It'll be a lot like this, but sexy.
(Every Monday at Tragically Hipster we'll feature a look at a band, performance, or vague musical concept, with an accompanying virtual mixtape for your listening pleasure. There's no need to thank us; it's just one more service we like to provide for you, our dedicated readers. Most of whom also write for this site.)
Our theme this week, for those who didn't watch nearly enough Married... With Children when they were growing up, is centered on joyous (or, as some of the songs would have us believe, not-so-joyous) nuptials. Not for any specific reason, mind. Not because congratulations are in order to anyone we know. Because that kind of nepotism clearly just isn't our style.
Here we have contributions from Old Blue Eyes himself; gypsy-punks from that far-distant land called "New York City"; a featured track from The Features; ideological attacks from socialist movements and Australian marsupials; a quiet interlude from a band whose sound mimics perfectly the feeling of spending a weekend in their namesake; perhaps the darkest song ever written for and subsequently used in a real wedding ceremony; a story about that jerk who has to ruin everything he's a part of; and then a nice outro from a band whose name suggests the underworld but whose sound is more reminiscent of a Broadway stage, circa 1938. (If those descriptions don't make much sense to you, perhaps you can take some comfort in the fact that we're not quite certain that we understand them either.)
1) "Love and Marriage" by Frank Sinatra
2) "American Wedding" by Gogol Bordello
3) "The Idea of Growing Old" by The Features
4) "My First Wedding" by The Wombats
5) "The Bachelor and the Bride" by The Decemberists
6) "Wedding Bell" by Beach House
7) "And No More Shall We Part" by Nick Cave
8) "A Punch Up at a Wedding" by Radiohead
9) "Births, Deaths & Marriages" by The Divine Comedy
Quick Notes on Select Songs:
* "The Idea of Growing Old" by The Features isn't directly marriage-related, but we trust that you'll follow our logic in that in so far as it talks at great length about growing old together, it implies marriage -- at least according to what Sinatra croons in "Love and Marriage".
* I love The Wombats. Their first album is the perfect distillation of what guitar-pop should be: catchy hooks, melancholic love-addled lyrics, and great sung-shouted choruses. The desperate repetition of "She's not that beautiful!" in "My First Wedding" manages to be at once humorous and a little sad, with a nice dollop of patheticness on the side. I like to think that Radiohead's "A Punch Up at a Wedding" tells the same story, but from the perspective of the bride and groom. (This is, needless to say, something of a large narrative stretch to make, and is perhaps better left ignored by those more sensible than I.)
* Though at first blush "And No More Shall We Part" sounds like a piss-take on wedding songs, replacing a sense of dread for the more common joy, it was in fact written and recorded by Cave on the occasion of his own wedding. And listened to in its entirety, it reveals itself to be a track of aching beauty, leading the listener through a little mini-tour of a relationship, beginning with cynical lonesomeness and climaxing in a beautiful choral arrangement which suggests a deeper sublimity is indeed in store for those who choose to devote their lives to one another.
LINKS:
Things That Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage Mixtape
Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years
Super Taranta
Exhibit A
A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation
Her Majesty
Devotion
No More Shall We Part
Hail to the Thief
Diva Lady (CD Single)
Photo by Armando BrownOCUBS' most recent show, "Once Upon a Corset: A Tale of Two Pasties," played last week to sold-out houses at Fullerton's Hunger Artists Theatre, the group's regular home. The crowd was astonishingly varied: a retired couple, a group of boisterous middle-aged women, kids in their early 20s. There were a few loudly appreciative young men, but they were a small minority. Just in case anyone got out of line, a refrigerator-sized bouncer who calls himself Joe Smash sat conspicuously near the edge of the stage, looking comically menacing.LINKS:
Those interested in skin and raw titillation would be well advised to go to the beach rather than an OCUBS show. There's no R-rated nudity. And for these women, the sexiness is just one part of a far more ambitious entertainment package that combines clever writing, verbal as well as physical comedy, and creative costumes...
"Humor is one of the top priorities," said Fox, who -- more modestly dressed and without her plummy British accent -- is known by day as Melanie Gable, an Idaho native and the group's founder. "That's not the case with a lot of other burlesque shows. I think the cleverness and the humor are what we have to offer above all."
This weekend sees the return of the Orange County Underground Burlesque Society, a secret coven of burlesque artisans who, despite their name, practice their craft in an above-ground well-lit performance space, readily accessible to the public.
