Weird weekend Part 1

Lurking down a back road off the Bethnal Green high St is the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. This curious venue has quietly carved out a niche for itself as the place to go to when you want to slip on your spats and your zoot suit and cut a rug to some big band sounds (well you might!) They host a random confection of burlesque evenings, Mexican wrestle-mania and lindy hops and have a fascist door regime, so don't even think about coming in jeans. Ahem, having changed out of my jeans into a pair of borrowed white trousers, then back into my jeans again after the trousers barely made it past my knees, I entered the fray. Hep cats and cool chicks were frantically twirling each other around to my Father's record collection and even Tortured Artist appeared to have dressed for er, some sort of occasion. Admittedly, a white cable knit sweater complete with leaping carp motif artfully plashing across the back, worn together with Rupert the Bear trousers spattered in paint, probably comes from an era time has gratefully forgotten.

Beside the rather ordinary bar was a groovy cocktail lounge and instant tattoo parlor (hence the clawed throat) First act of the night was the fabulous Puppini Sisters a trio of doo wop dollies doing it (or wopping it) in a forties Andrew Sisters stylee, right down to the auburn, brunette and blonde hair. They belted out a number of standards before doing their own re-interpretation of Beyonce's 'crazy in love' - a bit of a thing of theirs it seems, having turned a number of heads with their woozy bluesy version of Wuthering Heights. Although they (unfortunately) don't strip, there's a burlesque air to the performance, those outfits are so Dita Von Teese I was kinda hoping for a costume change and an encore, just to see what they'd wear next. Hell they could have changed right there, nooo problem. While King groovy and the Hornstars swung it good, there was no replacing the lovely sisters in our hearts and we left shortly after. The rest of the night was spent entertaining a man on the edge and trying to sleep in the hull of the Mary Celeste while it rounded The Cape of Storms, but I shall elaborate further in my next post.

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