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.

The Satisfactions – Daddy You’ve Just Gotta Let Him In

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

Anyhow, I took a bit of a holiday break from this blog, mostly because not much goes on in Portelginland that’s worth blogging about.  I missed my semi-annual letter to Santa post, but rest assured, there’s a thank you letter to Santa in the pipeline, because this year I managed to actually get everything I could ever have wanted for Christmas (except for a unicorn, but what else is new?)

ANYHOW, I really want to jump right back into my regularly scheduled musical dress blogging, because somebody once told me that the only way I would ever become a CBC radio celebrity was if I actually blogged regularly and kept this project going.  So I am going to start off the new year on a timely and surreal note, with a series of disconnected meditations on Lady Gaga.

i) I first heard of Lady Gaga from my students last year in the LGBT Pop class.  I got a dozen papers about Poker Face (typical thesis statement:  “This song is kinda gay, or something,” only less grammatically correct).  And so I went onto The Internets to find out what the fuss was about, and watched the video and was completely baffled because the song was sort of weirdly unpleasant and the video was kind of ugly.  So I immediately dismissed Ms. Gaga as alluring, but not my cup of tea UNTIL ONE DAY when I was poking around her youtube channel and found a video transmission wherein she proclaimed that she was from outer space and was going to save the world with fashion and glamour and sequins, or something.  I can’t actually find the clip in question anymore.  But anyhow, that was the moment when I realized that she was a hilarious genius, and from that moment on, my fascination with Ms. Gaga has bordered on obsession.

ii)  The thing I like the  most about the Bad Romance video (apart from all of that Alexander McQueen gloriousness) is when Gaga and her retinue of zombie dancers flail awkardly around the dance floor.  I like it because that is basically how I dance, so seeing my particular dance aesthetic thus represented makes me feel less like an uncoordinated awkward person, and more like someone who could potentially appear in a music video.

iii)  We are reaching a point where the avant-garde and the massively popular are becoming increasingly indistinguishable.  I like this a lot.

iv)  What do you think of the vocal stutter that appears in so many Gaga songs?  It’s all over the place.  This is actually a serious question and I’m wondering what people think.  I just submitted a Gaga abstract to a conference, and in the paper I will theoretically write, I want to talk about that stutter.  Sometimes it’s, liked, auto-tuned in or something and sometimes it’s, you know, the pa-pa-pa-poker face thing.  I have my own theory, but I’d like to hear what others think.

v)  How ridiculous would she have to get before she got too ridiculous?  I am just so happy that there is a pop culture phenomenon out there right now that is so completely absurd and challenging, and yet I heard her playing on the radio at Tim Hortons in Parry Sound, Ontario, and she is my 13 year old cousin’s favorite singer.

vi)  Dear Lady Gaga:  ”Funny” is not an appropriate rhyme for “funny,” as heard in the lines “Met somebody cute and funny, got each other and that’s funny,” but I will forgive you for it just this once because I like your style.  (My illustrious roommate has suggested “Got each other, look a bunny” as an alternative.  You should considering hiring him for your production team.)

vii)  The Fame Monster, with its eight nuggets of sparkling awesome, arguably works better as an album than The Fame, which could have been edited down a little because it sometimes gets a bit redundant (much like certain David Lynch films).

viii)  Thank you, Lady Gaga, for introducing the phrase “paper gangster” into my vocabulary.  I don’t want one of those either.

xi) There is a lot of rather pronounced idiocy in Lady Gaga’s oeuvre, but it is very self-aware idiocy.  For instance, the song “Boys, Boys, Boys” (sample lyric:  ”Baby is a bad boy with some retro sneakers, let’s go see The Killers and make out in the bleachers”) is profoundly stupid.  But you can’t get that stupid without knowing you’re being that stupid, right?  So actually it’s brilliant.  That is my official scholarly opinion.

