replacing Hardly Baked whose feed is broken for reasons unknown. Original Hardly Baked + archive are here http://hardlybaked.blogspot.com/
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"Really awful is more interesting to listen to than pretty good" - Eno
1978! Never heard of this - session? guest appearance? interview? Doesn't seem like the sort of thing Capital Radio used to go in for.
I think the estimate of the number of people who'll be listening in is rather inflated... that would be literally every single person in Greater London, at that time.
I mean, yes, "eight million people can listen" to The Pop Group, but are eight million people going to listen? Not very bloody likely.
“Words that make the air bleed” makes me think of "when I fart, the sky bleeds" by Ted Milton on “Confessons of an Aeroplane Farter” - this is before he formed Blurt, who were not unlike The Pop Group, homegrown Contortions
Does any phrase bring to mind the atmosphere, the aroma, of the British 1970s better than "sex maniac"?
Not a rhetorical question - I genuinely am curious if there's a more evocative word or phrase.
I mean, there's "secondary picket".
The ad above is from 1976. The Sex Maniac's Diary launched in 1972, which surely proves its echt-Seventiesness. ("Kinky" would be the much cooler 1960s precursor I should think) (In fact, the Diary has a Kink of the Week listed)..
It reminds me of this forgotten book that I actually got for Christmas that year, I'm really not sure why, given that I was about 13 at the time.
A sort of spoof on Superwoman - a 1975 best-selling guide to achieving female omni-competence by Shirley Conran - but also a genuine guide for the modern gentleman. Apparently it too was a best-seller.
A riff on "Male Chauvinist Pig" - another very 1970s phrase.
The only things I can remember from Superpig are Willie Rushton's advice on sex: a gentleman always says "thank you" afterwards. And also that prior to intimacy, a man should always undress top down - shirt first, then trousers and socks. Trousers removed while the shirt is still on, he considered an undignified look that would blow your image of suave savoir faire in the boudoir.
Back to the Sex Maniac's Diary - someone I knew at Melody Maker, a freelancer, one of those interesting oddball characters who found their way into the inkie press, actually worked for Tuppy Owens, the female entrepreneur-activist behind the "Sex Maniac's" brand (there were Sex Maniacs Balls and the Erotic Awards and all kinds of other products - this chap was involved in all of that). This would be late '80s, very early '90s, when you would have thought that the "sex maniac" concept would seem frightfully dated.
Actually looking into her life, Tuppy Owens seems to have been a genuinely progressive figure. And she died earlier this year in fact.
The concept of "sex maniac" always makes me think of the wonderful trailer for this classic of softcore smut, a/k/a "funography"
I love the husky elation of the woman singing the theme song: "this is your life, Timmy Lee!"
I say "classic", but I still haven't watched the whole film, even though it's out there
Timothy Leer-y
There's also a film called Confessions of a Sex Maniac, but not sure if this is from the actual official series of Confessions... books / films, which always stipulated a profession or occupation or line of employment, that happened to lend itself to sex-mania
1974, need you ask...
So is the conceit of the novel / film series that "Timothy Lea" is both the author of the books and the protagonist, doing a series of jobs that lend themselves to how's-your-father?
Doug Keeley reminds of the Confessions of a Pop Performer flick - in which Robin Askwith's Timmy Lea plays in a glam band called Kipper
A rip off of the Confessions template
Although there was a Confessions of A Plumber's Mate book....
Another rip-off of the Confessions template
Also from the 1970s, natch
Possible convergence of "sex maniac" and "secondary pickets", ahoy
Brings a whole new spin to the idea of trade union congress…
"Shop Steward" - another '70s-scented phrase of course
Andrew Parker points to the Australian counterpart - Alvin Purple
Whose occupation is water bed salesman
"Purple" - I fear this is meant to connote a la "crimson crowbar"
Ooh, something much much earlier - 1934!
However I think it was originally just called Maniac and then repackaged as Sex Maniac and repositioned for the porno market. In the '70s or '80s
Not sure if any of the following have any relation to Tuppy Owens's brand
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A serious thought - the journey from "sex maniac" to "sex addiction" tells a story about our times. From permissiveness and libidinal liberation to a medicalized era and the idea of appetite-as-affliction
Mind you I suppose - as jocular as an expression as "sex maniac" was, it did contain the idea of psychopathology
What is the literature of sex mania?
Portnoy's Complaint.
The early creepy short stories of Ian McEwan (Ian Macabre as he was nicknamed) have an angle on the souring of Sixties liberation-drive into something seedy, sordid, and depressive-hedonist. There's one involving some blokes who work in a sex shop in Soho... and another about an all-nude singing-dancing-fornicating West End theatre production... and then there's the ones about incest, child molestation (two of those, very different) and Los Angeles as where erotic politics slackens into nullifying decadence.
There's at least a couple of porn film called Sex Maniac and Sex Maniacs - both from the 1970s
But probably the place where the concept lived largest was TV comedy. Everyone is being accused of being one, or claiming to be one.
