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Peaches


stewblack

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Just watching the Stranglers live in Battersea Park (gosh JJB was a great bassist wasn't he?) and it got mw wondering what the hell they meant by the line in Peaches, which seemed to be describing an anatomical impossibility.

So I looked it up. Well blow me down. I have been living in ignorance ever since 1977. It turns out that the word is actually clitares. Which I now learn is a French bathing suit.

edit: Allegedly

Edited by stewblack
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16 hours ago, stewblack said:

Just watching the Stranglers live in Battersea Park (gosh JJB was a great bassist wasn't he?) and it got mw wondering what the hell they meant by the line in Peaches, which seemed to be describing an anatomical impossibility.

So I looked it up. Well blow me down. I have been living in ignorance ever since 1977. It turns out that the word is actually clitares. Which I now learn is a French bathing suit.

edit: Allegedly

Seriously?? Is that what word was??

Man alive, I can die happy now!

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From genius...

Practically every reference to this lyrical line elsewhere states that the word present is

“clitares” which is supposed to be a French word for a bathing costume. However, there don’t appear to be any French dictionaries that actually feature such a word. Furthermore, every discussion of the word itself seems to be in reference to it as part of this song. Finally, even with the incorrect accent point, it still sounds a great deal more like the specific point of a woman’s anatomy than anything else. This would leave the sentence incomprehensible, but it would certainly fit the tenor of the song in its entirety.

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On 03/06/2020 at 14:50, taunton-hobbit said:

I was programming juke boxes for a major leisure chain when that came out -

most of our boxes were in lounge bars, so that was one record less that week..........

😎

You could have substituted Bring on the Numbiles (Cocktail version).

The story about Peaches is just mischief making by JJ or an urban myth, the story was around in the 1980s and was debunked then.

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Pretty sure the 'bathing suit' story is nonsense; as others have pointed out, there seem to be no references to this supposed French word on the web, except in the context of this tale.

Also, I recall long ago reading an interview with Hugh Cornwell where he was making his excuses for the weird pronunciation of the word in the song by saying that he just didn't know the correct pronunciation at the time.

[ Edit: found it: it's in his book "The Stranglers Song By Song". ]

Perhaps the line in the song was originally written as 'bikini', as in the radio-play version, which obviously makes much more sense, and the change to 'clitoris' was just typically Stranglers-style provocation?

Fantastic song though, questionable sexual politics notwithstanding. Pretty much responsible for me playing bass.

Edited by paulbuzz
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