x) Once upon a time, in a Women’s Studies class way back in my undergrad, it was Madonna day.  We were talking about La Isla Bonita.  The prof suggested that La Isla Bonita would never fly anymore (this would have been in about 2003 or 2004) because we had just experienced that surge in Latin popstars (think:  Ricky Martin, J-Lo, Shakira) who were doing it for realz and not just appropriating (and I would be interested in debating this particular theory as it is interesting but I can see some holes in it.  But that is another blog post for another time).  Now, it is 2010, and we have Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,” which opens with a spoken monologue in fake Spanish accent and has lyrics that are mostly nonsense with the names Alejandro, Fernando, and Roberto repeated ad nauseum, possibly just to sound fake Spanishy?  Difficult to say.  Is pop music cyclical, and have we come full circle, back to La Isla Bonita?  Difficult to say.  Is it politically incorrect that I really love both songs?  Probably.

xi)  Here is a picture of me in a silver and blue lame space dress, which I inherited from a drag performer, and which is obviously what I would wear if I was ever to meet Lady Gaga.  I am standing in front of a rare space ficus.  This is the one and only time I will be featuring myself as a model on this blog, and it’s only because I’m too tired to care, so eat it up, kids:

I was actually really uneasy when the concert started because I just wasn’t sure of what to make of the crowd.  I mean, of course there was the usual contingent of punky-queery-feministy-fatty-looking types (my people, my friends, I salute you!) but there also seemed to be a weirdly large proportion of folks who I just don’t think of as The Gossip’s audience – middle-aged dude with scrawny ingenue-types standing in front of me, I am thinking of you – and I was worried that The Gossip, who are One of My Bands That I Don’t Want Jerks to Steal had been co-opted by people who wouldn’t actually get it.  And yes, I know that this is kind of a stupid, elitist reaction, the kind of reaction that I am going to be critiquing two paragraphs down, but I am merely reporting what my gut was telling me.  But anyhow, I didn’t actually have to worry, because once the band started, the atmosphere in the crowd was just so positive and ecstatic that it seemed like everybody got it.  It’s a testament to what an amazing band The Gossip are that they were able to really mobilize such a seemingly disparate crowd.  And I loved that Beth Ditto seemed to be speaking to everybody in the room on a certain level, but also gave some totally rad Riot Grrl shoutouts (a mashup of Listen Up! and Bikini Kill’s I Hate Danger, and a story about touring with Sleater-Kinney) that made me (and probably lots of old fans) feel all special and stuff.

And musically, The Gossip were so on top of their game.  Beth claimed to have a sore throat, but she sang right through it in a way that I’d never heard anyone manage before, and let me tell you: going through four years of opera school, I heard a lot of people sing through a lot of sore throats.  The instrumentals were sparkling and clear, and it was just an amazing, fun performance.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this most recent Gossip album lately, and, in particular, about how it’s been received.  Reviews have been kind of all over the map, but a lot of them have been less than favorable.  There’s a common narrative of underground-band-makes-good-sells-out that keeps surfacing, usually not in explicit terms, but through statements about the album being “too polished,” “too much like every other dance rock band,”  and even too “dippy.”  There is, of course, a very strongly gendered discourse at the heart of these kinds of arguments; a discourse that positions pop as effeminate and commercial, and rock and punk as masculine and subversive.  I find it pretty compelling, then, that The Gossip have titled the album Music for Men, which, in this context, reads as an ironic jab at the precisely the kinds of rock dudes who are likely to dismiss the album for its (fabulous) disco pedigree.  I feel like The Gossip knew what people would say about this record, and they are laughing at the people who are saying it.

My favorite track on Music for Men is Four Letter Word.  It’s dark, it’s sparse, it’s minimalistic, and the characteristic Ditto howl is really in top form.  And it’s just so broody.  God bless the dark and broody.

11 Four Letter Word

And, oh, wouldn’t I love the chance to be Beth Ditto’s stylist.  Truth be told, her particular aesthetic is not necessarily for me – I could never pull off the neo-new wave look that she does, and my own sartorial inclinations lie a little earlier, mostly between 1957 and 1966 – but, damn, she’s exciting to look at.  So, for a dark, minimalistic, punk rock disco track, I would strongly advocate for this dress, which is not vintage, but is vintagey-looking, and I think is probably located smack in the center of the Venn diagram of my fashion sense and Beth Ditto’s fashion sense, and which I secretly covet:

And it would have to be paired with the John Fluevog bondgirls*, which I also secretly covet:

*Yes, I am recommending yet another pair of Fluevogs.  Because, honestly, are there other shoes in the world?  Ones worth wearing, I mean.

