Poor, Poor Marie.

I'm thinking of doing some sort of recurring thing with certain entries.  It won't be as often as the Dunsany stories, nor will it require as much audience participation as the entry title game.  Basically, I'm thinking perhaps of reviewing the odder entries in my musical library.  (And trust me, there's some odd stuff.)  The idea would be to ignore (for the most part) the stuff that most people would consider unlistenable, and instead go for the songs that cause reactions of "Why would someone make a song about that?"

So, to kick this all off, here's a quick review/overview (plus link) of one of the stranger songs in Nick Lowe's discography (and that's without discounting songs about the Bay City Rollers and castrating Castro).

Read on for the rest.

So our track of interest today is from 1978's Jesus of Cool (and the same year's American release, Pure Pop for Now People), a popular (among his fans, at least) Lowe track by the name of Marie Provost.

Now, at this point, anyone with an interest in the more sordid details of 20s/30s Hollywood will recognise that the name is familiar (as will readers of Kenneth Anger's questionably-accurate tome, Hollywood Babylon).  In fact, some might even recognise that the title is a misspelling.  You see, the subject of the song is none other than the actress Marie Prevost.  (Of course, that's not the only inaccuracy in the song, but we'll get to some of those eventually).

The song itself is a brief summary of her life, from her birth (in Sarnia, Ontario, not New York), through her brief career as a star of silent pictures, her subsequent failure to make it in the talkies, and eventually her death, at the age of 38, in late January, 1937 (not July, as the song claims).  Not a terribly interesting life, really.  Ah, but it's when you hit the chorus that you start to realise that something is not quite right here.  "She was a winner," croons Lowe, with backing vocals contributing wordless oohs, "That became the doggie's dinner."

That's right, it seems she forgot to leave some food out for her dachshund prior to kicking the bucket.  (Although the police report is much kinder, and claims that the bites were caused by the dog attempting to rouse her.)  All this to a catchy, bouncy, sing-along pop ditty.  That, folks, is called tact.