Circus Comes To Town

Sara Petite is the latest country singer to turn to the circus for inspiration, with new album Circus Comes To Town. The glossy gatefold sleeve opens to reveal pictures of Petite in clown make-up; spread-eagled on a knife-thrower’s target; and, in a bizarre piece of S&M imagery, cowering bare-backed with a bear headdress in the shadow of a man with a whip.

Sadly, the title song isn’t as colourful as the packaging. Kinky Friedman's Wild Man of Borneo and Gretchen Peters' Circus Girl are much more evocative of big top atmosphere.

Sara Petite
- Clowning makes her
brown eyes blue

But, disappointing though the title song may be, this is still a darn fine album of traditionally-slanted country delivered in an upbeat and modern way by a singer with a seriously backwoods twang and a feisty two-fisted attitude.

The daring young man on the flying trapeze

Sheet music for
Flying Trapeze

In my recent post on Jumbo, I asked if the name of any other circus performer had become a noun in the English language. The answer, of course, was the French pioneer of the flying trapeze, Jules Leotard, who gave his surname to the tight-fitting outfit that he wore for his act.


Leotard was immortalised in the 1867 song That Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, with lyrics by George Leybourne and music by Gaston Lyle - although the name of the flyer in the song is the fictional Signor Bona Slang. Well, he was depicted as a cad who stole the narrator’s girl, so Leotard might have sued...

Jules Leotard
as I drew him in
Circus Mania

The story of Leotard is one of many told in Circus Mania - The Ultimate Book For Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away With the Circus.

But now you can hear the song in a new rendition by Graham Parker that is one of many Victorian songs recorded by contemporary artists such as Richard Thomson, Kimmie Rhodes and Christine Collister on an album called The Beautiful Old. For more info go to www.thebeautifulold.com or preview the disc at CD Baby.

All together now:

"He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young man on the flying trapeze..." 

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.

Gretchen Peters' Confessions of a Nashville Circus Girl

 
There’s more to life than circuses... or so I distantly recall. When you spend a year writing a book about circus it tends to become a case of clowns to the right of me, elephants to the left, here I am stuck in the middle with Gerry Cottle.

When I’m not writing about circus, however, I write about music. Sometimes I even combine the two, as I did when I got to interview the massively successful American songwriter Gretchen Peters about her new Best Of, which she titled after her favourite song... Circus Girl.

Here’s an extract of my feature in Country Music People, in which Gretchen explains her affinity with the girl who walks the wire in the centre ring.

She even put a drawing of a big top and a Victorian trapeze flyer on the cover.


GRETCHEN PETERS - Girl On A Wire

by Douglas McPherson

I’ve witnessed some emotionally charged musical moments in my time...

But the only piece of music to give me the full lump in the throat, grit in my eyes, pass me the Kleenex, excuse-me-while-I-just-hyperventilate-a-bit effect, is one I heard a couple of weeks ago. You might not recognise the 100-year-old melody by its title, Entrance of the Gladiators, and you’ve almost certainly never heard of its composer, the unfortunately surnamed Julius Fucik. But if I said “circus music” to you, I guarantee you or anyone else on the planet would be able to dum-dum-dummy-dummy-dum-dum-da-da it to me.

My visit to the Great British Circus
- Britain's last circus with elephants -
where I first heard the famous circus theme music
Entrance of the Gladiators
at ringside with the smell of horses and camels
in my nose

Next to Happy Birthday To You, it must be one of the most widely known pieces of music ever written. It should sound incredibly naff.

Quite why it hit me so hard and unexpectedly was probably because I was sitting in a big, cold tent, with trampled mud and grass beneath my feet, a circle of golden sawdust in front of me, and a whiff of camel wee in the air.

The circus can have that effect on you, as Gretchen Peters found when she took her young daughter to a big top for the first time.

“My daughter was maybe seven or eight and I realised she was getting to that age where she was sort of becoming jaded about things. The circus came to town and I wanted her to see it while she was still young enough to get the magic of it, before she grew up enough to see through it.

“She loved it. But what I really wasn’t prepared for was how wonderful and evocative it was for me. I was really, really inspired by it. The tawdriness as well as the magic. The juxtaposition of both of those things. I went home that night and wrote Circus Girl.”

‘I work the high wire in the centre ring,
Defying gravity, that’s my thing...’

"Defying gravity in the centre ring."
The death of real life
circus girl Eva Garcia during her
high altitude performance at
the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome
inspired my book
Circus Mania

When she came to compile her new Best Of, Gretchen had no hesitation in calling the album Circus Girl.

“There are very few songs that you can play for 15 years that you don’t get tired of at some point. Even the ones that sometimes people really like, you need to give them a rest. But that is one of the very few songs that I have never got tired of playing.

“I’ve always thought it was my most autobiographical song. The character is so very close to home. As a metaphor for the music business... I just thought that metaphor was irresistible.”

‘Believe me darlin’ it’s a lonely world,
It ain’t easy for a circus girl.’

Gretchen is best known for writing Independence Day, a 90s hit which remains the career song of country superstar Martina McBride. But Gretchen is a good singer in her own right, and her Best Of is recommended to all fans of thoughtful singer-songwriters.

I certainly think she’s nailed the life of a girl in the big top. Here’s how Circus Girl ends:

‘So I climb that ladder right on up to the sky,
I don’t look down and I don’t ask why,
And just for a moment I’m on top of the world,
Just for a moment... I’m a circus girl.’

Circus Mania
"Brilliant"
- Mail on Sunday

To read about real life circus girls, and boys, and clowns and freaks and animals, read Circus Mania - The Ultimate Book For Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away With the Circus. Just £10 including postage in the UK (add £2.75 overseas) from:
Peter Owen Publishers
81 Ridge Road
London N8 9NP

Click here to buy Circus Mania from Amazon.