Category: English

Daddies and their little girls

Terry Zwigoff – Robert Crumb and his daughter Sophie, in Crumb
Terry Zwigoff – Robert Crumb and his daughter Sophie, in Crumb (1994) – from IMDB

In my post Thank Heaven For Little Girls, I presented several renderings of the song and ended with its use to accompany a stage dance between mature men and little girls. I stressed the symbolic nature of this reinterpretation of a song that lauded little girls for growing up into delightful young women: men love little girls as they are now, not only for their future beauty after puberty.

Now I found another video of a stage dance of adult men with little girls, but this one is much more romantic, the men lift the girls up, take them in their arms, and kiss them several times (at 1’05”, 3’00” and 3’29”): CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Childhood nostalgia in Ernest Dowson’s Praeterita

Jules-Alexis Muenier - La ronde des enfants
Jules-Alexis Muenier – La ronde des enfants (1902) – from Tutt’Art

Ernest Dowson kept in a drawer a booklet of poems written in his youth, which was published posthumously under the title Poésie Schublade (‘drawer poetry’ in a mix of French and German). These poems are not widely available on the web. However, they shine with freshness and evoke nostalgia for childhood, two qualities partially lost in the more polished verse of his maturity. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Catholic School Girls Rule, by Red Hot Chili Peppers

Cover of the LP Freaky Styley by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Cover of the LP Freaky Styley by Red Hot Chili Peppers – from Amazon

The American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers released their second studio album Freaky Styley in August 1985. Its 11th track, the song “Catholic School Girls Rule,” is inspired by an event in the life of the band’s singer Anthony Kiedis, which he told in his 2004 autobiography Scar Tissue (written with Larry Sloman, and published by Hyperion). A 14 years old girl who attended a local Catholic school met Kiedis backstage, and he slept with her while on tour before and after discovering her age. Genius quotes the book about their first meeting: CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Unhappy Girl, by The Doors

Dorothea Lange - Resettled farm child from Taos Junction to Bosque Farms project
Dorothea Lange – Resettled farm child from Taos Junction to Bosque Farms project, New Mexico. Photograph for the Farm Security Administration (December 1935) – from Wikimedia Commons

I have recently presented “You’re Lost Little Girl,” the second track of the album Strange Days by The Doors, and I said that this song probably refers to William Blake’s poem “A Little Girl Lost” in Songs of Experience (1794). Commenting the repeated line “You’re lost little girl” in the song’s lyrics, Genius says about Blake’s poem “A Little Girl Lost:” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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You’re Lost Little Girl, by The Doors

Paul Stewart - Tracy Stratford in The Twilight Zone, Episode 91: Little Girl Lost (1962)
Paul Stewart – Tracy Stratford in The Twilight Zone, Episode 91: Little Girl Lost (1962)

The Doors released their second album Strange Days in September 1967. Many fans consider it as the band’s most original and creative album. Its second track is a song called “You’re Lost Little Girl,” about a little girl who is lost, but knows what to do. For this song, the singer Jim Morrison was requested to relax, not to shout, so that his voice would sound like that of Frank Sinatra. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Alabama Song

Jim Morrison with a little girl
Jim Morrison with a little girl

The poem “Alabama Song” (also known as “Moon of Alabama,” “Moon over Alabama,” or “Whisky Bar”) was first written in German by Bertolt Brecht, then translated into English by Elisabeth Hauptmann in 1925. Kurt Weill set it to music for the 1927 musical play Mahagonny-Songspiel. The song was finally included in their 1930 opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny). It is sung in Act I by alcoholic prostitutes, they are craving first for a ‘whiskey bar,’ then for a ‘little boy’ (in the 1930’s, this designated a bottle format), and finally for a ‘little dollar:’ CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Marvellous freedom

Dick Whittington - Children being taught at Ryan dancing academy, Southern California
Dick Whittington – Children being taught at Ryan dancing academy, Southern California (1933) – from historyinphotos.blogspot.com

After two years and a half, Poets and Lovers is alive and going on, surrounded by hostile forces. It survived the persecution of its first website provider by the UK police, which finally led to closing down the websites that he hosted. We have now a new provider, aiming to host several art websites suffering from censorship, starting with those suppressed in the UK: Poets and Lovers, Pigtails in Paint, and the sites of Graham Ovenden and of Garage Press. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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