The Most Over-the-Top Song on My Media Player...

oh, I don't know, I have a lot of schmaltz on here...but this is a good candidate.

Ute Lemper performing this with some other schmo who almost sounds like Iggy Pop going straight...

The arrangement is terrible. The lyrics are hilarious (look at the source) but the arrangement is cheesy with just the worst guitars ever.

A gay friend (of course) who speaks German turned me on to Ute Lemper years ago. I bought it and it sat around. Then I just added it one day on a lark to my Media Player. I didn't really know the album.

Thanks Donovan. I can tolerate like two of these songs on this album!

Give me Annie Ross's version of "Punishing Kiss" anyday over Ute's.

Blame John Talbot (arranger). That's two terribly bad taste gestures by a Talbot in less than twenty-four hours. Although Madame Talbot selling "pickled punks" is far more egregious.

If your specialite as a singer is singing about getting repeatedly beat up and living in squalor, maybe you should treat yourself to the spa, buy some nice clothes and watch Little Shop of Horrors. See how funny Ellen Green (great performer!) looks saying "I'm sorry, Doctor! I'm sorry, Doctor!" Do you really want to romanticize abuse?

Maybe it's a German thing.

I don't get a lot of German things.

But it's not just that. Her voice is creepily stylized and drippingly overdramatic. I guess I just don't like her styling. But the arrangement on this one really blows.

I know she's probably proud to say "Nobody does beaten-down, old tired, over-troweled whore like me!

But wouldn't you rather have a bowling pin. Or summat.



TANGO BALLAD

(Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, arrangement John Talbot)



There was a time now very far away

When we set up together I and she

I got the brain and she supplied the breast

I saw her right and she looked after me

A way of life then if not quite the best


And when a client came I'd slide out of our bed

And treat him nice and go and have a drink instead

And when he paid up I'd address him "sir

Come any night you feel you fancy her"


That time's long past but what would I not give

To see that whore house where we used to live


That was the time now very far away

He was so sweet and bashed me where it hurt

And when the cash ran out the feathers really flew

He'd up and say I'm going to pawn your skirt

A skirt is nicer but no skirt will do


Just like his cheek he had me fairly stewing

I'd asked him straight to say what he thought he was doing

Then he'd lash out and knock me headlong down the stairs

I had the bruises off and on for years


That time's long past but what would I not give

To see that whore house where we used to live


That was the time now very far away

Not that the bloody times seem to have looked up

When afternoons were all I had for you

I told you she was generally booked up

The night's more normal in the day time will do


And when a client came he'd slide out of our bed

And treat him nice and go and have a drink instead

And when he paid up I'd address him "sir

Come any night you feel you fancy her"


That time's long past but what would we not give

To see that whore house where we used to live