TOTIE FIELDS 1960s Standup Comedy Act

The great and sadly missed Totie Fields performs her standup comedy routine in this 1960s clip.

"You're gonna see lips, like you've never seen before,
You're gonna see hips, you'll remember ever more,
You're gonna see passion, that'll set your pulses on fire!
You're gonna see fashion, not many women acquire.
And when you put them all together, what do you see?
Fascinating, Intoxicating, Scintillating, Captivating - stunning me!

You're gonna see eyes; like you've never dreamed before,
You're gonna see thighs, that could start another war —
And when you put them all together, what do you see?
You see adorable, wonderful, beautiful, sexy me!"
— (excerpt) the morbidly obese Totie Fields, lyrics from "Stunning Me" original music
with orchestra for Las Vegas revue ca. 1971

Totie Fields (May 7, 1930 — August 2, 1978) American comedian, singer and actress. Fields was famous for her self-effacing humor, ad-lib wit and ebullient good humor. All her life she battled a weight problem, (she weighed 200 pounds and was only five feet tall) but instead of letting it get her down incorporated it into her act with great results. She never used obscene humor but her use of double entendre was extensive. In addition to stand up comedy, she was a talented singer who could tackle serious ballads but mostly enjoyed regaling audiences with humorous songs written for her performances.

"Shirley Temple had charisma as a child. But it cleared up as an adult."
— Totie Fields

Sophie Feldman was born in Hartford, Connecticut. The family moved to Boston not long after and she started singing in clubs in Boston at a very young age. She began a serious career in comedy in the famous "Borscht Belt" in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. Their were nightly shows at these resorts, which catered to a predominately Jewish clientele.
She was brought to the attention of Ed Sullivan show after he saw her performing in a New York City night club. She was a hit and went on to appear on Sullivan's show forty times. When not appearing in Las Vegas or New York night clubs, she appeared on television talk shows, including the Mike Douglas Show and frequented the Merv Griffin show.

The versatile Fields wrote a funny diet book entitled "I Think I'll Start on Monday: The Official 8 1/2 oz. Mashed Potato Diet (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1972).

"Do you like to shop? Ya like to bargain? I do. The other day I bought 20 pairs of panty hose for fifteen cents a piece. They had the seam running up the front. What can you do? I figured I'd learn to walk backwards."
— Totie Fields

One of the Worlds's Most Important 6-sec Drum Loop

This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.

Atlanta Cable Access

So far I all know is that this is a show coming out of Atlanta, GA.

"I Hate Spring" - Beatrice Lillie

music video for beatrice lillie song, "i hate spring," but with cheesy filters added to make it look old.

Xavier at Paddles

This post is for my friend Tennessee. About 20 years ago Nelson taped Xavier(Tenn's then boyfriend) at Paddles. Xavier died of AIDS many years ago, but now, thanks to technology, he's momentarily back in your life, Tenn.

CHERRY BOMB - Jayne County

ayne County, the Queen of Punk Rock, performs her version of the Runaway's hit song "Cherry Bomb" on THE AMERICAN MUSIC SHOW (Atlanta, GA).

Visit Jayne's website at:
www.jaynecounty.com

Dear Robert,

As you know, i'm still balls-deep in Leigh Bowery, the Australian born Performance Artist who passed away some time ago [...so that Boy George could rise again like some Boweryesque dragged-up Phoenix from the ashes]. I have accumulated this wealth of research material on the poor man, funded by the odd generous scholarship programme, and when I steal (literally, s.t.e.a.l.) some time, I write some more here and there.

Which is actually how you and I met. I got in contact with Dick Richards [Hi Dick!] at Funtone about some Bowery footage, and he passed me on to his talented s(l)av(e)ant - you!

At this stage, I fear that your book on Miss Holly WoodLawn [Hi Holly!] will come out well before mine, and that the incredible Mr. Jeffries in NY [Hi Joe!] will beat both of us by several prolonged genocides with his book on Ethyl Eichelberger.

And then again, Lady Bunny has trumped us all by writing dozens of books in single posts on her blog. Is that 'woman' painting on microchips in lieu of 'wet look' nail polish? Is she half woman half computer now? Where does she find the time? I'm gobsmacked (i know) that the Seniors' Pension over there -in the US- caters for such a life of luxury. Over here -in Australia (i know)- they shuttle the elderly out to hovels that they call 'homes', sell off all their wigs [blatantly not true], and use the poor old dears only as laminated cardboard cut-outs for cheap Current Affairs style shows that make all their money exploiting the elderly, by making shows about how the elderly are being exploited [Hi Mom!]!

