TRACK 11: “Naked Girls”
Who among us doesn’t love naked girls?
Midge drives in from west Denver with her head held high
Another downtown performance for them lonely guys
She kinda likes it when you slip her a smile
It’s the Sultan’s Harem, it’s the cream of the crop
For $2.50 a beer the dancers never stop
You’d think it Heaven
Everybody’s so beguiled
By naked girls, naked girls
Naked girls, you can find one tonight there’s one there waiting for you
Sheila’s been at it for nine years now
But every time she shakes her sequins all the fellas still say, `Wow!’
She shakes her booty
Doesn’t feel any guilt
And her smile becomes Satanic when the music starts
She reads Gurdjieff and Crowley
Misquotes them both by heart
She says the only true law is just to do as thou wilt.
She’s a naked girl, a naked girl
A naked girl sweating under the lights and staring into the darkness
BRIDGE
Lord where do they come from? Lord where do they go?
All these back-door beauties
I see them swaying to and fro
One looks like a long lost girlfriend
But I forgot her name
And one looks like a t.v. star
And no two look the same.
Well, Taffy’s only job is just to give ‘em an eyeful
She works the dollar peep shows and she’s lookin’ delightful
She’d be a princess, but she’s got bruises on her thighs
And she’s hummin’ that song by The Captain & Tennile
“Love Will Keep Us Together,” and Taffy wonders how that would feel
But she knows she couldn’t leave it even if she would try
Aw, naked girls, naked girls
Naked girls at your service tonight, they’re trying hard to please you
(Repeat first half of first verse)
copyright Sidhe Gorm Music (BMI)
(Written 1981)
It had been a wild week back in August of 1980.
Pam, my pregnant wife, was down in Alabama to visit her folks before the baby came. I was between jobs. Pam and I had finished our summer gigs working as cooks for the summer camp at Brush Ranch up near Terrero, N.M. My substitute teaching standby job was still a couple of weeks ago.
A bunch of pals had planned a road trip up to Denver to see a Broncos pre-season exhibition game at the now-demolished Mile High Stadium and other shenanigans.
Never being much of a sports fan, I was mainly there for the other shenanigans.
We’d been planning that Denver trip for a while. But just a few days before, I’d made a spontaneous jaunt down to Juarez with a bunch fellow crazies after a rowdy Sunday night performance at the Forge in Santa Fe.
Like I said, a wild week …
In retrospect I now see this time as basically a last gasp of youthful irresponsibility before my impending parenthood.
I don’t remember much about that Broncos game. It might have been after that great moment in sports history when the boys and I ended up at that downtown strip club I immortalized in “Naked Girls.”
I can’t remember for the life of me the name of the joint. But about a year after this trip, when Pam and I went to Denver, I was able to find it so she could take a picture of me – the one you see at the top of this page – for the back cover of Picnic Time for Potatoheads.
Seemed like a great place to ogle the dames and drink some $2.50 beers (which seemed kind of expensive in those days.)
Two of the three women in the song, “Sheila” and “Taffy,” are based on real people I met that night. The other, the one called “Midge,” basically was a composite.
The reason she was from “West Denver” came from one of the dancers we talked to that night – It may have been “Sheila.” One of us Santa Fe guys said something stupid -- who knows what. I’m sure all of us said something stupid hundreds of times during that trip alone.
And this dancer replied, “Oh man, you must be from West Denver …” Just the way she said it was so funny we all laughed. I could imagine “West Denver” being a common punchline for her and her friends.
“Sheila” was a beautiful, dark-haired lady who seemed to be a little older than the others who danced that night – maybe mid-to-late 30s, possibly even early ‘40s. I’m not sure if she told us exactly how long she’d been in the bump-and-grind biz, but I seemed to remember her indicating that she was a veteran of her profession.
Don’t ask me why, but somehow, the conversation with her turned to Aleister Crowley, the infamous British occultist and self-declared “wickedest man in the world.”
I believe I mentioned his name and ”Sheila” replied, “Ah, Crowley. `Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.’ "
I must confess, in the song I shoved the character “Sheila” under the proverbial bus to cover up my own stupid mistake. I quoted the character in the song saying “… the only true law is just to do as thou wilt …” And that’s how it reads on the back cover of Potatoheads.
But not long after the lyrics were sent to the printer, I realized my error and started performing the tune singing, “She reads Gurdjieff and Crowley / Misquotes them both by heart …” I just thought it sounded funnier that way.
And for the record, I’m pretty sure that “Sheila” never actually discussed George Gurdjieff at all during our brief conversation that night. She neither quoted nor misquoted the Armenian mystic.
“Sheila” had such an upbeat personality and weird sense of humor that under different circumstances we might have been friends. But there was something sad about the one I called “Taffy.”
