September | 2009 | Barbarella Psychadella 2009 September | Becoming a Great Woman of Letters, one jello mold at a time.

September, 2009

A Dress and a Song, episode 5: I’m Blue (The Gong Gong Song)*

September 28, 2009 by ms. xandra

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Ikettes!!!

Oh, the Ikettes. Your name is only slightly less stupid than Ray Charles’ Raelettes, and you have inspired me to recruit my own team of backup singers named after myself: The Xandrettes. (Auditions are tentatively scheduled for next month, please forward C.V.s and audition tapes to lady.xandra at barbarellapsychadella dot com. Chief requirements for being a Xandrette: ability to sing at least mostly in tune for at least 50% of the time; killer dance moves; disregard for personal dignity. I cannot pay anybody but I will take you out for cheeseburgers once a week. In return you need to sing backup for me while I’m teaching discussion section to college freshmen. It’ll be the ultimate.)

The girl group era was full of these silly named bands of backup singers who didn’t really get a lot of credit for anything they did personally. Like, did you know that DeeDee Warwick and Cissy Houston (yes, of course, related Dionne and Whitney) founded the Sweet Inspirations, the band that sang backup for Dusty Springfield on Dusty in Memphis? I only learned that about a year ago, and I have spend a lot of time sitting around listening to Dusty in Memphis, so it is kind of shameful that I didn’t figure this out sooner. Anyhow, these back up bands are hard to track because their membership changed all the time – but the original Ikettes were Delores Johnson, Eloise Hester, and Joshie Armstead. They sang with the Ike and Tina revue, but also managed to swing a few hits on their own, but had a really rough time actually getting paid for anything, because Ike owned their name. He would also have more than one set of Ikettes active at a time, sending one on tour, and keeping one to sing with the Revue. At one point, one gang of Ikettes (Robbie Montgomery, Vanetta Fields, and Jessie Smith) tried touring under a different name, the Mirettes, but didn’t have much success, probably because they didn’t have the clout of the Ike and Tina association (not to mention, Phil Spector production) supporting them.

I’m Blue (the Gong Gong Song) was written by Ike Turner and was recored by that original group of Ikettes in 1961, with Tina Turner singing backup. (And later, Salt N Pepa sampled it in Shoop!) How do I love this song? Oh let me count the ways. First of all, I love it because of the admitedly silly onomatopoeic title. Why don’t more song titles refer to the way song sound? This is what I want to know. I like how guttural and angsty those gong gongs sound. I love how the song is slow and driving but is still the kind of song that’s danceable. And I love the sound of the Ikettes’ vocal timbres.

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The Shangri-Las do a version of this song that is good, but probably not their best track – I’d actually heard the Shangri-Las version first, and it became the one track on my Shangri-Las record that I’d skip because I didn’t like it. The Ikettes version floored me the first time I heard it. I can’t put my finger on why the Shangri-Las version just doesn’t work for me There’s just something less convincing about it. I am going to sidestep arguments about authenticity here because the very concept is verboten on this blog, but I do think you could say some interesting things about what cultural and social factors (ie: race and class and different performances of femininity) might inform the differences between the two versions, which is something I might use as an exercise in the girl group class I’m teaching in the spring. The Shangri-Las just sound too polite for this song, and race and class obviously have something to do with it. Even though the Shangri-Las were kind of seen as bad girls among girl groups (ie: they wore pants and stood near motorcycles), their whiteness still mitigates what expectations their vocal performances of femininity would fulfil. Those expectations are different for the Ikettes, as black women.

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But enough important voice, it’s time for dresses! So, any time Tina Turner is remotely involved, you want to be wearing something that will show off your legs and thus your killer leg-related dance moves. I mean, look at Tina and and the Ikettes cut a fucking rug – this is in 1966, on the Spector-produced Big TNT Show (which I saw on the big screen this summer, and it was every kind of amazing. Also, Tina is a goddamn force of nature, and we should all aspire to be her when we grow up):

So there is really only one place I can take this, and that place is the glorious land of go go dresses.

I love the side buttons on this one. Not to mention the color:

(from Old Age Vintage)

And this, well, this is just too spectacular for words. The seller describes it pretty accurately: “best print of all time.”

