[BRIEF NOTE] Linda Lamb and Hot Room

[rfmcdonald]

While sorting through my mp3s last month, I found an interesting song, mislabelled. When I used Windows Media to check its origins, I found that it was the song "Hot Room" by Linda Lamb, released off of the American Gigolo CD.

The "What is Electroclash?" page says that "[p]erhaps the most convincingly BIG-sounding singer is Linda Lamb of "Hot Room" fame, an Electroclash protégé remixed by Tiga for International Deejay Gigolo. Lamb's voice has a haggard and baleful grandeur that suggests some unholy hybrid of Marianne Faithfull, Nina Hagen, Kim Carnes, Nico, coke-ravaged Stevie Nicks, and Annie Lennox, while her lyrics [. . .] are wonderfully bombastic and mysterious." One Australasian style website describes the track as follows:

It’s 1982. A hot smoky black room in NYC, lit only by neon and cigarette smoke. Giorgio Moroder and Souxsie Sioux are sitting at the bar discussing the record they are about to collaborate to make. They speak so excitedly that Souxsie has to readjust her giant Egyptian neck brace and Giorgio has to slick back his hair again to regain composure. They meet in the studio and record but the result is never published, sitting in a vault for years… or perhaps it is 2002 in NYC and Linda Lamb channels Giorgio and Souxsie, finds a sympathetic ear in DJ Hell’s International DJ Gigolos label. Which ever the case Hot Room is essential retrograde futurism which must be bought with frenzied detachment.

It's right.

For my readership's pleasure, I sat down and transcribed the lyrics as best I could. (I couldn't find them anywhere on the Internet, save certain passages which--of course--were the only ones very audible, so I've made mistakes. Find the track yourself and correct me, if you'd like. I'd appreciate it.)

butterfly coming out of lagoon
white flies hanging in the fruit of the loom
my new disguise i hide away in this lagoon
butterfly coming out of the lagoon

a plate of meatballs caught on fire
my inspiration is getting higher
pay attention did I forget to mention
a plate of meatballs caught on fire

you see, freedom's an idea that cannot be
measured
am I getting through to what I thought was
treasure
freedom's an idea that cannot be
measured
am I getting through to what I thought was
treasure

back in Moscow it was still illegal
her eyes were closed so that made it better
her life was long underneath her
back in Moscow it was still illegal

you see, freedom's an idea that cannot be
measured
am I getting through to what I thought was
treasure
freedom's an idea that cannot be
measured
am I getting through to what I thought was
treasure

okay

Bombastic, yes. Mysterious, yes, but not quite the way the page's author intended. It's still a catchy song, though.