Maybe it was the bruises on her thighs.
This lady didn’t work in the same club as “Sheila” and the other naked girls. She worked at a nearby peep joint.
As dramatized in David Simon’s HBO series The Deuce, “dollar peep shows” were in sleazy places where customers could go into dark little booths, pit four quarters in a slot and some kind of curtain would open to reveal a one-way mirror, where a naked girl was performing.
Like the song says, “Taffy” did look delightful, despite her souvenirs of apparent abuse. But unlike the vivacious “Sheila,” I didn’t have anything resembling a conversation with “Taffy.”
That booth, where performer and customer were separated by the one-way mirror, was not conducive to conversation. When she said “Thanks” after I handed her a dollar bill through a little slot for that purpose, she was barely audible.
Of all the performers I saw that night, Taffy was the only one who didn’t exude — or even feign — enthusiasm for the weird sex rituals they were conducting. In fact, she looked like she hated her job.
And that was the bitter yin to the goofy yang of that bouncy Captain & Tennille song playing in the background while “Taffy” performed.
As for the unnamed strippers mentioned in the song, the tv star who one of them resembled was Suzanne Somers, who became famous around that time as a star in the sitcom Three’s Company.
No comment on the one who looked like a long-lost girlfriend.
I realize that writing songs about strippers is hardly an original idea.I remember, in the late ‘90s, reading a review by Grant Alden in No Depression magazine of Six Months, No Sun, a 1998 album by Kieran Kane, which starts off with a song called “Table Top Dancer.”
Grant wrote:
“Nothing good can come of a middle-aged man writing from the perspective of a young stripper. On too many levels it is simply a place he should not visit; that’s not a moral judgment, just an observation about the chasms one’s imagination should not seek to jump.”
Uhhh…
That’s a good point. Luckily I was still in my 20s, not “middle-aged” when I wrote my song.
I’m just glad Grant didn’t call me out on this issue when he reviewed the CD reissue of Picnic Time for Potatoheads in No Depression a few months before.
Here’s Kieran’s song:
The first song about an exotic dancer I remember hearing was one back when I was in junior high.
And I heard it from my mother!
She used to sing the first verse of the tune below for us kids. Mom never said where it came from. She said it was just “a song we used to sing.”
Sometimes when performing “Naked Girls” I’d do a slow acapella version of that first verse as an intro.
I was well into late middle age when I learned Mom’s song about the cutie of the burlesque show was by The Andrews Sisters, one of the most popular groups during my mother’s youth.
In fact, Mom already was on her death bed.
A couple of weeks before she died, I played her a YouTube of "Strip Polka" on my iPhone, in the nursing home. I can’t say for certain Mom heard it. By that point she was slipping in and out of consciousness. But she seemed to smile.
The nurses thought I was crazy. But it meant something to me, and hopefully it meant something to Mom.
In my own youth, my favorite song about strippers was one by Tom Waits.
Here’s to Chesty Morgan and Watermelon Rose …
I don’t know about Watermelon Rose, but Chesty Moran (real name, Ilana Wajc) was real!
She was in movies too.
“Naked Girls” was the most recently written song on Picnic Time for Potatoheads. I’d probably been performing it for just a few months before we recorded it.
The Whereabouts and I recorded the basic track with brother Jack overdubbing his electric guitar solo — one of my favorite musical musical moments of the record. Sister Mary’s background vocals also were overdubbed later.
Coda: One of the very last times I ever set foot inside an actual strip joint was one night during the summer of 1994. I went to the now-defunct Cheeks with a couple of drunken pals.
A new dancer, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Courtney Love — who actually had worked in topless joints before becoming famous — took the stage. She began dancing to “Come as You Are” by Nirvana.
I was spellbound.
In my drunken haze and my unfettered joy from hearing a song I actually liked played at Cheeks that while a pretty girl danced without her clothes, the moment became transcendental. I could almost see Kurt staring down from the cosmos with a sweet smile as his music blasted.
And I swear that I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun …
But the spell was broken at the end of the song as soon as the Cheeks announcer proclaimed, “O.K., give it up for Jasmine dancing to `Come as You Are’ by Nirvana!” Then he hesitated a second before adding with an audible sneer, “Turns out he did have a gun …”
Now enjoy my song:
Get your own copy of Picnic Time for Potatoheads & Best-Loved Songs from Pandemonium Jukebox HERE
Credits:
Steve Terrell, lead vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar
Jack Clift: lead guitar, producer
Mike Roybal: bass
David Valdez: drums
Mary Kyle: Background vocals
Jack's solo has always been one of my favorite musical moments, too. And, dare I say it...thanks for the trip down mammary lane, Steve!