As suggested by Phil in comments:
Hanky panky, how's your father, slap 'n' tickle, get your end away, leg-over ...
cf words that feel 1980s onwards: bonk, shag, rumpy-pumpy, nookie
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How's about music?
Well, there's this Ian Dury character Billericay Dickie....
Not about a sex maniac, but about a sexy windowcleaner - or is he? (Argument that the song is full of innuendo and is about about a sex worker who vigorously enjoys his work)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I actually know a sex maniac.... Always on the pull, always going on sex holidays.
This lad's like a characterological throwback to the 1970s - men with eyeballs popping out on stalks and necks that swivel every time a curvy young lady walks by... panting... sweat popping off the forehead and damping up the hairy palms... slavering for a glimpse of knickers...
Like a young, very good looking Benny Hill with ultra-hip music taste
A dirty young man, in fact...
1970s-throwback too insofar as he doesn't use the apps, he's a chat up merchant, always getting girl's numbers in the street.
Funny thing is that he is of the generation that is supposed to have gone off sex, to be doing it markedly less than previous generations... either dissatisfied by or deflected from the Real Thing by their porn addictions... or paradoxically turned off sex because of its insta-availability through Tinder etc... in exactly the same way that streaming can create musical anhedonia, a wilting and atrophy of the urge...
"We gave her most of our lives.... never a thought for ourselves..."
"We only wanted to be loved"
(always taken it to be meant as a clinging motherly or grandmotherly voice, a mixture of sponge and limpet... although others bits of the lyric suggests it's more about the mutual braindeath of matrimony: Rotten's last stand of cynicism before hitching up with Nora, for life)
"Nigel's whole future is as good as planned"
And now for something completely different...
Ray Davies playing truant from his role as Head of the Family, keeping his head down and turning a blind eye...
I am sure there's other examples of the parental voice in the Kinks songbook, must be something on Village Green Preservation...
Not a parental voice but perhaps a social surrogate for the parental - the congressman in "Summertime Blues" - "like to help you son, but you're too young to vote"
Harry Chapin of course...
Not forgetting Cat Stevens's "Father and Son"
Maternal voice internalized as spectral super-ego, not heard but invoked in "Triad"
I love you too
And I don't really see
Why can't we go on as three
You are afraid, embarrassed too
No one has ever said such a thing to you
Your mother's ghost stands at your shoulders
A face like ice, a little bit colder
Saying to you, you cannot do that
It breaks all the rules, you learned in school
But I don't really see
Why can't we go on as three
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
update 12/2 late night
Lots of good suggestions in the comments, but this one I remembered myself - it dramatizes a dispute between a dad and his fruity, freaky glam-rock loving kid.
The full skit below concerns a teenager (Tommy Chong) who wakes up and listens to a song by "Alice Bowie" (Cheech Marin) and then his father (also played by Marin) yells at him to get ready for school and they have a fight.
[song]
My mamma talkin' to me, tryna to tell me how to live
But I don't listen to her 'cause my head is like a sieve
My daddy, he disowned me 'cause I wear my sister's clothes He caught me in the bathroom in a pair of pantyhose My basketball coach, he's done kicked me off the team For wearing high-heeled sneakers and acting like a queen (queen)
The world's comin' to an end, I don't even care As long as I can have a limo and my orange hair And it don't bother me if people think I'm funny 'Cause I'm a big rock star, and I'm making lots of money Money, money, money, money, money I'm so bloody rich, I own apartment buildings and shopping center And I only know three chords, watch me burn you fools
[skit starts]
I said turn that thing down and get ready for school Hey, what are you trying to do? You ruined my record, man, I just bought it I don't care what you just bought You get your little fanny perpendicular and get ready for school I'm not going to school What do you mean you're not going to school?
It's what I said, I'm not going to school And why not? Because I'm sick, that's why not Sick, you're sick, all right What's wrong with you now, prince charming? I got an earache
Earache, my eye, how would you like a butt ache? Now, get your little fanny out of that bed and clean up this room It looks like a pigsty, you hear me?
(oinking sounds)
All right, that's enough, that's enough You pushed me far enough, young man, you're gettin' punished Now stand up, no I said stand up!
Ah, let go of my hair, man Now, young man, I have talked to you and talked to you and talked to you Til' I'm blue in the face, and I'm done talking to you Good, does that mean you're done spitting on me, too? Shut up, I'm not done talking to you, now turn around and bend over Or what are you going to do, you pervert?
Pervert? What are you snobby little Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow Oh, shut up, I haven't even touched you yet Now I want you to know this is gonna hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt me Oh wow, that didn't even hurt Oh, yeah?
Oh, wow, what are you trying to do, tickle me? Tickle you? Yeah, I'll tickle you, ow! Oh, is that tickle, huh? Come on, I'll tickle Come on, lock it up, honey, come on Oh no more, no more
All right, now you're gonna do what I tell ya? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah You gonna talk back to me? Yeah, yeah,
what? I mean no, no, no, no, no Alright, now you get your clothes on and get your little butt ready for school right now Do you understand?
Yeah, alright
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Update: 12/ 3
how could I forget this one?
sourced in this anti-drug single (as mentioned in the comments)
.jpg)
