My Human Gets me Blues

A song on the album Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart (also known as Don Van Vliet) and His Magic Band.

'I saw yuh baby in yer x-ray gingam dress
I knew you were under duress
I knew you under yer dress
...

You were afraid you'd be the devils red wife
But it's alright God dug yer dance
'n would have you young 'n in his harum

Dress you the way he wants cause never had a doll                   
Cause everybody made him a boy
'n God didn't think t' ask his preference
You can bring yer dress 'n yer favourite dog'

• Captain Beefhart & His Magic Band. Trout Mask Replica. LP  Straight STS 1053 – 1969.
• John Muir (ed). The Lives and Times of Captain Beefheart.  Babylon Books. no date, probably 1980.

This video is of two songs: She's Too Much For My Mirror & Human Gets Me Blues.

3 X ‘I Wish I was a girl’ – the lyrics

‘I Wish I was (sic) a girl’ is a popular title for a song. The lyrics in some cases are rather odd.

Do any of these lyrics give the impression that the singer will actually start down the gender path?

The Pink Fairies, 1973

The boys come down to see me
I know that they can't believe me
I don't need their coffee bars
or clapped-out racing cars

You can tell I was the only one
My school days weren't much fun
As a child I was the only one
I can't say I was a son of a gun
because
I wish I was a girl

As a street fighter I don't make it
When the boys cut loose I can't take it
The sight of Blood don't turn me on
When the trouble starts I'm long gone
Oh, I wish I was a girl'.

Counting Crows, 1998

The devils in the dreamin’
He tells you I’m not sleepin’
In my hotel room alone

With nothing to believe in
You dive into the traffic rising up
And its so quiet
You’re surprised and then you wake

For all the things you’re losing
You might as well resign yourself to try and make a change
And I’m going down to hollywood
They’re gonna make a movie from the things
That they find crawling round my brain

I wish I was a girl
So that you could believe me
And I could shake this static every time I try to sleep
I wish for all the world
That I could say
Hey, elizabeth, you know Im doing all right
These days

The devils in the dreamin
You see yourself descending
From the building to the ground

And you watch the sky receding
And you spin to see the traffic
Rising up and its so quiet
And you’re surprised and then you wake

For all the things I’m losing
I might as well resign myself to try and make a change
And I’m going down to hollywood
They’re gonna make a movie from the things
That they find crawling round my brain

I wish I was a girl
So that you could believe me
And I could shake this static every time I try to sleep
I wish for all the world
That I could say, hey, elizabeth,
You know I’m doing all right these days

And one of these dreams
You forgive me
It makes me think of the bad decisions
That keep you at home
How could anyone else have changed
But these are wrong conclusions
That leave you alone
How could everyone rearrange
How could everyone else have changed
What I see
I believe

For all the things I’m losing
I might as well resign myself to try and make a change
And I’m going down to hollywood
They’re gonna make a movie from the things
That they find crawling round my brain

I wish I was a girl
So that you could believe me
And I could shake this static every time I try to sleep
I wish for all the world
That I could say, hey, elizabeth,
You know I’m doing all right these days
Well I cant sleep at night [repeated]

Violent Delight, 2003

I wish I was a girl so I'd see more tits
I wish I could jack by dipping in a pit
I only have a dick that's quite hairy
My ass is too, that's kinda scary

I wish I was a girl

I don't care about the blood, I don't care about the pain
Cos being a girl's the only thing that's on my brain
Cost being a guy is really boring
And cross dressing just isn't my thing

Some people think I might be gay
But I don't swing the other way
I just wanna be a girl so damn much
To fell my clit as it gets.........

But if I was a girl I couldn't drive no more
Cos I couldn't tell the difference between the clutch and the door
I'd get mood swings and I'd have to shave my pits
But I wouldn't really care cos I would have massive tits
I wouldn't have to put up with erections all the time
I'd get a better job when performing 69
Cos being a girl would be so cool
Cos when you cum you don't leave a pool

Mother

Why wasn't I a girl
[repeat 12 times]
Why
[Chorus and out]

And for the other side with better grammar

Beyoncé, 2009

If I were a boy
Even just for a day
I’d roll outta bed in the morning
And throw on what I wanted then go
Drink beer with the guys
And chase after girls
I’d kick it with who I wanted
And I’d never get confronted for it.
Cause they’d stick up for me.

