Kinky, freaky, wild and dangerous

Kinky Friedman has been singing the same dozen songs since the early 70s. Perhaps it’s because the sometime detective novelist and politician has known all along what the rest of the world may eventually realise: that they’re some of the finest songs ever written. A leaning towards the satirical and downright outrageous has stopped the Kinkster getting the recognition of more ‘serious’ songwriters like Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark and Tom T Hall. His appearance on famed TV show Austin City Limits was the only edition deemed too incendiary for broadcast at the time. It languished in the vaults for thirty-odd years, but its eventual release on DVD a couple of years back proved second only to Jerry Lee Lewis’ tornado-like appearance as the tautest, most compelling performance ever filmed by that programme.

What’s all this got to do with Circus Mania? Well, aside from the funny songs like the feminist-baiting Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In The Bed, Kinky has written some moving and sharply observed songs about the tawdry side of showbusiness, including the tales of down and out country singers Sold American and Nashville Casualty and Life.

One of his best compositions, meanwhile, is a dark, poetic reflection on life in the big top, Wild Man From Borneo. The loneliness of the circus freak is sublimely evoked, along with the blindness of a credulous audience: “We come to see what we want to see, but we never come to know.”

The fakery behind the glitter and the disillusion of the performers is exposed in lines like, “The tattooed lady left the circus train, and lost all of her pictures in the rain.” But so, too, is the air of danger and fascination that is part of circus’ siren call. “Don’t you get too close to me, don’t you get too near,” warns our “hairy, scary, legendary, living souvenir” of a narrator.

This is circus that bites. But then, Kinky is a singer and writer who bites, too. He sounds as good as he ever has on this mature and assured vocal and guitar live performance (Kinky Friedman’s Bi-Polar Tour - Live From Woodstock) that puts the spotlight on some of the best lyrics ever penned.

author Douglas McPherson with
Circus of Horrors founder
Dr Haze (right) and showman
Gerry Cottle (L) at the
launch party for
Circus Mania

But what of the real Wild Men from Borneo? The celebrated dwarf, Tom Thumb? The stuffed mermaids and white elephants presented by PT Barnum? The circus freaks enmeshed in legal battles to defend their right to work from disability rights campaigners who want to end their exploitation? And the modern day freak show that is Britain’s Circus of Horrors?

Delve into the world of circus freaks in Circus Mania - if you dare; one eminent critic confessed there were lines he was too squeamish to read.



Buy Circus Mania direct from Peter Owen Publishers by sending a cheque for £10 (including postage in UK; add £2.75 for overseas orders) to:

Peter Owen Publishers
81 Ridge Road
London N8 9NP

And, in the words of Kinky Friedman, may the best of your past be the worst of your future.

Read also: Confessions of a Nashville Circus Girl, my interview with Gretchen Peters about her song Circus Girl.