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Stripper Music Monday: It’s Initiation Time

Welcome to the club! (image via flickr user dustout)
Welcome to the club! (image via flickr user dustout)

Starting a new club is never easy. You have to contend with the management, the staff, and a whole new crowd of customers. It takes a while, but eventually you adapt to the new atmosphere. So long as you make it through the initiationthe unspoken way a tight group of strippers sometimes try to break the new girl in. Try to not to take it personally. Use the music you dance to as a passive-aggressive tool to protect yourselfand impress everyone in the process. Here’s how I do it.

Once I feel comfortable at my new club, I’ll begin requesting changes to my setlists. The retaliation begins when dancers giggle and request a couple of my freshly incorporated tracks into their stage sets during our shift together, as if it will get a rise out of me the way it riles them up, seeing stacks thrown at another dancer “ruining their song.” You know, “Pussy Liquor.” Their song.

When this situation occurs, I wait for my eyes to return to their proper position post-roll and gather songs from these dancers’ elementary school days, ensuring that they either don’t know them, or would never think to request them because it’s much too difficult to pout at yourself in the mirror as they’re played. The following list contains songs that aren’t necessarily obscure—but if the club DJ still used vinyl or CDs, these tracks’ albums would be the ones covered in dust.

Stripper Music Monday: Porcelain Raft, “The Way Out”

thewayoutA friend sent me this video last week, rightly pegging it as relevant to my interests. The song is “The Way Out” by Porcelain Raft, the performing name of multi-instrumentalist Mauro Remiddi. It is expansive and atmospheric electronic pop that might be a little too downbeat for a packed club but, as in the video, a perfect track for a quiet afternoon shift. The video stars a very capable pole dancer, employs an elegant one-shot format, and has a subdued mood. It’s more Exotica than Showgirls. Its events threatened to upset me, but the story has a satisfyingly dark conclusion. I reached out to director Michael Lawrence to ask him about his process. Watch the video and read our Q&A below.

Stripper Music Monday: Christmas Songs

Working the company Christmas party is inevitable when you work a lot during the holiday season. You may have to suffer Frederick’s Christmas lingerie and jokes about Santa’s lap, but don’t put up with your DJ’s Christmas song collection. If it consists solely of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You” (or, God forbid, the reboot with Justin Bieber) and AC/DC’s “Mistress for Christmas,” pull out these tracks for a change of pace.

Merry Christmas! May your stockings be stuffed with large bills.
Lloyd, “She’s All I Want For Christmas”

The Greatest Strip Club Song Of All Time: Elite Eight

stripperball

Our stripper song bracket is down to its regional finals today. Only two contestants from each quadrant remain in competition, and you will now vote to pick the regional champions. Here’s the full bracket and here’s a playlist of the remaining eight songs.

“Pony” and “Closer” continue to dominate their respective regions. Can “Drop It Like It’s Hot” credibly challenge “Pony?” “Fuck The Pain Away” has a reasonable shot at “Closer” thanks to its consistently strong showing, but I hope we aren’t deprived of a semifinal matchup between Ginuwine and Nine Inch Nails. “I Touch Myself” has pulled off a major upset of “Girls, Girls, Girls” to compete with “Pour Some Sugar On Me” for the Classics title, and the Rock region trends ever gothier as “The Beautiful People” and “More Human Than Human” face off.

Voting is open now until Thursday, when the Final Four will be announced.

Naked Music Monday: Ciara’s “Ride” as a Sex Work Anthem

Caty: Ciara’s given us many music and video masterpieces over the years: “Like A Boy” (is there anything better than her going soft butch?), “I’m Out” (a song that values ass shots, selfies, and texts as much as us harlots do), and “Never Ever” (cleverly riffing off syrupy 80s soft rock? Especially appealing to the sex worker sensibility, given how much of it we have to listen to appease our baby boomer clients). But her true hooker anthem is the unalloyed brilliance that is “Ride.”

Do not try this at home. Ciara in "Like a Boy."
Do not try this at home. Ciara in “Like a Boy.”

Josephine: Truth! Ciara’s created a plethora of handy tracks over the years.  “Goodies,” her breakout single, was played nonstop at work in its day, a perfect song for customers who just don’t understand that we won’t go home with them. The music video for her single “Work” is beautifully subversive; a band of gorgeous women dancing their asses off in a construction site, a space that is classically reserved for men only. Kind of like a strip club! But you’re right, “Ride” is easily her Unintentional Sex Work Anthem.