Go, Go-go Girls, Go!

V/A:
The Whip on the Strip—«Exotic Dance» Sounds
by Strip Joint House Bands of the 1950s & '60s [.zip]

Sandwiched between '50s cocktail lounge and '60s garage rock—between the suave and the scuzz, as it were—you get this: Sides recorded by house bands with residencies in strip clubs and go-go bars before the advent of disco, nu-R'n'B, techno and other scourges of the sexual impulse forever banished decent music from houses of ill repute. Not as sedated by painkillers and umbrella drinks as exotica, nor quite as dishevelled by raging hormones as garage beat, this is music for whiskey swillin' business daddies to occasionally let loose to, remembering, through liquor's hazy prism of lowered inhibitions and loss of control, his youth and his natural drives, lusting for tits.

Most of the songs in this obscure sub-genre are instrumentals, and there's typically an added catchphrase, or suggestive giggles or a few lewd haw-haws, repeated throughout. They tend to contain the kind of dated humour that appeals so much to people who are nostalgic, yet too self-conscious to admit so, dressing their admiration up in ironic pop culture references instead.

Which is easily done, because the jokes—tame and corny by now—retroactively castrate whatever edge there may once have been to this music. The songs become quirky, and there's nothing sexy about quirky. Instead of inciting people to fuck, the songs have been turned into just another escape from the frighteningly delicious appetites rumbling in your base animal gut…

Yet not all the recordings of this genre are novelty songs. If you like your sex with raunch rather than laughs, sensual pleasure rather than abstract ideas, there's plenty to be had: Raw, sexmongering saxophone from a time when the guitar was not yet the phallus of choice… sassy rhythms that alternate between grinding and pounding… the sloppy, overly eager playing of lusty musicians who have something more urgent to get out of their systems than musical notes.

This collection eschews the cutesy half-ironic/half-nostalgic recordings all too common in such retrospectives, in favour of the tracks that have stood the test of time to remain hot. The ones instantly evocative of flesh on your hands, soft, warm texture on your fingers, various fluids on the tip of your tongue, skin 'tween your teeth, etc. etc. This is the sound of hips, thighs, breasts, nipples, napes, shoulders, clavicles, bellies, backs, wrists, chins, lips, eyes, labia, rosettes, feet, all in frenzied, shaking movement (when not slowing to a sweet, aching grind). And that's just the beginning; no less than two of the tracks on this comp feature the bullwhip as an actual musical instrument!

This music wasn't intended for cuddling on a bed of rose petals and scented silk sheets. This is all flesh and fluids; the sound of straight male fantasy. What men seek, whether they're flicking through the Bible for passages about the whore Magdalene or they're at the strip club, gawking up at the vixen atop the table, his desires lost in a conflicting mix of the will to power and willing servitude, best expressed by that master perv, Russ Meyer:

… violence doesn’t only destroy; it creates and moulds as well. Let’s examine closely, then, this dangerously evil creation, … encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: Handle with care and don’t drop your guard. This rapacious … breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere and with anybody.

The danger and challenge of the untamed savage—shaking her primal nudity up there on her pedestal, in touch with nature's forces in ways men think they can't even imagine (yet nonetheless try to)—gives rise to a tension between wanting to control and to be controlled, to tame and to be tamed, leaving the voyeur at her feet a drooling mess of confused horniness, desire going off in every direction. It's the moment for which every businessman lives and breathes… He may have the money, the vote, the driver's licence, the freedom, but, baby, you possess the only thing he really wants.

And the only thing you need to make that man crawl, is a soundtrack such as this.