The First Cut is the Deepest – P.P. Arnold

So, this is P.P. Arnold, who released the first recording of The First Cut is the Deepest (written, of course by Mr. Cat Stevens) and holy fuck, it puts everyone else who has ever recorded this to shame (not naming names, or anything).  Like, honestly, I had always thought that this song was pretty insipid and annoying until I heard this version of it.

P.P. Arnold, who I’m really shamefully unfamiliar with at this point, was an Ikette (yay!) and had a fairly substantial career in Britain, by all accounts.  Hung out with the Rolling Stones and Bowie and stuff.  If she continues to be this awesome, she might just find her way into a certain dissertation that is currently in the process of being plotted.

So, this song is in the Girl Group hatbox, which I’ve owned for a couple of months, but it is fairly characteristic of my listening habits that I didn’t find this song until today.  I tend to fixate on songs and listen to them on repeat for days at at time, to the exclusion of all others, and I’ve sort of been haphazardly meandering through the hat box  in that way.  But I think this track is just SO GOOD.  So good.  For so many reasons.

First of all, P.P.’s vocals.  They’re kind of imperfect, no?  She sounds a bit tired, there’s a lot of breath around her voice in some places, she drops final consonants all over the place.  At the same time, she’s got this timbral quality that sounds kind of young.  For me, anyhow, the effect is one of premature world-weariness, which I’m in love with.  And the opening verse over that ringing arpeggiated accompaniment is so gorgeous – I love how she plays with the timing in the vocal line.

And also the orchestration!  It is like a smorgasbord  of awesome.  Like, is that a celesta? (NO IT IS NOT:  my roommate has pointed out that it is obviously just a harp, which is of course true.  Point of fact:  given the choice, I will assume that any given sound is being made by the least likely musical instrument out of all available options because I enjoy complicating things.  Dear hopes of a future career in musicology:  I’m sorry.)  And also there is brass.  And strings.  And an amazing bass line.  And ghostly, barely there backup singers.

So, ok, I will stop totally geeking out over how happy this song makes me now.  Inspired by this (really great) live performance, in which P.P. Arnold is wearing a go-go dress and what appears to be a giant tie, here is what you should wear when you listen to this:

Cuter and more practical than an actual giant tie, from Light Years Vintage.

And this dress would look so good with these amazing, amazing boots!  Amazing!

from Nineteen Vintage.

Carole King, Crying in the Rain:

Crying in the Rain

I like the Carole King version bestest.  She wrote it, obviously, because she is such an awesome lady.  The Everly Brothers version is more widely known, and is also lovely:

And then there’s the A-Ha cover. Also really really good:

I don’t really have anything intelligent to say about this song, other than I love it.  I love it because it is melodramatic (“fuck you, you’ll never see me cry, I’m going to cry in the RAIN”) and sad but sounds so disarmingly cute if you’re not paying attention to the words.

So, raincoats. Raincoats, raincoats, raincoats. My favorite raincoat is my blue, polkadotted, double-breasted, vinyl-tablecloth-material raincoat that I wear at music festivals in the rain, thereby contributing to my reputation as the Least Practically Dressed Lady at the Folk Festival. Here are some other awesome raincoats:

From Catbooks1940s.  Absolutely in love with the full skirt!

From The Dusty Dog Vintage.  I love:  This color of green, double breastedness, belts.

From a la garconniere.  Adorable and wonderful!

And HOW CHARMING ARE THESE BOOTS?  Only the most charming, ever.  You will be SINGING in the rain with these boots on.  (I was thinking very hard about whether or not to include that very bad joke, and decided that yes, indeed, I would go there.)

from Modcloth.

Leslie Hall is making fun of crafting BECAUSE CRAFTING IS SO AWESOME and she knows it.  I am also currently fairly obsessed with Blame it On the Booty, which I have been watching approximately 10.5 times a day.  There’s a pretty hilarious version of fat acceptance going on here that I really delight in:

