Candye Kane, White Trash Girl

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to talk about Candye Kane’s music without first discussing her life or at least that of her persona (assuming that there is a distinct difference between them which, we’ll get to in a moment). So: purportedly born in the mean streets of East L.A. (Highland Park, specifically), Candye’s early life has an After-School Special quality to it, deliciously lurid and true-to-life (too true, really) in a weirdly artificial way. She fell in with gang culture and was a single mom at seventeen. She was on welfare — well, off and on. She had — and has — huge breasts (used onstage in ways — believe it or not — that you wouldn’t exactly expect). She had, and lost, a scholarship at USC. She began posing for such glossy (and not) rags as Hustler, Floppers, Mounds, Melons, and Jugs. She worked as a phone sex operator, a (presumably minor) plus-size porn star, a stripper, and a generally about-and-ahead girl in the straight-to-neon punk scene of ’80s L.A.

She was not, she would want to assure you, a victim of any sort. Rather, as she likes to say, she was working with what she had, funneling flesh-stuff cash into (mostly) musical endeavors. But although Ms. Kane was in a series of raucous country outfits early on, her musical career didn’t truly take off until 1992, when the infusion of blues, burlesque, and Texas finally came together in a simple, shimmering form of loud…dropping the whole laud-talk bit, we should probably just say “she picked up some decent players from SXSW and went to town.” Anyway. The story’s garish, gorgeous, and most likely true in every particular. Generally speaking, life really is that bad. Life really is that sordid, at least that sticky, hopefully that fun, and at best that clean. But there’s a certain paucity to this account, isn’t there? Isn’t there something rather deadening about the very familiarity of it? The realness, even? Minus the self-love glow (which: artificial tan, more or less), it’s a story heard a million times, albeit with, generally speaking, a different ending. Behind every sex worker’s hard, disinterested eyes, there are a million similar details, and if they’re all different then they’re different like snowflakes — that is to say, not in a way that really matters to us.

This might, to you, all seem rather mean-spirited, and why the hell would her life be up for summary judgment, anyway? More to the point, you might add, given that this is her life, what exactly do you want her to say? How should she introduce herself? Does she have to revise her narrative? For her music to actually get even some cursory attention? And if this isn’t, say, the whole story but carefully selected details intended to mold a nice, sexy, and (let’s not forget) brassy, persona, well what’s the fucking problem?

Fair enough. This is, after all, entertainment. But the thing of it is, though my reaction to the life and times of Ms. Kane is basically “so what?,” that’s not my problem with said life and times and all the talk surrounding it, at all. The problem with the headline-grabbing backstory is that it’s reduced her music to a sort of critical afterthought; it’s all the reviews talk about. It’s also, for the most part, what Ms. Kane herself talks about in various interviews, which brings up another problem: the whole “since someone has told me to think of them this way, I am naturally inclined not to” thing, though if I’d merely heard of them in such a fashion my reaction might be substantially different. Regardless, the focus upon Candye Kane the trading card, the interesting, the alluring, the street chanteuse, etc., devalues the one thing that actually makes her unique, the one thing that is atypical, bawdy, hard-boiled, and powerful. Which is her music.

Which is also far more interesting than any discussion of it, this one included. The music, at least, is exactly as advertised, which is a good thing. Though not scarily groundbreaking or arguably important (unless you, like me, think the pleasure of the listener happens to be important), Kane’s music is more than just a curiosity; it’s potent, it’s big, and it’s proud. Since ’92, Ms. Kane’s released seven albums and countless singles and comp appearances. Her songs have been featured in TV and movies. She’s played with some serious luminaries of rockabilly and blues. She’s dominated the scene of her adopted city of San Diego. She has, surely, made her heroes (Big Maybelle, Big Mama Thornton, Etta James) more than proud. And she’s done so with an increasingly varied lineup, including her almost-grown sons. Stylistically, she’s thrown together swing, cabaret, blues, and a little bit of glue-sniffing moxie; the result’s Vegas, honky-tonk style, complete with feathers, tits, and sweat. There may not be a name for the genre, but it’s warm and fuzzy, like a nice beer-drunk.

Today, with White Trash Girl‘s release, the beat goes on — there’s some serious fun on this record. Though not a huge departure from previous efforts, Girl is still the best of the lot. The all-dirty swagger of the title track alone is well worth the price of admission. It’s also a perfect summer song, all howling sexual menace, barbeques, clear skies, broken families, and guitar licks that sound positively salty. Unfortunately, the track’s muscularity doesn’t reappear on the album (save for some truly nasty bass/snarl on “Queen of the Wrecking Ball”), but if the toughness goes missing, the bawdiness of what follows more than makes up for it.

“Whatever Happened To The Girl” is a delight, a nice bubblegum ballad reminiscent of the sunniest stuff off of Grease. “Work What You Got,” though a bit anthemic, shakes and shimmies with the best of them. And the admirable “Mistress Carmen,” is one of the more endearing odes to a stripper/dominatrix I’ve ever heard. When Ms. Kane coos “We don’t want much / We don’t have to touch / We just want to watch you dance,” the desire is actually earnest, not seedy or even pathetic, more loving than not and suffused with longing. Of course, “We all say thank you / & please / She might even let us touch / What brings us to our knees” is a bit of teenage wish fulfillment, but what’s wrong with that? It’s refreshing to see want combined so unabashedly with hope and without contempt for the one wanting being expressed in any way.

There are some missteps. “Estrogen Bomb” is hokey — and probably intentionally so, but in this case that’s no saving grace (“I’m talking about the estrogen bomb” — no kidding, and also more like yowling). “Masturbation Blues,” despite some nice tickling piano lines, is a bit easy and a bit too easy to imagine reconfigured as a toss-off NOFX song (“It helps me to snooze / I’ve got the masturbation blues;” ouch). The piano-bar styling of “I Could Fall For You” is, at best, vacuous. Way too much vermouth. But the only real wince-worth moment occurs a the end of the record, with a straight-up rendition of “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” It’s not just bad, it’s the sort of bad that makes you want to protect the singer from the judgment of others, from specifically having the same reaction to it that you’ve already had because after all, you love the singer and can forgive the trespass (have already forgiven the trespass), but others, one imagines, might not understand the overall value of the singer’s oeuvre vis-à-vis this particular song. They might not. Truly. But here’s hoping that they do.