Monday, June 19, 2017

Your Monday Moment of Atonal Groaning*

From the Pathe Archives, via Charlie Pierce:

Here's Marlene Dietrich, singing in Russia. This is not to be confused with singing about Russia, which I suspect will be a serious choral work in a few weeks.



BTW, apparently, Burt Bacharach was the musical director on this, which is pretty cool.

*[h/t my late Stereo Review colleague Noel Coppage, who coined that phrase to describe Dietrich's inimitable...er...vocal stylings.]

4 comments:

Billy B said...

Atonal groaning pretty much nails Ms. Dietrich's attempts at "singing". And get a load of that fur coat. Talk about over the top.

8^)

Anonymous said...

So that's where Exene got her sound & look!

Short performance, I guess she Marlene left them wanting more.

Captain Al

Anonymous said...

Steve:

1) She's okay but she's no Lili Von Shtupp...

2) Re Noel Coppage: next time you're talking about entertaining bits of rock criticism, you should post the review that Noel did around 1982 of Robin Trower's BLT album - it's hilarious in both concept and execution.

3) Burt Bacharach's also been working with one of your rock'n'roll heroes - Tonio K. A cd of demos of songs they worked on together just got issued in Spain (see May 22 post at www.theseconddisc.com).

J. Lag

steve simels said...

J.Lag -- Tonio and Burt? Hole. E. Shit.

Thanks for the headsup...