Man Playlist

For those going through "Man-o-pause"... I have found the cure. Thanks to all who gave suggestions.

I added some less manly songs just to balance out the testosterone.

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss
2. Midnight Oil - My Country
3. Agnostic Front - Gotta Go
4. Queen - Don't Stop Me Now
5. Scissor Sisters - She's My Man
6. Men at Work - Down Under
7. Slim Dusty - Duncan
8. Cold Chisel - Khe Sahn
9. Belle and Sebastian - The State I Am In
10. Dr Dre - Bitches Ain't Sh@#
11. Australian Crawl - Boys Light Up
12. Jimmy Barns - Working Class Man
13. Louis Armstrong - What a Wonderful World (I'm still not convinced about this)
14. Village People - In the Navy

Coming to a Man Day near you.

Man, I feel like a woman

Over the last few days I've been feeling a little demasculated. I'm not entirely sure why...

I tried listening to some manly music, in the hope of re-claiming some of my stolen testosterone. So I rocked out to the tunes of Elton John and the Scissor Sisters...but to no avail.

I'm thinking of having a "Man day". During "Man day", I will listen to some of the manliest man-tunes I can get my manly hands on. The problem is, finding man-tunes is a lot harder than I first anticipated.

The most manly form of music I could think of (80s Hair metal), turned out to be...

...slightly less manly than I'd anticipated.

What do real men listen to? For some reason (goodness knows why), I own a CD called "The World's Best Ever Beer Songs". Needless to say, it's not very good. But are these "beer songs" the man-tunes I'd been searching for? Maybe, but I wish not to listen to awful, awful, awful songs like Copperhead Road and Mustang Sally. I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of the "best" (subjective, I know) music from the last 50 years, was not particularly manly. Bob Dylan and David Bowie, at times could be considered androgynous, certainly not afraid of make up. The Beatles loved matching outfits. Marvin Gaye's surname is "Gaye". Leonard Cohen could be considered by some as a slight pansy. And as for Frank Zappa...

...well.

He is quite hairy though, to be fair to him.

When I speak of man-tunes though, I am referring to overtly macho tunes (which I generally dislike) that will overcompensate for my drag queen adventures of the past week. I have been listening to some Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, both of which I consider to be masculine.

I think that's been doing the trick, but can anyone recommend me some more man-tunes?
Happy "Man day" everyone.

Fantastic Imagary

You know those moments when you wake up to find your face smudged with purple eyeliner and lipstick, and there are two lemons in your bed? Well that was me yesterday morning. It took me a little while to remember why I resembled The Joker, after he fell into the acid. It was of course, because I went to Jolly's Eurovision party the night before.

I was most fortunate to have seen the highly acclaimed Hungarian transsexual PiPi perform her latest hit single "True Fantasy" with her band PiPi's Pretzels, in front of a somewhat bewildered audience.

Let me introduce the band members:


Sleazy Jim (Band manager)



The Cowboy


Curly Ju-Ju


PiPi


Madam A-Go Go


Eye-Candy Heinz


Together they are "PiPi's Pretzel".

I can't really comment on the actual Eurovision song contest because I was too busy trying on women's clothing while it was on...but I will say that I was very impressed by the Ukraine and France.

I'll leave you with the inspiring words from PiPi's hit song.

"People always judged me
when I walked the streets*
They think how I am on the outside
is how I want to be

But inside I am free -
to be me!"

*Literary scholars, music critics and fans have all speculated on the meaning of this line. Many books have been written about it. Is it just a straight forward, literal reference to walking down the street? Or could it be a passing hint at PiPi's rumoured career as a prostitute? Critical analysis of PiPi's lyrics have left many minds baffled but she is well known for her deep, multi-layered, poetic turn of phrase, which would point toward the latter interpretation. In her 1987 song "Don't be such a big girl", PiPi used this clever line to criticise the Hungarian Prime Minister Károly Grósz and his communist regime. A deeper look at the song, also indicated that PiPi was singing against hormonal increase in gender reassignment surgery (a worrying trend in late 80s Europe, which lead to many male-to-female transsexuals taking steroids to boost their testosterone levels after the operation, causing them to become larger than average ladies). So who was she really speaking to when she sang "Don't be such a big girl"? Her fellow Post-ops or the Prime Minister? It's not unfeasible to conclude that PiPi was singing about both these things. She has been quoted as saying "my art is for everybody...my transformation is my art". This makes things a little easier for us, when delving into the magical kingdom of double entendre and political opinion that are PiPi's lyrics.

Eurovision

The Eurovision Song Contest is on this weekend. It is a crack-up. I would very much like to be in it myself. I'll see if I can enter it next year, representing Wales (although I think they count Great Britain as one country. Ridiculous! If Luxembourg can enter why can't Wales?).

So I've created my Eurovision persona, taking inspiration from 1998's transsexual winner from Israel, Dana International.



Introducing PiPi: (pronounced Pee Pee)


Originally from Budapest, Hungary, PiPi hopes to enter the 2008 Song Contest with her song (Strengthen me)My Boulder of Love.



Born with the name Peter, "PiPi" underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1968 and has never looked back.



The above picture is the cover art for her forthcoming album, Gender Studies.

I hope to watch Eurovision on Sunday night so I might post a review of it next week.
If anyone is remotely freaked out by any of the above pictures, you can blame Jerome. He wanted me to post on Eurovision.

WeatherWatch

If you’re a late TV watcher, you will no doubt, have come across “WeatherWatch” on SBS. It’s not exactly the most…um…eventful of programs but if you are a keen follower of meteorology and/or an insomniac then it may just be your favourite show (I’m waiting for the DVD box set). It also happens to be the cultural hub of music in Australia. The likes of Norah Jones, Il Divo and Aled “it’s all gone wrong for me” Jones are all headline acts on the WeatherWatch stage. It’s a more soothing (or perhaps “numbing”) alternative to Rage. If you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, it’s a map, much like the one pictured, accompanied by a CD that plays over and over again (Yes I have checked. They don’t change the CD when it finishes. Obviously there wasn’t much else on TV that night.). You can order the CD from Dymocks, if you really like it.

So far, I haven’t really been tempted to ring up the hotline and place an order. Only two albums have come close to making the grand claim of getting me to consider a purchase; one, a compilation of French Café tunes (I think it may have been titled French Café, appropriately enough), the other, Madeleine Peyroux’s album Half the Perfect World.


Madeleine is, in my opinion a “rich man’s Norah Jones” and her album contains delightful covers of Tom Waits’ (Lookin’ for) The Heart of Saturday Night and Joni Mitchell’s River, amongst others. I’d probably pick it up on special but not at Dymocks.

Have you ever watched WeatherWatch? Have you ever bought anything because of it? Or have you ever been turned on to some music from an unlikely source?