I Will Revise: Florence Foster Jenkins Is The Patron Saint Of Simp's Kind Of Bullshit Garage Band Delusion

If any of Duncan Black's Eschatots are reading this I hope they remember this the next time Stupy is bragging about how well his digitally enhanced, vanity-recorded garage band tapes are doing on the bullshit popularity listings on the obscure websites that narrow-cast them to an audience who aren't listening as they play online.  

Weinstock's recollection of Madame Jenkins's visits to the Melotone studio made their way into the liner notes of the long-playing compilation on 33 rpm released swiftly after Florence's death.  "Rehearsals, the niceties of volume and pitch, considerations of acoustics - all were thrust aside by her with ease and authority.  The technicians never ceased to be amazed by her capacity for circumventing the numerous problems and difficulties peculiar to recording.  She simply sang; the disc was recorded."  She also told a story which illustrated the artiste's unshakable self-belief.  It featured cameos for two of the great sopranos from the olden age of opera - Frieda Hempel, the diva of Leipzig who was a favorite of the Kaiser, and Luisa Tetrazzini, the Florentine prima donna renowned as 'the queen of staccato'.  Lady Florence reported to the studio that, at a recent soiree of one of her friends, all of them music lovers, [they] listened attentively to recordings of the Magic Flute aria by Tetrazzini, Hempel and the redoubtable Jenkins.  Unanimity of opinion, Mme Jenkins informed us with modest hesitancy, was that the latter recording was without a doubt the most outstanding of the three.'

[Her accompanist, Cosmo] McMoon told a similar story of Florence putting records on the Victrola when she hosted in the Seymour Hotel. Her guests were asked to compare her with the great coloratura soprano Amelita Galli-Curci who was a hugely popular recording artist.  "She would put on The Bell Song" by herself and Galli-Curci, and then she would hand little ballots out and you were supposed to vote which one was the best.  Of course they all voted for her, and one woman once voted for Galli-Curci so Madame said, "How could you mistake that?  My tones are so much fuller than that!"  So she really didn't hear the atrocious pitches in these things.  She used to sit delightedly and listen for hours to her recordings."

Florence Foster Jenkins 
by Nicholas Martin and Jasper Rees  

I can well imagine one of her parties being a bit more entertaining than a few hours at Eschaton, with a lot less vanity being displayed at La Jenkins' Salon.   I doubt she ever asked people to buy stuff at Amazon for her.