[Chorus]
If I were a boy
I think I could understand
How it feels to love a girl
I swear I’d be a better man.
I’d listen to her
Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the one you wanted
Cause he’s taken you for granted
And everything you had got destroyed

If I were a boy
I could turn off my phone
Tell everyone it’s broken
So they’d think that I was sleepin’ alone
I’d put myself first
And make the rules as I go
Cause I know that she’d be faithful
Waitin’ for me to come home (to come home)

(Chorus)

It’s a little too late for you to come back
Say its just a mistake
Think I’d forgive you like that
If you thought I would wait for you
You thought wrong

(Chorus)

But you’re just a boy
You don’t understand
Yeah you don’t understand
How it feels to love a girl someday
You wish you were a better man
You don’t listen to her
You don’t care how it hurts
Until you lose the one you wanted
Cause you’ve taken her for granted
And everything you have got destroyed
But you’re just a boy

The Rose

Directed by Mark Rydell
Script by Michael Cimino (uncredited) & Bo Goldman, based on a story by Bill Kerby
125 mins 1979

Bette Midler plays Mary Rose Foster
Alan Bates plays Rudge Campbell
Frederick Forrest plays Huston Dyer
Michael Greer plays emcee
Kenny Sacha plays Rose impersonator
Sylvester plays Diana Ross impersonator
Claude Sacha plays impersonator
Michael St Laurent plays impersonator

Country of finance: US
Nationality of director: US
Location of story: New York, Florida
Filming location: New York, Los Angeles

Synopsis

Rose Foster is and is not Janice Joplin. She is a big blues singer in the 1960s given to self-destructive behaviour. She is kept going by the bullying of her manager, Rudge. She takes up with Huston, an AWOL-soldier cum chauffeur, and then drives him away. One of the best scenes is 40 minutes into the film when she takes Huston into a supposed gay bar where she used to work, and the drag performers pull her on stage to sing with them.

Who is who

This is Bette Midler’s first real film. She had first made her name singing at the gay Continental Baths in New York. She went on to become a big star as a singer and actor.

Alan Bates is a distinguished English actor who started in the 1950s. He was awarded a CBE in 1996. In The Rose he does not attempt a US accent. He has never played a drag or transgendered role.

The club emcee is Michael Greer who was in The Gay Deceivers, 1969, and was the flamboyant prison drag queen in Fortune and Men’s Eyes, 1971 (on both stage and film). He has worked only infrequently since the 1970s, probably because he was so good in Fortune and Men’s Eyes that he was typecast.

For Kenny Sacha this was his first film. In the next five years he did Bette Midler impersonators in the television shows Madame’s Place and Simon & Simon, and and was a female impersonator in Miss Lonelyhearts, 1983. After that he played a few male roles, but died in 1992 of AIDS.


Sylvester is Sylvester James, who was The Cockettes in the early 1970s, and went on to become a famous disco singer. His biggest hit was "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)". He died in 1988. He contined doing drag until the end.

Claude Sacha appeared in only this film. One wonders if he is Kenny Sacha’s brother?

Michael St Laurent appeared in only this film. One wonders if he is part of the St Laurent voguing house featured in Paris is Burning, 1990?

Curiosities

The crowd in the gay bar does not look gay.

There are 6 drag queens/performers in the club, but only 5 are credited.

When the emcee removes his dress, he is wearing a white tuxedo underneath. However when he was in the dress we do not see trousers underneath, and he is not shown rolling down the legs.

Caldonia

One of the notable female impersonators in New Orleans in the early 1940s was Caldonia, who was a major influence on Patsy Valdalia.

In 1945 Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five has a number one on the ‘Race Records Charts” with a song called ‘Caldonia’.  The song was written by Louis Jordan under his then wife’s name.  It was featured in the film Caldonia, 1945, and the sequence was cut out and featured as a Soundie, a short musical piece that was played in cinemas at that time (a precursor of the music video).  The song was also recorded by Woody Herman, B.B. King, Muddy Water, Bill Haley, James Brown, The Band, Van Morrison and many others.  Thus it is one of the standards of Blues and Rock music.
Here are the lyrics:

Walking with my baby, she got great big feet
Long, lean and cranky and ain't had nothing to eat
But she's my baby, I love her just the same
I'm crazy about my baby 'cause Caldonia is her name
Caldonia, Caldonia
What makes your big head so hard?
I love you, I love you just the same
I'm crazy about you, baby, 'cause Caldonia is your name
You know my mother told me to leave Caldonia alone
No kidding, that what she said
She said, "Son, the woman ain't no good, leave her alone"
But mama didn't know what Caldonia had been putting down
So I'm going down to Caldonia's house and ask her just one more time
Caldonia, Caldonia
What makes your big head so hard?
I love you, love you just the same
I'm crazy about you, baby, 'cause Caldonia is your name

Now remember the analysis of Little Richard’s lyrics.   Is this song about Caldonia the female impersonator?   I cannot find any statement that it is.  But it is suggestive that it might be.

