4 replies to this topic

[raskar42]

i was listening to the Tom Waits song - "Phantom 309" when the lyric came up - "he pushed her ahead with 10 forward gears, man that dashboard was lit like the old Madam La Rue pinball" i was curious and goggled "madam larue pinball". there were a few references to it, usually as a metaphor for something being lit up, but i found no record of any such machine. Is this just an invention by tom waits, or was he referring to a real machine?

Edited by raskar42, Wed Aug 3, 2011 12:43 AM.

[save2600]

I think it's just Tom Waits being his normal goofy self or referencing some generic cool-looking deco piece he saw or used to play somewhere. Not aware of any Madam LaRue pinball machine, that's for sure. There's a Madam Butterfly Bingo pintable and Madam Anna Sage is depicted on Bally's Old Chicago backglass, but no LaRue AFAIK. Googling her, doesn't even seem as if she was a real person of historical importance anyway. When it comes to Madam's though, first person I thought of was Dominique LaRue from Harlem Nights. Jasmine Guy was a hottie back in the day!

Great flick if you've never seen it...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097481/

[SEgamer]

I heard this song last week and was wondering the same thing. From the Balboa Theater wiki page there was a "colorful, hard-drinking, hard-swearing character Madame La Rue" that was there. Maybe Tom used the name to describe the pinball as being colorful and tough?

[raskar42]

i tend to agree that's it's a fictional pinball machine - but i found this in someone's blog:

Quote

....some older guy, meaning over sixteen and allowed to play the pinball machines..is on a roll at one of the machines, Madame LaRue’s from the look of it. That’s the one with the full-busted, vivacious women looking back from the point total/games remaining total area ..

maybe it's just an example of bad prose and a reference to the tom waits song, but there were a few older pinball with deceptions of alluring women on them, it makes me curious.

[save2600]

Perhaps Madame LaRue is an obscure music industry-insider joke describing Elton John?