#lounge lizard

“Long after midtown office towers have been deserted for the day, as many New Yorkers snuggle into bed in their high-rise apartments, another world comes to life in the seedier districts of Lower Manhattan. From 11 pm to 5 am, Monday through Sunday, the young and the active pack into musty East Village basement bars, cavernous lofts in warehouse districts or short-lived speakeasies that, because they lack liquor licenses, tend to fall prey to police raids … this outlandish scene has its own celebrities (John Sex and Gracie Mansions), fashions (spike cuts and crew cuts) and rules for conduct (regulars rarely dance, even in clubs with constant rock music) … Best known for his straight-up hairdo and slimy nightclub act, John [Sex], a former male stripper, now supports himself singing hits like his R-rated version of “That’s Life”. “I’ve been a hustler, a hooker, a honcho, a hero, a dyke and a queen,” John sings to the classic Sinatra tune. Sex, who has been 24 for years, just landed a recording deal with Island Records. “I’m a nice Catholic boy from Long Island and everything my mother didn’t want me to be,” he admits.”

/ John Sex quoted in the article “Art After Midnight” by Michael Small in the 20 August 1984 issue of People magazine /

Tom Waits: Blue Valentine (1978)

Everyone here has “celebrated” an ANTI-Valentine’s Day or two, am I right?

One of my personal favorites was that time my friend Lisa and I, both newly single and simultaneously fed-up with and addicted to the “full-time job” that was dating in New York City, “protested” V-Day with a drunken dinner at The Palm, then took a town car to see Clutch at Brooklyn’s L’Amour!

(Funny, that naming coincidence never once crossed my mind until now.)

Well, this ain’t no Clutch LP, but I can’t think of a better anti-Valentine’s spin than Tom Waits’ Blue Valentine, even if few of its songs are actually preoccupied with today’s holiday, but rather entail a typically varied and immersive collection of sounds and stories.

Like a bebop musician covering a standard to ease inexperienced listeners into their albums, Waits opens Blue Valentine with a lushly orchestrated, non-ironic version of West Side Story’s “Somewhere,” in which his trademark, histrionic growls edge ever closer to Louis Armstrong.

But most of Blue Valentine shuffles down dark alleys and dank streets to dingy, smoky lounges where vivid low-life rhapsodies like “Romeo Is Bleeding,” “Wrong Side of the Road” and “Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard” can wrap their tawdry tales around well-worn jazz and blues frameworks.

One notable exception is “Red Shoes by the Drugstore,” where subtle guitar stabs, creeping bass, and bright electric piano flourishes (courtesy of a pseudonym-ed George Duke) circle tribal rhythms and preview Waits’ post-Beefheart 1980s work on Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, et al.

The unusually literal “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” is another favorite of Waits diehards (if not one of mine) and, at eight-minutes-long and change, “$29.00” (yet another song about turning tricks) will cost you ... oh, about 17¢ per second -- a bargain for your “alligator purse.”

Finally, Tom drops more autobiographical ephemera into “Kentucky Avenue” than Verbal did into The Usual Suspects, and then it’s onto the title track, which satisfies today’s anti-Valentine’s Day requirements with a full complement of familiar break-up emotions: the bitterness, confusion, remorse, and guilt:

“She sends me blue valentines, all the way from Philadelphia; To mark the anniversary of someone that I used to be. And it feels just like a warrant is out for my arrest.

She sends me blue valentines, though I try to remain at large. They're insisting that our love must have a eulogy.

Instead, these blue valentines to remind me of my cardinal sin. I can never wash the guilt or get these bloodstains off my hands. And it takes a lot of whiskey to make these nightmares go away. And I cut my bleedin’ heart out every night ... And I'm going to die a little more on each St. Valentine’s Day.”

Need I say more? 

Hope you enjoy Valentine’s Day, whether it’s blue or another emotional shade. 

“Raffish, joli laid French balladeer revered by kitsch-loving Rock Snobs for his sleazy-listening pop of the 1960s and 70s. Despite hangdog looks and an inability to actually sing, Gainsbourg embodied the pungent flower of French manhood in all its Gallic glory, duetting and getting busy with such hotties of the period as Brigitte Bardot and English dolly bird Jane Birkin …”

/ From Serge Gainsbourg’s entry in "The Rock Snob’s Dictionary" in the November 2000 issue of Vanity Fair magazine /