The Murmaids
“Popsicles and Icicles” b/w “Huntington Flats”
1963, Chattahoochee Records
Everyone talks shit about vanilla, but it’s my favorite flavor.
The word itself is often used as a synonym for boring or bland. You can lead a vanilla lifestyle with vanilla interests and have vanilla sex–and no one who describes it that way means it as a compliment.
Vanilla is also typically white, like a politician’s shirt or the plain walls of an unfurnished living room or Pat Sajak–and that’s supposed to be bad, too, I guess.
You hear these slanders about vanilla all of the time, but you won’t hear ’em from me because I LOVE IT. I’m crazy about it. Vanilla is refreshing and cozy. I’m even nuts about the scent of it. Furthermore, vanilla, like me, may look very white, but it has Mexican roots (all real vanilla is derived from an edible orchid plant indigenous to Mexico; the Aztecs of old were way into it).
In that sense, I am vanilla. I identify.
Continue reading “Things I Will Keep #21: THE MURMAIDS, “Popsicles and Icicles””
