Ok, I swear to god I am still blogging for realz.  This quarter is just eating my brain alive – my exams are coming up, which is, you know, stressful and stuff.  So I apologize for the lack of dress blogging as of late.

But anyhow!

The Satisfactions have proven a bit tough to track down.  By all accounts, they were actually The Blossoms, a girl group who didn’t have that many hits of their own, but who recorded backup vocals for Phil Spector-produced tracks by bands like the Ronnettes and the Crystals, and they worked with artists including Elvis, Sonny and Cher, and the Beach Boys.  Darlene Love, who’s now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, got her start with the Blossoms, and Gracia Nitzsche, who was married to superstar producer Jack Nitzsche, was also a member, and seems to have been the lead vocalist for this particular song.  There isn’t a lot of information, though, on which incarnation of the Blossoms made up the Satisfactions, and they don’t seem to have recorded much else under that name.

But this song . . . is amazing.  It’s a tragic, poignant narrative about a very difficult rite of passage that young women have gone through since the dawn of time:  breaking the news to dad that your boyfriend is a member of the Hell’s Angels.

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Things that make this awesome:

i) The growling vocal delivery on “Hell’s Angels,”

ii)  The ascending vocal line on the word “in” at the end of the verse:  it really goes much, much higher than is necessary, and I am totally ok with that,

iii)  So many things left unexplained!  Who is he on the run from?  Where did she find a member of the Hell’s Angels?  Is he actually a member of the Hell’s Angels, or is “one of hell’s angels” just a terrible metaphor for being a bad boy?  I have obviously decided that he is actually an outlaw biker, because that is the more exciting option.  And HOW AWKWRD will it be when he meets her dad?  “Oh, I hear you’re a member of a biker gang.  What are your intentions vis-a-vis my daughter?”  Thank god I’ve never had to tell my dad that my boyfriend is a member of the Hell’s Angels.  Thank god my boyfriend is a librarian instead.

But just remember:  if you’re the kind of teenage girl who’s going to run away with the Hell’s Angels, be sure to pick a skirt that will match nicely with your boyfriend’s leather jacket, which, if he’s any sort of gentleman, he would do well to lend you, because I hear it gets pretty breezy on the back of a motorcycle.

Vintage biker jacket from Jack Rabbit Vintage

Pink and black circle skirt from Stella Ranae Vintage