(Pschent/Creative Vibes)

Barbara Bui’s skill with a sewing machine is apparently so impressive that she’s inspired two volumes of sweet-sounding soulful ballads mixed by Emmanuel S.

Now underneath the lichen-covered rock I share with earthworms and various other single-celled creatures, Barbara Bui is about as well-known as my crack. No doubt, Babs can darn a sock and knit-one, pearl-one as well as any member of the CWA, but why does she justify two CD’s worth of deep house covers?

Apparently Babs possesses a special touch, which as any transvestite working the graveyard shift on William Street will tell you, can please even the harshest of critics.

Jimmy Scott reckons “Nothing Compares to You” taking Sinead O’Connor’s weepy ballad and applying the sort of speed restrictions that operate in Council car parks. New Conception of Jazz dedicate “Trouble” to the incomparable Ms Bui, suggesting she’s either one feisty, flirty fleshpot or else she sold the band a set of dodgy t-shirts.

Elsewhere, Babs comes across as a “Showgirl” to Megablends, resembles the much-loved, but well-trodden, tarmac of the “Champs Elysees” to Emmanuel S and inspires some rather rude name calling in To Sir With Love’s “Chicken Lips”.

Babs’ double CD got me pondering what songs I’d inspire if any of my friends (hint! hint!) or enemies bothered to get off their lazy asses to bootleg Christina Aguilera’s finest vocal efforts in celebration of moi.

If a French seamstress can inspire a double CD, then surely I can scrape together an EP’s worth of melodies?

Ignoring my as-of-five-minutes-ago former friend Susan’s suggestion that the CD open with Queen’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls”, I want my CD to have a theme. The songs inspired by Babs seem to be the only ones the artists could obtain the copyright for but happily such legal niceties won’t bother this little exercise.

The most entertaining, but also the least complimentary, effort could probably be mounted by my exs-, if the slack-jawed morons were capable of simple thought processes.

Working backwards from my most recent: BMW Driver, who once remarked that he knew I lived in Newtown from the hairiness of my legs, would probably opt for “Itsy Bitsy Spider” since arachnids also have downy limbs. He also has about as much attraction as a funnel-web spider on a toilet seat can muster.

Marcin, the Polish stripper, illegal immigrant and proud owner of a six-pack, would appreciate the irony of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” since he could never take his eyes off himself.

Aspiring drug dealer No Parking couldn’t go past the Dandy Warhol’s “Heroin is so Passe” since every after illegal substance was considered fair game. Alternatively, my Newtown roots might inspire a more indie choice such as Fugazi’s “Blueprint”, which concludes with the observant line: “Never mind what’s been selling/It’s what you’re buying that counts.”

Tour guide and occasional cross-dresser Michael might be a glowstick waving disco queen, but would surely select “A Boy Named Sue” by Country and Western legend and ex-jailbird Johnny Cash. For the various stalkers who have stolen my Optus phone bills over the years, The Police’s “Watching You” cannot be beaten.

And for the dreadlocked mistake I made in university, whose latest career move apparently is performing in a male strip revue in Canberra, I’d say he’d go for the Skyhooks “You Just Like Me ‘Cause I’m Good In Bed”. A healthy ego is a fine thing, no matter how unwarranted it may be.