Friday Jukeboox: Back in the USSR Edition!

Yes, I know - you're damn sick and tired of The Civil Wars.Well, I'm not, and it's my blog. Deal with it.

The thing is, what I really wanted to put in here was an old song from the Seventies called Brown Shoes by someone called Karen Alexander.

I ran across this song purely by chance - hell, it was the Seventies, and since the alternative was Donna Summer my musical taste at the time ran more to Brit techno-pop and/or American jazz - and loved it both for the catchy hook and the lyrics:

"When I was just a little bitty girl
I had a little bitty pair of shoes;
they were brown and ugly but I knew just what to do.
Well I shined 'em in the morning, I polished 'em bright.
When nobody was lookin' we danced into the night.
We danced to marching music and we danced to the blues
Oh, Lord, help the poor man that I love more than those shoes.

When I was just a little bitty girl
I had a little bitty mouse;
made him a little swimming pool and a big two-story house.
I fed him on chocolates, on tiny leaves of grass,
I kept him in my pocket, I took him into class;
I took him everywhere with me in my old seer sucker blouse.
Oh, Lord help the poor man that I love more than that mouse.

Oh, Lord, ya better warn him, I been training all my life
Been rehearsin', about to verse him
gonna feed him eggs and waffles, gonna love him up real awful
I'll shave him in the morning oh, so good...
I'm the terror of the neighborhood.

When I was just a little bitty girl, I had a little bitty god;
made a velvet temple with a silver lightning rod.
In momma's costume jewelry, I danced before the muse.
I whispered prayers and ecstasy right into his ears
I was a high flyin' temple dancer, those long scarves of chiffon...
oh, Lord help the poor man that I love more than that god.

Oh, Lord help the poor man, because I know I'm gonna sing the blues
Oh, Lord help the poor man that I love more than those shoes."

Turns out that Alexander was a truly odd story; an American expat married to an Iranian about the time of the Revolution on 1979; cut two vinyl albums and then...nothing.

The woman also lived here in Portland, so there's a local connection. I sure wish I could find you that song; it's a treat.

But there's nothing for me to post. The output of the woman's imagination is preserved only on the hissing tracks of a vanishing medium. No YouTube, no audio track, nothing.

And the title of this post?

Because I've been out and about all over Oregon this past week and it's time for me to go home and see my family again, and wake up in my own bed for a change.