Don't Mutilate My Mink

Tonight at dinner with my writing group at the Baghdad Café (which we sometimes dub the Algonquin West), I was interested to learn the varying level of awareness (in part due to Saturday’s post here) about Neil Hannon and the Divine Comedy. Some had gone so far as to explore his YouTube videos, such as the stunning "Sunrise", the finale of his Fin de Siecle, the sort of song U2 might cut if they were…oh, I’ll hold off on my U2 barbs for now.

Based on the few comments and many more emails I’ve received as a result of that post, it seems that all my female friends are rushing and gushing to buy CDs and my gay male friends think I’ve lost my sanity. They are even more brutal when I pull out my (I have to admit completist) Mark Eitzel/American Music Club. Sorry, Kylie, Madonna and Whitney and their ilk just don’t sing to my heart or pocket book.

Now, don’t think I don’t have my female musical muses that range from Vashti Bunyan, Nina Simone, Francoise Hardy, Nico and, on the right day, Ute Lemper. The recent increased interest in Divine Comedy made me pull out her release Punishing Kiss which was sort of a cross over disc, and I saw her at Davies Hall during that tour. Half the crowd walked out around the time her piercing voice sand Nick Cave’s "Little Water Song," a really brilliant murder ballad sung from the perspective of a woman that was being drowned by her lover. I was going through a particularly nasty break up then, and it spoke to me a little to closely – the sentiment was that “you may be killing me, but you’ll never be able to be inside my head or soul.” Listening to Punishing Kiss 3/4ths of a decade later, it sounds comfortably distant and 50% brilliant and 50% goofy and click ahead to the next track. Ute could potentially be in my top 10 list because she is willing to belt out so harshly, almost a Weimar Joplin at times, but then she will go into these over affected, Al Jarreau on crack mannerisms. But she can be hilarious at times, and I will never forget her self-introduction of “I come from Berlin, that little scar of a city on the arse of Europe.” And revisiting Scott Walker's epic 11 minute "Scope J" in a post-9/11, post-Tilt world gives it much greater resonance.

Thinking of women that I’d add to that list, I was reminded of Cristina Monet or just Cristina who was the grande dame of No Wave and the Norma Shearer of Ze Records back in the early 1980s. Well, I’ll be darned, she is the first beloved artist that actually stumped YouTube. I have her two complete LPs from Cristina (1980) and Sleep It Off (1984) that opened with the killer track "Don't Mutilate My Mink", and I think her version of "Ballad of Immoral Earning" is my all time favorite. Those tunes, especially on the latter LP, are very much where I was at that time -- all downtown angst channeling Weimar energy. She had one of the best Christmas tunes of all time, "Things Fall Apart" as well as a mean, snarling cover of "Is That All There Is?" that pre-dated P.J. Harvey's version by a decade or so. But it does not seem that there will be a behind the music until I become CEO of VH1. At least there is a fansite out there for Cristina. If you really love me, I'll burn you a CD of my favorite of her tracks

In the meantime, I am really wanting to take a blogger/youtube, et. al. holiday this Memorial Weekend. Time for Proust, friends, haute Japanese cuisine, gardening and exercise. Oh, and brushing up the Castilian and Catalan.