So, someone who saw this link says to me the other day, “tell me about Blame it On the Booty.”  And, like, please, try to explain Leslie Hall to anybody. It’s inexplicable. But because I sit around and think about these things all the time, I did actually have something to say.  Leslie Hall, I have decided, is performing a particular aesthetic that I have termed the Hipster Grotesque.  That is to say, she tries to be as hideous as possible for the purpose of being somehow ironic.  What’s interesting about Leslie Hall, is that when she does this I LOVE IT, whereas when I see hipsters in Silver Lake in bad 80s getup it makes me want to give them all makeovers and attitude adjustments.  And I think it’s because Leslie Hall clearly knows how ridiculous she is being, and it’s that self-awareness combined with this sort of earnest joy that make what she does so appealing to me.  It’s like she’s reclaimed irony for the overly self-aware fat girl set.  (Look for my forthcoming Exciting Academic Paper, “Wearing Gold Spandex Pants I Made a Hip Hop Album: On Leslie Hall and the Hipster Grotesque,” coming soon to a musicology seminar near you.)

Also there’s something to be said about the fact that she calls herself a rapper.  There’s some kind of critique of whiteness at work here too, but I need to think about it some more before I can come up with some sort of more cogent theory.  But I think you can draw parallels to things like the Flight of the Conchords doing a Biz Markie impersonation – I’m interested in what it is that makes it so funny when white people who are impossibly hip pretend to be impossibly square and do hip hop.

ANYHOW, here is a really amazing song about Back to the Future!

Leslie and the Lys – Back to the Future

If I were to, say, “do some musicology” on this song, I might talk about how Leslie has a pretty irregular usage of rhythm here, and perhaps speculate that the way timing works in this song is a reflection of how time travel technology destabilizes the idea of time as we know it, while the driving rhythms of the chorus represent the act of hurtling through time and space in a Delorean.  (FUN UNRELATED FACT:  For a very long time I thought the Pixies’ “My Velouria” was actually called “My Delorean.”)

And while I really wholeheartedly support Leslie’s decision to live her life in spandex, I know it’s not for everybody, and is not necessarily a life choice that I would make.  But I think this glorious hot pink thing is perfect for this song, because it’s ideal attire when you go back to 1955 to hang out with mom and dad at prom, and also I’m pretty sure Leslie Hall would really dig the colour, not to mention the sequins:

From Calendar Girl Vintage

Only Loved At Night is a completely heartbreaking song, and I love it.  The odd, clockwork percussion and chiming guitars demarcate time in a very haunting way, and the vaguely impressionistic words paint a very tragic portrait.  The Raincoats have two very distinct songwriting voices working in the band – Gina Birch‘s songs provide quirky, awkward, lovely, sparkly and insightful wit; while Ana Da Silva’s songs often seem darker and more ellusive – and this song is classic Da Silva.  Here are the Raincoats in 1981:

And I can’t find a dress for the Raincoats.  I mean, I can, in my head.  I know exactly what it would look like.  That’s kind of how I work – I usually have a pretty clear mental image of what dress will go with each song, or sometimes I work backwards if I’ve seen a dress I like and want a song to match it, but I can’t come up with anything this time out.  And the dress I can envision for this song is kind of impossible, it’s like the platonic ideal of dresses that does not exist in the real world.  Because it would have to be sort of punky because that’s where the Raincoats came from, but it could never be all 1977 black and white and safety pins and torn fishnets because that just wouldn’t work.  It would have to be some kind of strange hybrid of Vivienne Westwood meets wild, spinster woman living in a cabin in the woods, who knows lots of herbal remedies and/or magic spells and would take me under her wing and teach me how to be unafraid.  This is how I picture a Raincoats dress, and this picture doesn’t translate to any kind of tangible reality.  So, dear readers, if you happen to see this dress around somewhere, do let me know.

Viv Albertine, late of The Slits, also played last night, and she was just lovely, too.  Again, there was that charming combination of earnestness and poetry and creatively unskilled musicianship about her that tends to be associated with that particular moment in girly punk rock in the UK.  And she told a hilarious story about how Vivienne Westwood wouldn’t let anybody wear brown because brown is too wishy-washy or something and punk rock had to be all black and white and contrasts.  There is no brown in punk rock.  The best moment in stage banter history came when she referred to 1970s British punk as “oh, the bleakness.”  And of course, some dude behind me was complaining that her songs weren’t any good, but of course he didn’t think they were any good.  Bands like the Slits and the Raincoats exist so outside of the criteria of what punk rock dudebro fandom would consider “good” that they are speaking an almost entirely different language.  And it’s so important for me that someone like Viv Albertine is still singing.  It’s really rare for me to find artists who can articulate  a perspective so close to my own in such a clear, poetic way, and I hope to god Viv and Ana and Gina live forever and keep making noise.

