Here at 1537, you know how we pride ourselves* on being dignified cultured sorts and a lone voice in support of high cultural pursuits in a dumbed down world. On a weekend I may well be found at the opera, catching a modernist dance troop perhaps, or attending a challenging art installation in a groovy loft, that is to say when I’m not to be found at home reading Ronsard and Proust in the original French. It’s not all balancing bits of Lego on top of LP covers you know.
Well imagine my surprise when I somehow inexplicably blacked-out at lunchtime and ended up an hour later back at my desk clutching a copy of Blood Orgy Of The Leather Girls, a soundtrack album to the film of the same name on Pimp Records. My cultural radar having been tweaked somehow by the four be-weaponed chicks standing atop the body of a supine dude on the cover, the lady on the left with the clear plastic pasties and Hitler moustache being a particular draw for me. The soundtrack itself has surf-punk, hillbilly and other garage-style delights from the likes of the Mummies, The Highlander 11’s**, The Pussyhounds, Three Stoned Men, the Troglodykes and the Phantom Surfers. The LP cover features nudity, spoof photos and swear words. I couldn’t leave it there, no-one else in Liverpool would love and cherish this LP the way it needs to be loved and cherished, well not unless John Waters happened to breeze into town.
After a bit of internet research I found it is a real film, made by a fictional director (it’s a long story) about four women going on a violent rampage against men after one of their number was assaulted. So sort of a bit Russ Meyer then, although with far smaller kazongas and less titillation intended. But how could I resist the soundtrack to a film advertised thus?
Assorted dissections, dismemberments, castrations, disembowelments, knife fights, cold-blooded shootings, drug hallucinations … and philosophical digressions.
As a big fan of philosophical digressions, particularly when coupled with near, or actual nudity and violence – then count me in!
I should explain, via a chum I discovered Liverpool’s best new second-hand record shop today Dig Vinyl, which carries a scarily wallet-lighteningly great range of stuff I want. I also snared a copy of the Led Zeppelin I 3LP remaster, which is the only one I want because of the live 1969 Paris gig, and my first ever copy of Deep Purple Made In Japan, which is a Canadian import with a little maple leaf stamped on the back cover.
Oh dear, so that’s sort of 6LPs really in one lunch hour; damn you Dig Vinyl! I was trying to be good this month!
I also had the 12″ of Mark Ronson Uptown Funk waiting for me when I came home – what a phenomenally great track, by far my favourite tune so far this year, my daughter and I have just been perfecting our routine to it. Look out world!
537 Down (still)
*please note egomaniacal use of word ‘we’ and worrying tendency towards talking about self in third person; not to mention somewhat alarming pronoun shifts.
**whom we are assured are ‘San Francisco’s leading Scottish hillbilly band’, they’re definitely in my top three.