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| photo via librarising.com |
Am I the only one who has weird, almost psychedelic dreams when coming down with a cold?
So the other morning, I'm in that twilight sleep stage, no longer asleep, not fully awake, and my sickly brain is obsessing over Welsh singing legend Tom Jones. Specifically, Tom Jones and the stories of women in the audience throwing their panties at him as he performs. My mind is full of questions...
Is it something that truly happens, or is it urban legend and PR? Why Tom Jones - and not, say, 50 Cent or Aerosmyth? Do women actually remove the underwear they are currently wearing and throw them at him, or do they bring clean ones from home (perhaps in a smaller size and sexier style)? What's the protocol when women from behind you are throwing their panties and they don't make the stage, perhaps land in your lap, or even your hair? [eeewwwh] Are you supposed to throw them forward, like batting a beach ball in the stands of a baseball game?
What happens to the panties after the show - is there a hazmat stage crew that gathers them up with latex gloves? Do they get washed and donated to charity, or just trashed? All these thoughts and more, churned in my sick brain, until I could crawl out of bed and do some research.
Luckily, the Interwebs are full of answers:
From NNDB.com
During a 1968 engagement at the Copacabana Club in New York, the air conditioning was not working well and Jones, as always giving every song everything he had, was drenched in his own perspiration. Between numbers, several women in the audience offered him their cocktail napkins to wipe his face. But one woman lifted her dress, removed her underwear, and handed that to Jones on stage. He says he was flabbergasted, but he wiped his face with it, and handed the woman her underwear back. A gossip columnist was present, and after the incident was mentioned in the next day's newspaper, throwing panties onto the stage became the thing to do at Jones's concerts.
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| from tomjones |
So, that's how it got started, and became his "thing," although at this point, he's pretty much done with it. (I can see how it would become a tiresome distraction at this point.) In some venues, security will now prevent would-be panty-flingers from approaching the stage near enough to launch lace. Or the other
Few women actually wear and remove their underwear anymore. (Lazy sluts!) A handful of men are chucking their boxers these days. In some venues, it seems that the women themselves approach the stage after the shows to collect their knickers, ideally after The Voice has deigned to touch them or mop his brow with them.
A few things struck me, as I was satisfying my brain fogged curiosity.
First - the guy really does have an amazing voice. Many men don't still have a powerful voice as they age - he does. He sings a variety of material in all kinds of different styles and does it well. Yes, there are back-up singers and so forth, but that voice isn't overdubbed or "helped," it's all him.
Incredible stage presence. When Tom Jones takes the stage, he takes the stage. I could see myself giving him the panties I was wearing, or Any Thing Else He Wanted, whether we're talking young Tom or old Tom. I watched lots of clips, read lots of reviews, and nobody said in any review that he was ever "phoning it in." For a guy who's done as many shows as he has, that says a lot. Everybody who's seen a Tom Jones show ended up a fan, whether they started out one or not.
Plus I loved the way he poked fun at himself with his cameo in Mars Attacks! Or the way in some shows he'll joke that a piece of thong underwear is an eyepatch.
Now... how can I work this into a novel somewhere? I'd love to catch a Tom Jones show and write it off as a business expense!
Do you have weird wild dreams when you're under the weather, too? Are you a TJ fan, past or present? Got a panty-tossing experience you care to share?
