Sugar Me - Claudine Longet

Sugar Me was written by Lynsey Monckton Rubin (better known as Lynsey De Paul), and it's sung here by Claudine Longet as a typical French pop tune; all heavy breathing, sucrerie-related Oo-la-la, sub-Pepe le Pew breathy come-ons and wan vocals that suggest she'd rather be smoking peppermint Gitanes or nibbling on some sort of almond-flecked pastry.

Le pop aside, Longet is best known for being at the centre of one of the more salacious showbiz Babylon stories of the seventies when she shot and killed her lover, pin-up downhill skiing champion Spider Sabich, in their Aspen Colorado home (it says 'home' in her biography, but I prefer to picture it as some sort of 'lodge').

Longet pleaded not guilty, claiming that her finger slipped on the trigger while Spider was teaching her self defence. She received a thirty day sentence for criminal negligence and moved to South America with her already-married defence attorney.

In 'Claudine', a 1978 Rolling Stones bootleg outtake, Jagger sings: "There's blood in the chalet, and blood in the snow, she washed her hands of the whole damn show. The best thing you could do, Claudine."

All in all, a tragic waste of a young sporting talent, a walk-in beige and advocado-coloured warddrobe full of matching alpine knitwear (again, I choose to picture it this way) and, in Spider Sabich, the best showbiz name this side of Dex Falcon... though Dex Falcon is a character in Jackie Collins' Lethal Seduction.

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There Stands the Glass - Jerry Lee Lewis

In 1737 a collection of English popular verse was published by the wigmaker and poet Alan Ramsay. Included within was the popular ditty 'The Bottle Preferr'd':

"The table's my throne and the tavern's my court. The drawer's my subject, And drinking's my sport."

Some 230 years later in Memphis Tennessee, honky-tonkin' wildman Jerry Lee Lewis poured himself a whiskey and started to sing in much the same manner. After years of piano pumping, musical delinquency set to a switchblade beat and leering lyrics about hugging, squeezing and rocking all night long, the KIller turned to country and it's thematic trinity; drink, guilt and heartache.

Jerry Lee was a decent marksman. He once shot his bass player in the chest with a .347 Magnum and woke his wife up by firing a submachine gun into the wall above the bed as she slept. In his 1964 song 'Lincoln Limosime' he sang, with sneering Southern schadenfreude, about President Kennedy's death: 'They shot him out in Texas where the longhorn cattle roam. Oh Lord it would have been better if he had have stayed at home.'

Was that a discarded bottle of Old Crow bourbon on the grassy knoll? How about a cabal of rockabilly sharpshooters in league with Cuban exiles and la Cosa Nostra? Reckon Carl Perkins is the spit of Lee Harvey? Who else saw the man in the white jumpsuit run from the Texas Book Depository?

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Manifesto & Book News

If it's ever been on K-Tel or Ronco, it's in. If it features hand claps, cow bells, syrupy orchestration, walls of sound, wrecking crews, sha-la-las, toothy teen idols, candy-based metaphors for carnal acts or lyrics about hugging, squeezing and rocking all night long, it's in.

Increasingly desperate



> Martin Lampen (latest book news, contact details and other stuff)

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