Dr. Giraffe's Cellophane Cruise Ship: Lucille Bogan - Shave 'Em Dry (1935)

This new recurring feature looks at odd footnotes in musical history. It's called Dr. Giraffe's Cellophane Cruise Ship because I decided to call it that. For the first installment, I shine a (flesh)light on this filthy 1935 blues number by Lucille Bogan.

People were as dirty-minded in the 1930s are they are now - it was just harder to get away with it in public. The pre-war blues singers would record innuendo-laden come-ons in the studio, but these would turn into bawdy single-intendres in the clubs at night. These were the sort of rowdy places where, legend has it, people would regularly try to beat up Memphis Minnie and she'd break a bottle over the bar and give them what for.

For this song and some others Lucille Bogan just said "fuck it" and jettisoned any commercial pretense. It exceeds the 3 minutes typical of pre-war blues songs in case it takes you that much longer to see what she's getting at. Indeed, whatever she was trying to communicate through such abstruse lyrics as "I fucked last night and the night before, and I feel like a wanna fuck some more" is lost to the ages. It also includes the line "I've got something between my legs that'll make a dead man cum", imagery that would show up in 1976 on Tom Waits' "Pasties and a G-String" and then again in 1981 on The Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucille_Bogan

Spotify Playlist: Assal Horizontology

10 Songs with Awesome Outros

I use the term "outro" loosely because a distinct outro as in a coda is less common than an intro. "Songs that end awesomely", basically.


1. Fairport Convention - Matty Groves


2. Built to Spill - Broken Chairs


3. The Beatles - I Want You (She's So Heavy)


4. Pixies - No. 13 Baby


5. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened


6. Gillian Welch - Time (The Revelator)


7. The Rolling Stones - Can't You Hear Me Knocking


8. Augie March - Brundisium


9. Hunters and Collectors - Run Run Run


10. Sonic Youth - The Diamond Sea

Related:
10 Songs with Awesome Intros

The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street (Deluxe Edition)

The Rolling Stones made Exile on Main Street for somebody's sins, but not mine. It's a double album in the same way that London Calling and Daydream Nation are double albums: they don't fit onto two sides of vinyl, the dominating format at the time. Double albums often come at the peak of a band's creativity, a time when to put out another dozen or so songs seems like a facile endeavour - it's surprising that the late 60s produced as few as it did, it being at time when an album a year was standard.

Exile on Main Street is many people's favourite Rolling Stones album, but I'll take its predecessor, the concise ten song set Sticky Fingers over it any day. Exile lacks the restless eclecticism of London Calling and with Keith Richards as chief songwriter, doesn't play host to the warring personalities of its members as does The Beatles (The White Album). It doesn't even bother with a concept, as The Wall did, and not much of it is given over to experimentation. Pared down its best tracks, Exile makes a very good single album, but still not one that matches Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers. "Tumbling Dice" vs "Brown Sugar"? No "dice". "Sweet Black Angel" vs "Wild Horses?" Fuck off.

The Deluxe Edition comes with a bonus disc out outtakes. The quality is surprisingly high for such a disc and demonstrates that the Stones weren't the best judges of their own material; Exile could have been improved by replacing some of its duds with some of these songs, especially "Plundered My Soul".

You might be wondering why I hate Exile on Main Street. That's a question I can't answer, because I don't hate it. I actually like it quite a bit. I just like some other Rolling Stones albums a hell of a lot more.