(from Maiden Rapture Vintage)

I really love this particular sartorial period. There was lots of swingy a-line action going on, not to mention great colors. It is becoming increasingly evident that I really should have probably been alive then if only for the purpose of accumulating a really fantastic wardrobe.

Also, I found you these go go boots. I really can’t decide if I even like these boots or if they just upset me. Someone make up my mind, please. You obviously shouldn’t wear them with the op-art dress because then it will look like the 60′s have barfed on you, but maybe you could wear them with the turquoise.

(from Valentine Vintage)

Luckily, my Secretboyfriend John Fluevog has invented a dancing shoe that I strongly recommend wearing with everything, ever, especially with turquoise go go dresses:

*Sadly, no, there is no connection to the Gong Show.

Category Dress and a Song Project, Fashion!, Music | Tags: | 5 Comments
A Dress and a Song, episode 4: St. Louis Blues

September 26, 2009 by ms. xandra

Sorry this is late – I meant to post yesterday, I really did, but teaching four hours of section kinda knocked the wind out of me. I’m happy to report, though, that I think my students this year are going to be really great – they’re all freshmen who haven’t learned how to not do their homework, so they all showed up to the first day of school having done all of their reading, a veritable miracle. Anyhow. Look at this dress!

(from B and Lu)

I love this dress. I love this dress so much that I bought it. Sadly, you are not going to get a self-portrait of me in this dress because it is currently at the tailor because it is too long and gave me a bad case of the Stumpy Leg. One of the perennial problems I have with fat girl clothes is that so many of them are clearly designed for fat girls who are also statuesque amazons, and the last time I checked, statuesque was not an adjective that is easily applicable to yours truly, even when I am wearing Very Significant Shoes. And yes, shortening a dress is normally something I could easily do myself, but because of the fancy decorative bit at the hem, I wanted to keep the bottom edge, which meant the dress would have to be shortened at the waistline, so I decided to entrust this job to a professional. I will admit right here that my sewing methods tend to be pretty sloppy and haphazard because they are based largely on trial and error (and I would like to take this opportunity to bemoan the loss of home ec in high schools. I never got to take home ec. I don’t know how commonplace home ec is in high schools anymore, but I think that at the very least basic hemming is a skill that every teenager, be they boy, girl, or magical unicorn child, should be taught), so they really aren’t suitable for use on anything that I don’t want to accidentally ruin. (And this is why I buy all my fabric at two bucks a pound at the Michael Levine Loft in the textile district.) I was all set to try this job myself, and had the dress all pinned up and ready to go, but then suffered an enormous crisis of self-confidence and decided that it was not the job for me, and thus my dress has been sent away to sleepaway camp, and hopefully will come back a better person.

But anyhow. I love this dress because of the vintage detailing combined with a pretty contemporary color scheme. I bought it in black and red, but it was a tough call because the dove grey is really lovely as well. And I WOULD HAVE gotten the purple, except that they hadn’t released it in purple yet when I ordered, jerks. The one qualm I had about this dress is that it’s vintage pedigree is kind of ambiguous – I think it looks sort of late 1920s, early 1930s flapper-y, but there’s also something about it that is ever so slightly 1980s-ish, which is generally a sartorial period that I prefer to avoid. But I’ve made the cognitive leap and I’ve put that out of my mind, because I still really love this dress. I can imagine one of the great early blues women, like Bessie Smith or Lucille Bogan, on stage in this dress. This dress is also one of the rare occasions where I really appreciate jersey fabric, which I normally sort of hate because of how stretched out and shapeless it can be. Here, though, because it’s such a high quality jersey, it has an amazing sheen and drapes amazingly well. So it’s like a fancy dress made actually wearable because when I spill my lunch on it (inevitable) I can just throw it in the wash.

And for a dress that makes me think of the blues, what better than the indomitable, hard-drinking, beautiful Miss Bessie Smith, with St. Louis Blues?

This clip makes me want to wear my hair like the women sitting at those tables – all swept to the side in the front and pinned back. They look so dignified and glamorous.

