This is planned as a chapter in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). While I'm far from confident this book will ever complete a path to print, it ain't dead yet. Watch this space.
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
THE COCKTAIL SLIPPERS: St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Written by Steven Van Zandt
Produced by Steven Van Zandt and Cocktail Slippers
Single, Wicked Cool Records, 2009
In the 2012 movie Not Fade Away, fictional 1960s group the Twylight Zones look to break out of Jersey bar-band anonymity with an original song called "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre." Though the song itself may not quite sound like an authentic sixties-era nugget, it still oozes with garage-bred period verisimilitude, as appropriate a retrofit as the equally-fictitious Wonders' fabulous ersatz '64 beat number "That Thing You Do!" in 1996. It's not easy to concoct a throwback pop pastiche, threading the needle between what we think we remember and what we presume we've learned since then.
Of course, "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" wasn't quite a new song in 2012. Nor did it date back to the days of conscription, military escalation, and post-teen combos wishing they were the Yardbirds. The song was written by Steven Van Zandt, and it was originally recorded and released in 2009 as "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" by an all-female Norwegian quintet called the Cocktail Slippers.
It's tough to say what one thing Steven Van Zandt is best known for. His acting as Silvio on The Sopranos? His long association with Bruce Springsteen as a member of the E Street Band? His own records fronting Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul? As a producer, a player, a songwriter, and a vocal advocate of rock 'n' roll's past and present? As the architect of the Sirius satellite channel and syndicated radio show Little Steven's Underground Garage? Yeah, a combination of all of those roles, making Little Steven a Renaissance Punk for today's troubled times.
The Cocktail Slippers formed in Oslo around 2001, created from the wreckage of a previous combo called the Barbarellas. The original Cocktail Slippers quartet--keyboardist and lead singer Modesty Blaze (aka Lisa Farfisa), guitarist Rocket Queen, bassist Sugar Cane, and drummer Tammy Lee Sticks--released their debut album Rock It in 2001, and added second guitarist Squirrel in time for second album Mastermind, released in 2004. The group signed with Little Steven's self-descriptive Wicked Cool Records label, which reissued Mastermind in 2007. Tammy Lee Sticks beat it in 2008, replaced at the drum kit by Bella Donna. 2009 brought the single "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" and the album Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, co-produced by the band with Little Steven.
The album’s title track is a welcome earworm, maddeningly catchy, sounding incongruously bouncy while reflecting on love's uncertainty and rushing fearlessly and fatalistically toward an affair's assured and imminent end. As the singer asks her soon-to-be ex-lover if she’s still penciled in on his calendar, still the late-night call when he’s got nothing to say, one is forced to conclude that a box of chocolates won’t cut it on this Valentine’s Day.
Van Zandt's lyrics imply a lovers' drama playing out in rapidly elapsing time. Was it adventure, was it fear, or sanctuary? Modesty Blaze's voice is tinged with resignation; behind her and with her, her band of sisters seems hellbent on holding an Irish wake for broken hearts. Across the calendar pages that fly by with cruel indifference--Thanksgiving night, Christmas morning, New Year's Eve--a love that can't even evolve from pencil to ink careens toward its inevitable erasure come the 14th of February. The song flies to its foregone conclusion on a conjugal bed of the most bittersweet la la la la lala las in rock 'n' roll history.
After those faux but convincing garage rockers the Twylight Zones performed "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" in Not Fade Away, Little Steven hisself recorded the little ditty for the 2017 Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul album Soulfire. Not to slight the song's author, nor to diss a made-for-the-movies band already dealing with the handicap of never existing in the first place, the song will always belong to five women from Norway who asked if they were still penciled in on your calendar.
Who'll be the last lover standing? Whether they liked it or not, the Cocktail Slippers knew the answer to that one. La, la, la, la, lala, la....
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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/
If it's true that one book leads to another, my next book will be The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Stay tuned. Your turn is coming.
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