelly Higgins) == It’s a bother– such a bother Oh what a bother to be so relied on (– Aimee)

Cindy tells me == Cindy, tell me (– R Carlberg)

Living quietly — like labourers’ wives… == Living quietly — like labourous wives… (– Tymothi Loving)

They’re selling up their maisonettes == They’re selling off their maisonettes (– Sardonicusj)

Some of them lose — and some of them lose == Some of them lose / and some of them loose (– Sardonicusj)

References:

Maisonette: A flat (apartment) with its own separate entrance.

Hotpoint: a manufacturer of white goods — cookers, fridges etc. These “labour-saving devices” (a buzz-phrase in the 1950′s & ’60′s) get referred to again in the following line, “saving their labours”. Eno carries this idea through into the last verse’s “labourers’ wives”.

From: EnoWeb

Model of the Week: Sophie Dahl

Sophie Dahl inspired a famous writer to write a famous book. The writer was Roald Dahl and the book was The BFG. Dahl was Sophie’s grandfather. Sophie’s grandmother was Patricia Neal. Her mother and father are Tessa Dahl and Stanley Holloway. With a pedigree like that she was bound for stardom from birth. As a teenager, Sophie was discovered by Isabella Blow, crying in the street after an argument with her mother, so the legend goes. She quickly became a top model, celebrated for her unapologetically sumptuous curves. She’s also written a series of columns for magazines as various as Waitrose Food Illustrated, Vogue, and The Daily Telegraph, she’s the author of two novels and a cookbook, and hosts an English cooking show. She earned a boatload of controversy for her provocative and very naked ad for YSL’s Opium scent.  She was, for a brief time, supposedly allegedly dating Mick Jagger. She’s now married to Jamie Cullum, who is at least a full foot shorter than her and looks like a hobbit. Sophie as a woman of many facets, to say the least. What I thought when I first saw her: Omg! It’s the love child Deborah Harry and Marilyn Monroe could never have! That just about sums up her looks, yes?

Cielo Giallo

Does this sound familiar? Just like the real thing, but somehow chicer.

Ciel de lit

I almost watched And God Created Woman the other day, but the dvd was scratched. So still no commend on whether or not the divine BB had the acting chops to match the pulchritude. MM did, but exception proves the rule. Most of the time talent is inversely proportional to boob size.

Christian Dior

This is just like when Jennifer Lopez wrote a song about her love for Christian Louboutin shoes. Just like that! Dior makes such great neckties, somebody just had to write a song about it. Actually, no. That’s not it at all. It’s about Christian Dior, the pudgy French genius whose ostentatiously glamorous New Look liberated fashionable ladies from the drudgery of wartime practicality. Besides being a heralded in his own lifetime, Dior was a known workaholic who sacrificed the satisfactions of a personal life for the virtuosity of his creations. The story goes that his friends were so worried that he was overworking himself, they practically had to drag him on a nice Italian holiday. Where he promptly died of heart failure, leaving behind no heirs or family of any kind. For some reason, Morrissey feels some kinship with this somewhat tragic figure. Where the similarities lie, I can’t imagine.

Christian Dior
Words by Morrissey, Music by Boz Boorer

Christian Dior
you wasted your life
on aroma and clothes
fabric and dyes

Christian Dior
you wasted your life
on grandeur and style
and making the poor rich smile

You could have run wild
on the backstreets of Lyon
or Marseilles
wreckless and legless and stoned
impregnating women
or kissing mad street boys from Napoli
who couldn’t even write
their own name

Christian Dior
you wasted your life
sensually stroking the weaves
of a sleeve

You could have run wild
on the backstreets of Lyon
or Marseilles
wreckless and legless and stoned
impregnating women
or kissing mad street boys from Napoli
who couldn’t even spell
their own name

oh Christian Dior
oh Christian Dior

When you look at me
failure is all that you see
I discipline my days
just like Christian Dior

I could have run loudly
and proudly
all forcible entry
and morally bankrupt
and never non-violent
and drawn to what scares me
and scared of what bores me
years alone will never be returned

Christian Dior

Lionise maverick
design if you can
the way to just be a man
to just be a man

Christian Dior…

Cactus

David Bowie always makes unexpected and excellent choices when picking which songs to cover. He should sit down and think about making a Pin-Ups 2. It’s been too long. Anyhow… On 2002′s Heathen he chose to revive a Pixies classic. A good choice, as usual. Slightly kinkily sexy, maybe a little morbid as well. He stuck close enough to the original. Kept the name-spelling bit in, which was a T-Rex tribute in the first place, so now it’s a double meta-tribute.

The Chosen One

With Avalon, the final Roxy Music album, Bryan Ferry found a sound that really worked for him, and with it he stuck for the next twenty-odd years. Super smooth, atmospheric, impeccably well-produced, dance-able but unaggressive, the aural equivalent of a fine tuxedo. On has latest releases he’s finally gotten back to being a little quirky, thanks be to having Eno back in his life. As much as I love the smooth-operator 80′s Ferry sound, by the mid-nineties it was getting monotonous. Boys & Girls (1985) was Ferry’s first solo album after the breakup of Roxy Music, which sadly occurred right when they’d hit their most commercially  viable vein. Not as strong as what came right before or immediately after, it did manage to become his biggest US hit. It’s nothing if not atmospheric, the atmosphere being that of a  posh nightclub. The problem is, even the silkiest musical texture need some foundation, and towards the second half of the album, the songs run together watercolor-style, none of them having the strength of personality to individuate themselves. It’s an easy album to enjoy, but hard to pay attention to. Unintentionally and ironically, Ferry was matching Eno at his own game; making ambient music that slips into the subconscious without making a dent. I’m surprised this song was revived for the stage. It’s almost five minutes of ethereal vocalizing and liquid guitar sounds with barely an actual song to hold it up. Typical of mid-period Ferry music; beautiful, sensual, dreamy, and easy on the brain but without strong melodies, strong ideas or strong emotions. It does serve an important purpose, however. It feels really good, and nobody does this sort of thing better.