She'll Getchya

I love the early, bawdy and edgy Bette Midler-- in other words, before she got clean and started doing carefully produced covers of Rosemary Clooney and Peggy Lee. She was a wild tour de force and I adore pretty much every indulgent track on "Live At Last" (1977) because even when I don't like the song, I love Bette. "Long John Blues," for instance, is a hysterical, down-and-dirty blues ditty about a dentist who knows that "your cavity needs a little filling" --He took out his trusty drill/and told me to open wide/ He said he wouldn't hurt me/But he felt my hole inside...Dr. Long John don't you ever go away/ cause you thrill me/when you drill me/and I don't need no novocaine today.Hilarious, old-school burlesquey stuff whose humor and cleverness is totally absent from today's purely trashy Fergalicious crowd.So there you are laughing and loving Bette's naughty patter and gleefully filthy Sophie Tucker jokes when she hits you with "Birds," a song she starts off with jokes about its composer, Neil Young ("Neil is so mellow and laid back... I am trying to be mellow and laid back. You know, I am even going organic. Last week I ate an Earth Shoe") and then she just segues right into this heartbreaking song. Before you know it, you're sitting in a puddle remembering every heart-shattering break-up you've endured. "It's over, babe." And there she has taken you once again from the highs to the lows, and you're absolutely the better for it.