One of the performers who had toured with Louis Jordan was Estella Young, a contortionist who was almost sixty but still agile.  She danced to the song and took Caldonia as her professional name, but not until after he had written the song.

Lola

Lola is song written by Ray Davies and performed by The Kinks.   It was released in June 1970.   The single went to number 2 in the UK, number 1 in Ireland, New Zealand and the Netherlands, and number 9 in the US.

Ray Davies said that it was based on an incident with the band’s manager, Robert Wace:

I remembered an incident in a club... in his apartment Robert Wace had been dancing with this black woman, and he said, ‘I’m really on to a thing here.’ And it was okay until we left at six in the morning and then I said, ‘Have you seen the stubble?’ He said ‘Yeah,’ but he was too pissed [drunk] to care, I think.

Many of our readers must have had the experience, early in their experience of going out dressed, of this song being played in a public place, and fearing that it might point to themselves.

The song has been covered and parodied by many other artists.  A notable cover is by trans musician Dana Baitz, who changed the words to Lola’s perspective.

I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola [LP version: Coca-Cola]
See-oh-el-aye cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said Lola
El-oh-el-aye Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well I'm not the world's most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man
Oh my Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well we drank champagne and danced all night
Under electric candlelight
She picked me up and sat me on her knee
And said dear boy won't you come home with me
Well I'm not the world's most passionate guy
But when I looked in her eyes well I almost fell for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
I pushed her away
I walked to the door
I fell to the floor
I got down on my knees
Then I looked at her and she at me
Well that's the way that I want it to stay
And I always want it to be that way for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Well I left home just a week before
And I'd never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said dear boy I'm gonna make you a man
Well I'm not the world's most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
And so is Lola
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola

• “Lola (song)”.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_(song)

Little Richard (1932 – ) and his lyrics.

Richard Wayne Penniman was a Rock-and-Roll singer/pianist and preacher.

In his apprenticeship years, he had toured the southern US in a vaudeville show where he played in drag as Princess Lavonne, ‘the freak of the year’.


Later, as he became famous as Little Richard from 1955, he performed with make-up, flamboyance, high pitched squeals, extravagant clothing and pompadour hairstyle.

Little Richard was certainly out of line with the 1950s concept of masculinity. One of the pioneers of rock and roll, he was unique in purveying an androgynous image.

Two of his hit records have been taken to be about drag queens: bald-headed Sally, and Miss Molly who is addressed as ‘son’. The 18th-century mollies were of course transgendered.

Good Golly Miss Molly

From the early early mornin' to the early early night,
When I caught miss Molly rockin' at the house of blue lights,
Good golly miss Molly, sure like to ball,
A-When you're rockin' and a rollin', can't hear your mama call.

Mama, papa told me 'Son, you better watch your step',
If'n your Papa's Mama had to watch my Papa's step ,
Good golly miss Molly, sure like to ball,
A-When you're rockin' and a rollin', can't hear your mama call.

Long Tall Sally

Well, long tall Sally, she's built for speed,
She's got everything that uncle John need,
Oh baby, yes baby, woo baby, havin' me some fun tonight.

Well, I saw uncle John with bald headed Sally,
He saw aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley,
Oh baby, yes baby, woo baby, havin' me some fun tonight.

W.T Lhamon writes: “Traditional black folk figures scamper through this song in scandalous antics. Uncle John is a stock figure in black lore from the ‘John cycle’ of tales about a slave who outwits the authorities. On this level, the song’s Aunt Mary is a good wife … But ‘Aunt Mary’ is also gay argot for a possessive queen. So she operates on at least two levels, apparent nurturer and drag possessor. In any case, Uncle John in this song is ducking out on Aunt Mary’s authority, whatever she represents. It’s Long Tall sally, ‘built for speed,’ who ‘got everything that Uncle John need.’ But where did Sally come from? Nightmare to to every Aunt Mary, Sally is the newly noticed, old, subtraditional freak. Not only long, tall, and speedy, she’s ‘bald-headed.’ As such, she’s figuratively phallic, flashing in and out of alleys in the hand of Uncle John, that trickster. That is attractive enough in the male-bonding context of the studio where all this cropped up mutually among these men, but there is more. In the transvestite shows of Little Richard’s apprenticeship, baldheadedness was preparation for one’s wigs… Long Tall Sally, in addition to her other meanings, is therefore a transvestite fantasy figure slipping and and sliding through life’s niches. … A transsexual variant of Sambo, and just like this new rock form which her surfacing embodied at this mid-fifties moment of family breakdown, she represents whatever anyone wishes her to represent.”

