Pompatus of Love
OK, so as you may possibly know Steve Miller, when he wrote the ear-assaulting, insipid 1973 song "The Joker," invented the neologism "Pompatus":
"Some people call me the space cowboy.
Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love.
Some people call me Maurice,
'Cause I speak of the pompatus of love."
There were other songs in which he coined strange terms, and apparently there is a tradition within the rhythm and blues genre of inventing new words to work into lyrics. Which brings me to the marvelously creepy bit: a 1954 song called "The Letter" by the Medallions had the lines:
'Oh my darling, let me whisper
sweet words of pizmotality
and discuss the puppetutes of love.'
The song was composed by Vernon Green as a description of his dream woman. "Pizmotality described words of such secrecy that they could only be spoken to the one you loved", Green explained. He coined the term puppetutes "to mean a secret paper-doll fantasy figure who would be my everything and bear my children". (emphasis mine)
So to recap, a "puppetute" is apparently some kind of ideal paper doll woman capable of carrying on relationships, and also bearing children. Now if that is not some kind of Arthur Machen-inspired messed up shit right there, I don't know what.
"Some people call me the space cowboy.
Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love.
Some people call me Maurice,
'Cause I speak of the pompatus of love."
There were other songs in which he coined strange terms, and apparently there is a tradition within the rhythm and blues genre of inventing new words to work into lyrics. Which brings me to the marvelously creepy bit: a 1954 song called "The Letter" by the Medallions had the lines:
'Oh my darling, let me whisper
sweet words of pizmotality
and discuss the puppetutes of love.'
The song was composed by Vernon Green as a description of his dream woman. "Pizmotality described words of such secrecy that they could only be spoken to the one you loved", Green explained. He coined the term puppetutes "to mean a secret paper-doll fantasy figure who would be my everything and bear my children". (emphasis mine)
So to recap, a "puppetute" is apparently some kind of ideal paper doll woman capable of carrying on relationships, and also bearing children. Now if that is not some kind of Arthur Machen-inspired messed up shit right there, I don't know what.