But suffice it to say that I have been feeling dispirited.  And when I feel dispirited, I get homesick and spend a lot of time sitting around with a bottle of wine and my Portable Dorothy Parker, which clearly is a recipe for a lot of bitter laughter, and really establishes a set of conditions under which nobody should be allowed to blog, and so I didn’t, lest I tell the internet anything regrettable.

So in honor of my not-very-good week, here’s a beautiful, sad song about being mopey and Canadian in Los Angeles. How about that dreary descending bass line, kids?  I tell ya.

The Lisa Marr Experiment, In California:

03 In California

And Neko Case covers it, in gloriously navel-gazing fashion:

Neko Case, In California

11 In California

And because I miss Canada, by association I miss warm cozy winter coats.   I have a really impressive collection of vintage winter coats that languish in my parents basement.  The weirdest thing about living in California has been the way the seasons, or lack thereof, completely screws up my sense of time.  This is not a complaint about the weather, because I hate snow.  But the constancy of the seasons makes it hard for me to really comprehend what time of year it actually is – like, my parents told me they’re calling for snow at home next week, while, just over a week ago, it was so hot here that I went outside and thought I was going to have a heart attack.  I find it really difficult to understand that it is, in fact, October.  But I think what really makes my grasp on temporality so elusive is the light – while the temperature does remain fairly consistent here, apart from the almost unbearable heat for a few weeks in the summer, and the one or two weeks (typically coinciding with people visiting me from Canada) when it rains steadily in December or January, it’s the way the daylight remains constant and unchanging that is strangely disconcerting.  David Lynch said something once about how the light in Los Angeles is what makes the city so perfect for filmmaking, and it’s true.  I even maintain that pictures of me that were taken in Los Angeles look significantly better than pictures taken elsewhere.  But another thing the light is good for is making me forget what month it is.  And I love the way the sunlight looks on the hills when I’m walking up to Sunset to catch the bus, but that’s why I still rejoice on those rare overcast days.

So instead of dresses, today, some winter coats, that would never do in Los Angeles sunshine, for when you’re in California, dreaming of snow:

The most glorious coat that ever was, from A-hem Vintage on Etsy.

Also gorgeous, also from A-Hem Vintage.

And because the coat I miss most of all, is my floor-length, blue velvet coat with purple buttons, two gorgeous blue coats:

From Cheesecake Vintage,

Most amazing collar detail!  from SkivvyLuLu Vintage.

It was going to be beautiful.  The exciting and intellectually stimulating discussion I had planned on the red scare was going so well, and my students seemed honestly excited and engaged, and this was all leading up to what I had pegged as a grand finale:  we would watch the clip from Dr. Strangelove about the commie plot to flouridate water, and everyone would laugh and it would crystallize everything we’d been talking about and we would have a really fun time talking about nefarious communist plots before I sent them home for  the weekend.  Instead, they watched the Strangelove clip and promptly shut down.  They sat there.  They stared at me.  Nobody said anything.  The half hour of really great discussion that had preceded this silence was but a distant memory, vanished, like the fart of a hummingbird on a windy day.  I vamped for a few minutes.  I dismissed them five minutes early.

So, dear students who do not understand why Dr. Strangelove is so funny, I dedicate this post to you.  Most importantly, though, I dedicate this song, sung by Miss Vera Lynn, the Forces’ Sweetheart, and set to a delightful scenic montage by Mr. Stanley Kubrick,  to you:

Fun fact that I learned from wikipedia that is therefore undeniably true:  The BBC included this song in a package of recordings that they made especially for listening to in your fallout shelter, to keep those nuclear winter blues away.

And maybe next time we have a class about communists, I will wear this dress to really get the point about the red scare across:  for it is certainly red, and at a mere $450, the price manages to be pretty scary:

(from Timeless Vixen Vintage)

Or there’s always this red atomic number; truly a McCarthian delight:

(from Sydney’s Vintage.   Also, you should totally click through on the above photo and check out the back of that dress!)

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.

The Ikettes – I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song)

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.

The Shangri-Las – I’m Blue (The Gong Gong Song)

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.