And because I like to give props to my fellow Canadians whenever I can, I think you should go listen to Little Miss Higgins. I saw her at Summerfolk a year ago, I think? And she was lovely, and there’s a wonderful version of St. Louis Blues on her album. If you paired today’s dress with a pair of cowboy boots (which I obviously am going to do as soon as I get it back) and then taught it to sing, it would sound like Little Miss Higgins.

Category Dress and a Song Project, Fashion!, Music | Tags: | 3 Comments
A Dress and a Song, episode three: Mary Lou Lord, She Had You

September 21, 2009 by ms. xandra

I have this funny ability to remember, with startling accuracy, the circumstances under which I have acquired almost every album or book or dress that I own. I bought Mary Lou Lord’s Got No Shadow at Randy’s Records in Owen Sound, the store that we used to frequent in high school – I remember digging around for musicals soundtracks with Leith, and then later, digging around for Monkees albums with, you know, some guy, name best left unspoken. But anyhow. I don’t know if Randy’s is still there, but it was the kind of record store that was dingy and dusty and Randy was sort of weird and, I think, lived in the back of the store, and I’m pretty sure he’d listened to every album that came in because he would have something to say about every album I bought. And I remember him telling me that this Mary Lou Lord album wasn’t very good. But I bought it anyway, because I knew she was on Kill Rock Stars for a while and had some connection to Kurt Cobain and the whole Seattle scene, and that struck me as decent enough pedigree. And the album is fine – it’s not the most revolutionary thing I’ve heard by any means, and coming back to it years after the fact, I notice that the first half of the record would really benefit greatly from kicking the tempo up a notch or several. But there are a few really great songs on here. After the slightly plodding first half, it’s like someone showed Mary Lou an electric guitar and was like “HERE. Try this. It’s called an electric guitar,” and things generally get better. Jingle Jangle Morning is really deliciously poppy, and there’s a fun cover of Shake Sugaree. I think my favourite song on the album, though, is She Had You.

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She Had You fascinates me because of how bitter it is, and also because it speaks to class tensions in a really powerful way. The song is about a girl who is described as a “waste of space,” but managed to one up the song’s protagonist because she managed to get the guy or girl that the protagonist wanted, and still wants. The line that really sums it all up for me is “she never made it, she’s selling Avon, but she had you,” which is one of the most evocative lines I’ve ever heard in a song because it encapsulates so many things at once: firstly, the idea that there’s something contemptible about not having the wherewithal to get out of the small town where you grow up; secondly, that there are certain careers that are more intrinsically valuable than others (ie: selling Avon); and thirdly, that even if you make it out of that small town, even if you’re doing something seemingly productive with your life, what really matters is the relationships you’ve had along the way, what really matters is getting what you really really want. (Zigga zig ah.)

And obviously, I don’t really hold with the sentiments that the character in the song is espousing, but I think they’re the sort of things that we believe in without really wanting to. I’m not going to lie, I shake my head when I think of the people that I went to elementary school with who still live in Nowheresville, Bruce County, even though I know that I was able to leave because I come from a pretty privileged socioeconomic position and had certain choices open to me that other people don’t have. I find She Had You really compelling because of how it raises the question of who gets to leave and who stays behind. It’s a song about privilege and memory and resentment and how our pasts create our presents.

Seriousness aside, though, Mary Lou Lord supposedly dated Kurt Cobain and famously fought bitterly with Courtney Love, and it’s kind of fun and juicy, if far fetched, to imagine that she’s singing to Courtney. Just saying.
Anyhow, this song is very 90’s alternative scene to me, so I was on the lookout for a dress that wasn’t necessarily “vintage” from the 90’s (I maintain that anything more recent than 1985 is not vintage, it’s just second-hand, which, I acknowledge, is my own totally arbitrary definition) but would be the sort of dress that would look good with a pair of 18 hole Doc Martens. Something that Mary Lou or Courtney, or, like Kat Bjelland or someone might wear on stage. I like these:

(again, from Thrush, on Etsy, a shop that I seem to browse pretty frequently)

(from Rusty Zipper Vintage)

Category Dress and a Song Project, Fashion!, Music | Tags: | 1 Comment
A dress and a song, episode 2: FASHION EMERGENCY!!!

