Long loved this silly - yet searing, through the poisoned conviction supplied by the performance - song by The Renegades. A Brit Beat combo, but this tune feels more like a US garage punk record. It seethes with the desperation for "satisfaction" - sexual resentment bubbling up from the hormonal volcano within - that marks the greatest songs of the era. The post-apoc scenario is ludicrous: society's collapsed, there's only 1 man left alive, him - plus 13-strong harem at his beck - but he stills needs a couple of chicks to earn 'em his money (there's still a functioning economy?) and another to buy him a diamond ring (why not just dig through the rubble of Hatten Garden, or Tiffany's?). Yet somehow the bitterness underlying the fantasy makes it real.
And then the punchline - "here's the joke, when I awoke, I had to get to work on time" - he's just a working stiff nobody, lucky if he can get the attention of 1 woman...
What I didn't know, until just now, is that it's a cover - the original "Thirteen Women and One Man" was by a jazz guitarist called Dickie Thompson, who recorded it himself. Then Bill Haley and the Comets did a better known version, with lyrics altered to reflect the recent H-bomb test on Bikini Atoll, although it was not a hit. However on the B-side of "Thirteen Women (And Only One Man in Town" (as it was now titled) lurked a number that became much better known: "Rock Around the Clock"
