Thursday 27 November 2008

Camp bedfellows indeed



It's not until you gather together a selection of personal tastes collected in one place at one time, that the proverbial penny drops how eclectic your taste really is... And so it was, as I spent some time today (off work suffering with this dreaded lurgy) adding onto VisiTrax the latest set of CDs we have accumulated.

There they lay, the weird and the wonderful - Leona Anderson's Music to Suffer By, Beryl Reid's Music Hall Singalong, a 3 CD collection of Brigitte Bardot, four CDs of Jonathan & Darlene Edwards, Duffo's Ground Control to Frank Sinatra, Disco Tex & the Sex-o-Lettes, Bonzo Dog Band, Carol Channing, Mel Brooks and Eartha Kitt - all of them crying out for attention (which they will all get, in turn).

And on it went - Frankie Goes to Hollywood remixed, Tony Randall's Warm & Wavery, a "New Beat" compilation from 1987, Ernie Kovacs' Record Collection, Peter Wyngarde, Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Anna Russell and DiscolongaMax...

I am exhausted. But it is a most peculiar thing to behold once the titles appear in their alphabetically ordered columns in the database.

In the words of George Melly (in his preface to the fabulous book, and my eternal inspiration, Camp - The Lie That Tells The Truth by Philip Core):

"As someone wrote about an obituary column, it is extraordinary the way people die, (for here substitute "camp it up") in alphabetical order.

"Where else would one find Caravaggio and Barbara Cartland or Cardinal Newman adjacent to Beverley Nichols? Camp bedfellows indeed!"

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