Richard Penniman is also an ordained born-again Christian. As a reverend, he married Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.

He was one of the first seven inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

• Marjorie Garber. Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety. Routledge. 1992: 302-3
• Wayne Studer. Rock on the Wild Side: Gay Male Images in Popular Music of the Rock Era. Layland Publications. 1994: p135.
• Charles White. The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock. New York: Da Capo Press xvi, 282 pp 1994.
• W.T. Lhamon. "Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s. Harvard University Press. 2002: 89, 93-95.

 EN.Wikipedia       www.littlerichard.com

Love Is a Stranger

This is a video about dressing up as a woman, and going out in an expensive car. She even takes off her wig as per the old-time drag performance tradition. And she ends up back in a suit and tie. View it here (You Tube says: Embedding disabled by request, so I can only give a link).

Except of course the person, doing the dressing up, is Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics. Society deems it to be normal when a women dresses in female drag, but a very different thing when a man does the same. A qualification is needed here. After a certain age, women are criticized. Mutton dressed up as lamb.

So what is when a woman dresses up as a woman. Two major terms have been proposed. Autogynephilia and homovestity. The first means getting off on yourself as woman. This is normal behaviour. In men as in women. Except when men do it, psychiatrists and others rush in an attempt to pathologize it. Equally normal is autoandrophilia: getting off on yourself as a man. Whether you are a man or a woman. The second term, in contrast to transvestity, means dressing up as the sex that you are.

When the single and video was originally released in 1982, some viewers thought that the person in the video was male bodied, presumably a transvestite, especially because of the wig removal.

Not that Annie Lennox is all for gender play, at least not for men. The Lyrics of “I need a man” contain:

You should know Im not impressed
cause theres just one thing
That Im looking for
And he dont wear a dress.
I need a man...
I need a man...
Baby baby baby
Dont you shave your legs
Dont you double comb your hair
Dont powder puff
Just leave it rough

• “Love Is a Stranger”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Is_a_Stranger

Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.

Cisgendered heterosexual that he is, the younger Mick Jagger did have an ambiance of being androgynous, although not to a degree that compared at all with real gender variance. Androgyny for the cisgendered. Steven Simels in his Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in Rock ‘n Roll, 1985, wrote of Jagger “Hipless and emaciated, possessing lips of such astonishing lasciviousness, that when you put him on stage he resembles nothing so much as some weird mixture of both human sex organs.”

However we must say that the major items below were recorded 1966-70. Very few other rock bands flirted with androgyny until the coming of Glam rock in 1972.
In 1966 of the band dressed as World War II army nurses for the photograph that accompanied the single, 'Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow?'.

In 1967 We Love You, one of the very earliest videos, made in the wake of Mick Jagger's trial for marijuana possession, has Jagger, in the dock, dressed as Oscar Wilde and Marianne Faithful as Alfred Lord Douglas.

The Stone's single, 'Honky Tonk Women', 1969, has been commented on by different writers as being about a drag queen: 'a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis' heaves him 'right across her shoulder ... she blew my nose and then she blew my mind'.

The word androgyny has often been used about the film Performance, 1970, which has Jagger as Turner, a retired rock-and-roll singer who initiates Chas, an on-the-lam gangster into androgyny and fusions of gender and identity. Well, the trailer intimates that. At the end the identities of Turner and Chas have become confused. Which one has been killed? Which one is taken away by the gangsters? This is not really androgyny (man-woman): it is more andrander (man-man). But then there is that bit where Chas is in bed with one of Turner’s women, and with a bit of tricky editing, you think for a moment that it is Turner himself rather than the woman.


Steve J. Spears' stage play, The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin, about a transvestite speech-therapist, which was first performed in 1977, uses both the Rolling Stones' song You Can't Always Get What You Want and Mick Jagger's image as part of the ambience.

The film, Running out of Luck, 1986, features Jagger as himself recording his first solo album in Rio de Janerio when he is kidnapped by a gang of transvestites. This film is so obscure that I could not find either a suitable photograph or clip.