September 18, 2009 by ms. xandra

OMG OMG! Some people got a ticket to the premiere of The White Stripes: Under the Great White Northern Lights at TIFF on Friday! Some people asked me for a White Stripes makeover! (So what this means is: yes, I do take requests.)

I like the White Stripes because I have a soft spot for crazy, potentially egomaniacal artist-types who never say anything that makes sense (see also: David Lynch). And I like the White Stripes because I sort of appreciate Meg White’s extraordinary rudimentary approach to the drums, which seems to be based largely on hitting things really hard and flailing, which is kind of what I am like when I play the drums (ie: the two times in my life when I have been entrusted with/allowed to touch the drums). But what I really, really like is the way they really sleekly bring in rockabilly and 60’s garage rock influences that sound really tight but are enveloped in a wash of feedback. I love giant masses of feedback and distortion. I think I told someone once that I find it really relaxing to listen to, and then was told that I’m crazy.

Anyhow, Tanya sent me this clip, and I think you can really hear that stuff in it. And I think there’s something in particular about “You’re Pretty Good Looking” that makes it sound like the 60’s garage bands that are in all of those Frankie and Annette movies. (And also starting at about 1 minute in, the chord progression is pretty much exactly the same as the bridge of the Shoop Shoop song.)

But what should Tanya wear when she goes to seduce Jack White???

Well, a red dress obviously. And, pardon my French, but I fucking love this particular red dress:

(from Thrush, on Etsy)

And it’s perfect, because it’s got just enough of a rockabilly sensibility to be totally cute and retro without being all costumey.

And I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of Jack White recently, but right now he sort of has this, like, cowboy steampunk thing going on, right? And he’s always wearing really good hats, right? Like this:

So I think a hat and suspenders are totally necessary. You can’t wear suspenders with a dress, but you can wear this:

(From AudraJean, on Etsy. Also, Audi has a blog that I really love.)

And also I found you these hats. I can’t decide which one is best. I guess it all depends on how badly you want to sleep with Jack White:

(From Babydeeere, on Etsy)

(from Rock Zombie Oldies, also Etsy)

And my Secretboyfriend John Fluevog recommends these:

Category Dress and a Song Project, Fashion!, Music | Tags: | 3 Comments
Also I think marriage should be illegal for anyone under the age of 75.

September 15, 2009 by ms. xandra

Some thoughts, having just finally seen 500 Days of Summer (which I really liked!):

1. I would like it on record that I had publically declared Ringo my favourite Beatles months before Zooey Deschanel made it the hip thing to do.

2. The movie seems to be set in Hilarious Bizarro World Los Angeles, in which people ride public transit and actually hang out downtown, without bitching about it. Bizarro Downtown LA looks pretty much like New York, but with palm trees. Real Downtown LA looks pretty much like New York, but with more dirt, blazing sun, lots of shops selling quinceanera dresses and disreputable electronics, and palm trees if you look hard enough. Oh, and Clifton’s Cafeteria.

3. Because it was set in Downtown, there was lots of good old architechture porn – Downtown is full of wonderful old buildings that used to be movie palaces and theatres but now are mostly abandoned or converted into retail space or use as filming locations. Ironically, I was watching this movie in the multiplex at the Grove, the foyer of which is meant to look like the interior of the old single-screen movie palaces (think crystal chandeliers and marble) and, in fact, has a informational display about LA’s old theatres, but, as a multiplex, is partly responsible for why those theatres can’t stay open.

Depressing! I’m going to bed. I am still on Port Elgin Standard Time and I am going to STAY THAT WAY, DAMMIT, because it means I am going to bed at midnight and getting up at eight in the manner of a normal, functional adult, rather than staying up until three and getting up between 11 and noon and then feeling so guilty for sleeping in that I then stay up until 3:00 under the auspices of getting work done (mostly this work period involves a lot of reading of fashion blogs). It’s vicious, I tell you.

Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 2 Comments
A Dress and a Song, episode one

September 14, 2009 by ms. xandra

So, it is that time of year when I tend to take stock of my blogging activities and realize that said activities are kind of diffuse and purposeless and all over the place, and that I still haven’t figured out how to become a millionaire by blogging, which obviously is the entire point of blogging, right? So, I’ve decided to start a project on this blog, on one hand to give it some structure, and on the other hand, to force me to do more (non-academic) writing. It’s a project that combines the two things I spend the majority of my time doing, namely: thinking about music and looking at pictures of vintage dresses on the internets. And here’s what I’m going to do: Every Monday and Friday, I’m going to pick a song that I think is interesting for some reason. And I’m going to pair each song with a dress that matches the song, so, like, the ideal dress to wear while listening and/or dancing to the song in question. Mostly they’ll be vintage dresses (but they won’t all be, because I already know what Friday’s dress will be, and it’s a new dress but kinda vintage looking), and they’ll all be dresses you can get from independent, lady-owned businesses, because I think we need to be supporting independent, lady-owned businesses. Occasionally, I may also regale you with a dress from my rather large closet of Far Too Many Dresses.

Which brings up a rather troubling point: I own Far Too Many Dresses, and have thus declared a state of No Buying Clothes, which is going to last until Christmas, I swear to god, because I recently had the idea that maybe I should save some of my paycheque with an eye towards buying something like, say, a car, after I finish my Ph.D. rather than just blowing it all at the Fairfax Trading Post every Sunday. So this will be a challenging project, because I will be forbidden from actually buying any fabulous dresses.

So anyhow. This project is officially starting now. And I’m starting with a trip in the wayback machine, to when I was but a wee lass, only just fourteen years old. As a wee lass, only just fourteen years old, my heart burned burned with unquenchable ardour for the music of one Bif Naked. And I was recently reacquainted with said ardour when I was at home, organizing the giant Rubbermaid tubs filled with my stuff, that live in my parents’ basement, one of which contained all of my old CDs, which I subsequently put on my ipod, because, as a musicologist, I insist on carrying Every Song, Ever around with me in digital form, just in case of an emergency where I might need Some Song I Haven’t Listened To in Ten Years. And that is how, friends, I found myself on an airplane, three hours away from Los Angeles, having watched all of the available episodes of Summer Heights High that were on the in-flight entertainment system (aka tiny television set that hurts your eyes) listening to Spaceman on repeat.

You know, there was a time in my life when this song was the awesomest thing in the world. Then somewhere along the line, I discovered Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground and became pretentious. But more and more I have been turning back the clock to my non-pretentious years, because things were a lot more fun back then. So the upshot of this is that everything that was awesome when I was 14 is awesome again, and is allowed to happily co-exist with everything that was awesome and pretentious when I was 19, which is in turn allowed to co-exist with everything I think is awesome now (ie: Dusty Springfield, The Shangri-Las, Frankie and Annette movies), resulting in a juggernaut of awesome.

And let’s just talk about that Spaceman video for a second. First of all, I had forgotten that Bif Naked manages to channel both Cher and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, while wearing a suit jacket made out of plastic wrap raincoat and somehow not even breaking a sweat. That, my friends is talent. Or something. I also appreciate how she totally owns that matte brick red lipstick, and seems unashamed of the fact that the set of the video is the Canadian poor woman’s version of the set of Scream.

And I really truly love this song, mostly because it is about space and is basically told from the point of view of an X-Files extra. This song was actually pretty important to me when I was 14 and living in shitty old Port Elgin. It’s so quintessentially representative of that particular moment in the 1990s, when the X-Files was really good, and there was that television special about Roswell that my dad wouldn’t let me watch, and I saw the movie Contact and decided to be an astronomer when I grew up, and my favourite shirt was a baby tee with a green alien face on the front, which I would wear with Mod Robes, because, lo, I had style. I kind of wonder about that particular cultural moment – because it wasn’t just me that was into aliens, it was kind of a zeitgeisty thing, and I wonder what sort of social and cultural impulses the alien abduction thing was responding to at that particular time. It’s part of a aesthetic of escapism and exploration and wonder, and, as this song pretty clearly indicates, deep dissatisfaction and longing.

Of course, the question on everybody’s mind is: when a spaceman comes to rescue me from my deep dissatisfaction, what on earth shall I wear?