But anyway, I digress, here is a little snippet that some lovely person has put up on mytube. Bananarama (i know) had an MTV stylee television show (i know) that played all the 'hot' new music video clips. It's about as bad as you might expect it to be, but this episode had Leigh on as their guest. And it's worth watching just to see how - in your typical freak-domination style 'there's-a-camera-i-am-the-king-of-the-world' move - he shifts from being guest to host in no time at all.

I'll warn you now that the show is rapeful, but it's the kind of historical gem that people like us go spastic over (i know - i used the word spastic, i know).

All He Needs

Dear Robert,

Something from Australia might wash today's everything down quite nicely, don't you think? [What do I care Adam! I'm off mincing down Daytona Beach making sand-castles, and eating soft-shell crabs!]. I believe I sent you a copy of this some time ago - it's very very sweet and very very well made.

'All He Needs' was built by Nicolas Randall (Aust/UK) and the family at Family. It's basically a queer parody of the original Air video 'All I Need' (circa 1998). Air were a French band [Please Note: Americans may need to reprogram their computers to get access to information about things from France, this may be difficult, but it's worth trying to circumvent the cultural firewall if you can.] According to the good people at Family, the film "...won the insight 300 seconds film competition" and has "...toured the world with RESFEST".

Not bad eh?

Before I walked around screaming, "You fat bitch! You stole my wallet!" at random strangers, I walked around singing the lyrics to Tina Turner's 'Private Dancer' (which was stuck in my head for an eviscerating six months). But before that, I walked around saying: "You're so rad," to which my friends would reply, "Don't make me cry, because i'm totally going to cry right now." So I owe a big debt to this short film.

FYI - I currently walk around inserting Coco Peru's line from 'Trick' into the middle of every imaginary conversation I have on my phone when i manage to convince myself that plebs are listening in, which goes something like...."So there I was lying naked on my bed with an eyeful of cum, and I thought to myself...oooh, oh NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

I am available for casting in student films.

Will see your Tally Brown and raise you a Nomi

Dear Robert,

The Tally Brown you reposted is incredible. Sadly, the rest of her work seems to have been removed from youtube, which I'm assuming is because of copyright infringement (they were covers). If anyone can feed us some more Tally Brown, please do - because people want/need to see it.

Tangentally, it kind of brings up a MASSIVE issue for the visibility of a large proportion of the work that we both deal with: Copyright Vs. Drag. Let's flag that discussion for another day - but if anyone wants to weigh in, please let me know.

Meanwhile, I'm going to post one of my favourite cathartic pieces, which i think is on par with Tally: Klaus Nomi's 'Cold Song'. No introduction is necessary - this piece just makes my head explode, in all the right directions.

Adam

Krisma

Dear Robert,

I've been lax.

But I've been loving Krisma (nee Chrisma), the Italo New Wave vehicle founded by Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser in the mid to late seventies - I wonder why nobody told me about them? People are awful, really awful. It took a thirty year old faggot practically shoving this in my face to wake me up and turn me on to these guys; when, quite frankly, I should have had this music blaring from the speakers that could have been custom-built into my mother's thighs at age Zero.

Is it simply the youth not listening, or the old not wailing long and hard enough? Or do i not want to reduce these big debates we have about this generation gap to such facile questions. Let's do what adults do and conduct a poll sometime. Or maybe we could have some kind of old-infomed fag/young-hungry fag "father-son" stylee camp?

But back to Krisma, they're like an early Italian Fischerspoon-a-la-la, but with a luscious lady savvier than Anna Matronic, and with better face furniture and follicles than something Viktor & Rolf may or may not have 'borrowed'. And they sound like Amanda Lear cross-bred with substance. Which is biologically impossible... because substance is barren.

'Black Silk Stocking' - is revoltingly good. And this is a nice little introduction to their work (for the youth)/a nice reminder of their highlights (for the informed).

My question is: How influential were they? There's so many tropes here that appear all through the work of many other interesting artists fusing Pop and Art? Can someone illuminate me, please? Wikipedia is a dirty filthy animal chockfull of the happiest, prettiest spin in the world.