Warning! Explicit lyrics!

MusicFriday, May 18

click to enlarge Warning! Explicit lyrics! - Paul Wilborn
Paul Wilborn
Warning! Explicit lyrics!

Why should rappers be the only musicians to reap the benefits of those seductive parental advisory stickers? Maybe we oughta slap one of those lucrative labels on Paul Wilborn's upcoming cabaret revue — as long as it means he'll get a nice big audience of rebellious teenagers and other dirty-minded sophisticates for "Let's Misbehave Again," the latest installment in his American Songbook Series. Wilborn, singer, pianist and creative industries manager for the City of Tampa, has unearthed lyrics by the likes of Irving "White Christmas" Berlin and Cole "It's De-Lovely" Porter that prove these paragons of American popular song were the proto-Eminems of their time. (Example: In Porter's parody of his own "You're the Top," the lyric "You're a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet, you're Mickey Mouse" gets changed to "You're the breasts of Venus, you're King Kong's penis, you're self-abuse!") Wilborn's show, which features his combo Blue Roses, vocalist Denise Moore and singer/actress Eugenie Bondurant, also spotlights elegant raunch by the likes of Rodgers & Hart, Fats Waller and Harold Arlen. Tipper Gore, consider yourself on alert! Fri., May 18, 7:30 p.m., Palladium Theater, 235 Fifth Ave. N., St. Petersburg, $20, 727-822-3590, mypalladium.org.

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