Pair this dress:

(from LouLou’s Vintage, on Etsy)

With these boots:

(from LorrelMae, also on Etsy)

It’s, like, perfect Barbarella-inspired mod 1960s but would probably also fit in pretty well at a rather unfortunate 1990s rave, so that’s my pick for listening to Bif Naked and dreaming about outer space.

Or, pile your hair up on your head, spray paint it purple and throw on this pointy-shouldered item and you will totally be channelling 1950’s pulp queen of outer space:

(from Posh Girl Vintage)

Alternatively, nothing says “Spaceman, Oh, Spaceman, Come rescue me from this (and also make me queen of your intergalactic empire)” like an op-art gown:

(from LuciteBox)

Category Dress and a Song Project, Fashion!, Music | Tags: | 3 Comments
Things that happened at the giant dominoes at Bloor and Spadina:

September 2, 2009 by ms. xandra

We ate toasted marshmallow ice cream and talked about boys,

I unexpectedly ran into one of my favorite spinster ladyfriends, who I didn’t even know was in town,

We shook our fists at the Dance Cave, apparently closed on Thursdays,

We said goodbye, filled with ounces and ounces of beer and nachos,

We almost didn’t find each other, because Dominoes is also a pizza chain, so “let’s meet at the dominoes” is easily misinterpreted to hilarious effect,

I met an old, dear friend, and we held hands in the dark, and he told me I was lovely and I wished I didn’t live so far, far away.

(But I promise I’ll be back soon, because I love all of you!)

Category Adventure | Tags: | No Comments
WWBD?*

September 2, 2009 by ms. xandra

One of the worst things about coming home for vacation from graduate school is that most people don’t really understand what gradute school is or why anyone would want to really bother with it, so I have consequently had to spend a lot of time justifying my (admittedly, sometimes poor) life choices to, like, everybody I know over the age of 30, including but not limited to my grandparents, my former choir conductor, parents of friends, my 8th grade teacher, and, even though my parents are very supportive and never question what I am doing, I feel strangely compelled to constantly remind them that I am not wasting my life, so I talk loudly about All of These Conferences I Have Successfully Presented My Work At and also That Journal Article That I Will Theoretically Publish Some Day and also People I Know With Tenure-Track Jobs.

So anyhow, constantly having to justify my existence has naturally resulted in a minor existential crisis. The thing is, I know why I am in gradute school. I am getting a Ph.D. because, fuck y’all, I want to. I really like to research and I really like to write, and I really like to teach, and one day, UCLA came along and offered to give me money for doing those things, which is a pretty sweet deal. The question remains, however, of what I will do with myself when I am done. Ideally, I would like an academic job somewhere. Ideally. But we all know how totally crappy the academic job market ALWAYS is, so I am a realist, and I know that I might end up doing something else, and I am really totally ok with that, because I know that while academia is what I am doing right now, it isn’t what I have to do with the rest of my life because there are lots of other things I could do.

I know that.

But because everybody asks me what I am going to do when I’m done, and because I don’t really know what I’m going to do when I’m done, I was kind of freaking out. I was freaking out until I told Tanya about how I was freaking out, and then Tanya said the most useful thing anybody has ever said to me. She said that when I’m done I should just Do Whatever the Fuck I Want.

And it was like a light went on! I can do whatever the fuck I want! I have no children, I have no husband, I have no house, and while Some People might see that as a bad thing, it is actually totally awesome, because it means that whenever I want, I can just drop everything and Do Whatever the Fuck I Want with my life. It’s weird because sometimes I feel like I should be establishing some kind of nest somewhere, but I don’t really want to, because I have more important things to do.

So I am going to do it. I am going to pursue my dream of becoming a Great Woman of Letters (a job title that I have invented that means Whatever the Fuck I Want it To Mean).

First, though, I do have things to deal with right now, namely the problems of I Don’t Know Who My Dissertation Advisor Will Be And Maybe I Should Make Up My Mind About That, and also I Just Sent My First Ever Article Manuscript Out to a Journal and Am Consequently Filled With Self-Doubt, but I’m sure those things will resolve themselves somehow.

*What would Barbarella do?

Category Academe, Angst | Tags: | 4 Comments