Scatman Mailer
May 19, 2005
Last night over at Sam Barry and Kathi Goldmark's house (of Rock Bottom Remainders fame - Sam is my piano teacher), I mentioned in passing that I was a fan of Norman Mailer. Hearing this, Kathi promptly disappeared into the back office to return with a copy of Stranger Than Fiction, a CD that Kathi conceived and produced a few years ago featuring Golden Throat-worthy performances from the likes of Mailer, Amy Tan, Dave Barry (a.k.a. Sam's brother), Roy Blount Jr, and dozens of other famous writers (or, "wrockers").
Highlights include Stephen King's scratchy falsetto on "Bo Diddley," Amy Tan's intimidating throat-warble on "These Boots Are Made for Walking" (surpassed only by the accompanying picture of her decked out in patent-leather thigh boots and goth-metal chains), a surprisingly tuneful Leonard Maltin singing "Act Naturally," and Maya Angelou elocuting her way through a peppy rendition of "Right Said Fred." With kazoos.
But nothing on the CD yielded anything like the sheer jaw drop I experienced when Kathi treated me to her private outtake from the recording session with Mailer, singing a lyric of his own composition so balls-out filthy that I shudder to even try reproducing it here. Let's just say the leitmotifs included a reference to every kind of bodily excretion you can possibly think of, and then some. Listening to Mailer's scatological tunesmithing - giving new meaning to the term "scat singing"? - I found myself feeling equal parts awed and appalled. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how I feel about Mailer.
File under: Ephemera
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