Kid Creole

            On Saturday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed several times and picked up all the bedbugs that were waiting for me there. Then I put some fresh carpet tape on the outside edge of the mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I went to bed around 1:30 and slept fairly well but did pick up and kill a couple of bedbugs while lying there. I got up at 5:00 and after yoga checked the bedroom where I found quite a few bedbugs stuck to the tape and only one baby on the wall. 

            I finished revising my translation of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. On Sunday I’ll run through singing and playing it in English. 

            I memorized the second verse of “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s more than half the song and there’s only a verse and a half left. 

            I weighed 91.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice. That guitar tends to go out of tune during the first half and then stay in tune later. 

            Around midday I rode to No Frills where I got four bags of red grapes, one bag of green grapes, two packs of Canadian blueberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a pack of Montreal smoked meat, a tub of buttery margarine, a basket of Canadian peaches, a jug of lemonade, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie's chips. I did a price match on the grapes with the Metro price of $5.49 which is half of the No Frills price but the cashier Kalila with the face tattoo and the weaponized eyelashes put me through the ringer. She looked it up on her phone to find the date and it took about ten minutes. In my experience they take flyers down if they aren’t current. 

            I weighed 92.25 kilos at 14:30. 

            I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. I took a siesta and woke up too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 92 kilos at 17:35. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with cream cheese, marinara, tomato pesto, potato wedges, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching a compilation video with commentary of the first appearances of what became regular sketches on The Carol Burnett Show. 

            There’s a promo in which Carol stands with her cast and her first guest Jim Nabors to promote her first show. 

            They show Tim Conway’s first “Old Man” sketch when he falls down the stairs in slow motion in real time. 

            When they did the Funn Family musical it was the first half hour sketch on any variety show. There was a “Heaven” number that Buz wrote. Ken Solms still sings whenever he calls Buz, “Hello mother how are things in heaven?” 

            Carol says some people objected to The Old Folks sketch but a lot of old people loved it because it showed that they could still get it on. 

            The George and Zelda sketch started out as a parody of A Place in the Sun when Shelly Winters is nagging Montgomery Clift in a rowboat but instead of Zelda falling in the lake and drowning like Shelly, Harvey jumps in to escape. Carol says she made the mistake over time of trying to improve Zelda. She became so obnoxious that she wasn’t funny anymore. 

            It ends with Carol and Lucy as charwomen singing about having “Hutzpah”. 

            I’ve been listening to as much as I can find online of Kid Creole. My ex-girlfriend turned me on to him back in the late 80s but the only full CD I’d ever listened to is You Shoulda Told Me You Were…, which I really like. He’s a good singer, the backup singers are good, the music is funky, the songs are catchy and the lyrics are sometimes interesting. 

            August Darnell was born in August in the Bronx but there is a fictitious back story for his Kid Creole character that he was born in Montreal. He started in a band called The In-Laws with his half brother in 1965. He studied English and Drama at Hofstra University and then became a middle school English teacher. He started his music career because he was a frustrated actor. In 1974, again with his half brother, he formed Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band for which he played bass and wrote the lyrics. They combined Swing and Latin music with Disco rhythms. Their self-titled album was in the top 40, was certified Gold and was nominated for a Grammy Award. Their biggest hit was “Cherchez la Femme”. In 1979 he joined Machine and co-wrote their best known song, “There But For the Grace of God Go I”. 

            In 1980 he formed Kid Creole and the Coconuts with his wife Adriana Kaegi. His Kid Creole persona was a flamboyant and exuberant big band leader clearly inspired by Cab Calloway. Their first album was Off the Coast of Me, which I haven’t been able to find. Their second was Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places (which I’m waiting to download). I’ve just listened to Tropical Gangsters, which is his most popular album and it has some songs I recognized. In Praise of Older Women has the song “Endicott”. In 1983 he formed Elbow Bones and the Racketeers, which had a hit with “A Night in New York”. He appears as a singer in the movie Against All Odds. He’s lived in England, Sweden, Denmark, and Maui. His Coconuts are now European.