Pet Shop Boys - Domino Dancing Star (Then And Now Mix/Domino Dancing & D...

Night Dubbin´

Dimitri From Paris and The Idjut Boys interviewed by The Village Voice about their new, 3-CD box "Night Dubbin`" that celebrates New York Disco of the eighties with strong emphasis on Francois Kevorkian

Warning!

After Edgar Schlepper unpacked the new guitar-synthesizer he had ordered for his music-shop he immediately called his friend Hans Müller and they spend a drunken night toying around with this new device. Müller, who worked at a record company must have seen the potential of their experiments and the two formed Warning. They called themselves Ed Vanguard and Mike Yonder, put on black robes and Darth-Vader-esque masks and invented (and buried) death-metal-doom-disco.

The German producer duo hit it big when their bizarre and disturbing single "Why can the bodies fly" was used as the memorable soundtrack for a 1982 episode of popular TV-crime program "Tatort" (Crime-scene).


In the now classic episode "Peggy hat Angst" (Peggy is afraid), the killer listens to the song over and over while playing bongos. He terrorizes women by playing the song over the phone late at night. He finally kills one of his victims (a fashion-model) while she is on the phone talking to a model-friend. We only hear the music blaring through the speaker overlaid with the screams of the dying woman.

On the next day, people stormed the record-stores demanding the single which soon climbed to #11 in the charts.

This spooky novelty song with its totally disembodied voices and hilariously “dark” lyrics is a lost classic. Outside of doom-metal you won´t hear a voice like that and even today "Why can the bodies fly" sounds as strange as it did in 1982.
Check the cheap video and dig the backing-girls cooing "they killed it" over the simulated puking of the vocalist!

Take KISS in their disco-phase, bury with Italo disco and Munich Machine and witness the missing link between Amanda Lear and The Sisters of Mercy rising from it´s disco grave.



Warning released two albums which some goth-heads regard as very influential.

Today, Edgar Schlepper is producing audio-plays while Hans Müller died in 2004.

Fashion Pack

It was night and suddenly I felt like dancing.
I took a cab to show me to the disco scene.

He said: "O.k., you wanna see those crazy people, hustling at the door to get into Studio 54?!"


When I was in, everybody was travolting!
The fashion queens, the models and the movie stars.
Andy snapping, Margeaux dancing with Scavullo. Liza dancing on the floor and Bianca walking through the door.

Who is In?
Who is out?
Tell me, tell me, tell me!

Who is in?
Who is out?
Famous and trendy?!


"In-People" always have to smile in "Vogue".
They only travel by Concorde.
Doing things YOU can´t afford!


They are the fashion pack. The people you see in the magazines.
They are the fashion pack. They are always smiling in their limousines.

They only come out after dark, got to keep on their trendy tracks.
They are the fashion pack.

Rockstars sniffing, while Marisa is posing.
Bianca counting her paintings, the models of Zoli´s flirting...


Hey! what's your name?
Didn't I see you in "Interview" last month, or was it the "Ritz"?
Gee, You're so famous!
May I have your autograph?
Thanks! I will keep it forever!!!



Lyrics excerpt "The Fashion Pack", lyrics by Amanda Lear, 1979

My Other Voice

Confession: I love The Sparks in theory only!

I adore their style and image, the humour, the irony, their fantastic album covers (esp. "Propaganda" and "Indiscreet") and the influence they had on everything that was good in pop-music during the last (almost) 40 years!
But with the exception of a few songs I can´t really bring myself to listen to them. It bugs me, because I really want to like them, not only because of their hilarious, epic song-titles ("Rock n Roll people in a Disco world", "I thought I told you to wait in the car", "Angst in my pants", "Lighten up Morrissey) but the fact that they are most likely the coolest, most perfect R/Pop band ever!


But then there is "No. 1 in Heaven", the album that fused pop, rock and electronic disco like nothing that was ever done before. An epic in only six songs that explodes with the last song, the title track. My favourite song on the album, and probably my favourite Sparks song is the morbid and experimental "My other voice". This strange, slow and delirious song is placed between the hectic "Beat the clock" and "The No. 1 song in Heaven". It could be considered a bit of a downer and it is probably the strangest song on an already strange album.


I always saw "My other voice" as a sort of Overture for "The No 1 song in heaven". If the latter was the one you´d hear all over in paradise, "My other voice" was the sound you´d hear while dying on the dancefloor, going through a quick purgatory and presto: angel choirs!

Now listen to My Other Voice


There is a backwards hi-hat sequence running throughout the whole song, it dazzles the mind and plays with the listeners perception of time. Elements are added one after another: A clumsy bassline, fluttering, slowed down disco percussion, ethereal voices that grow into an otherworldly crescendo that aims to go higher and higher. Shortly before the voices evaporate into thin air there is something like a demented surf guitar which soon turns out to be a vocoderized voice "humming" a half-conscious melody.


At this point in this experimental flow of ascending sounds and descending melodies the humming voice, as if coming from far away instructs us to "Listen to my other voice". Only then does the relative darkness of the track open up to Russel Maels most angelic voice. But his sweet, yearning voice says words that are more of a threat than a consolation: "You´re so independent but that´s gonna change real soon. With my other voice I can destroy this room. I´ll wrap my voice around you and I drag you everywhere. My other voice."


He then yanks the vocoder back on and gets even more sinister and demonic: You think you´re romantic. Well, I´ll whisper in your ear. I´ll be all you hear for years and years and years. You may be deaf to everything, you wont be deaf to me: My other voice..
The last syllables are pitched so high that the voice drifts off into the atmosphere. Slowly, all instruments fade away until only the backwards hi-hat is all that is left.

I can only imagine the effect this must have had on a crowd of drugged up dancers in Studio 54...

Thunder! Lightning! Frightening!

"Knock on Wood", the Eddie Floyd song was given the disco treatment by Amii Stewart in 1978. Produced by new-comer Barry Leng it has a similar devastating and in-your-face-sound as Donna Summer´s "I Feel Love".



Although, "Knock on Wood" is less electronic and alien, the frantic, storming drums and the accelerated soul-freight-train-sound shared a similar vision.
"Knock on Wood" can still light up a dance-floor. The fantastic vocals of beautiful Amii Stewart are very forgiving when pitching up the speed to every required BPM.



One year later, the producers of French disco project Sheila B. Devotion ripped off the the song for their "Seven lonely Days", which is actually an (uncredited) carbon copy of "Knock on Wood".



The always great site Freaky Trigger is currently discussing the song in their "Freaky Triggers Top 100 Tracks of all Time"-series. Amii sits comfortably at No. 32!

Automatic Everything

In 2009 everything is coming up robots, but is there still anything romantic about the man-machine?

"Terminator: Salvation" and "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" will both have giant robots smashing things up this year. The former will also have it´s own roller-coaster: "Terminator Salvation: The Coaster" will open at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California. But -strange marketing ahoy- it will be a wooden coaster. So robotic!


Then there is the news that the re-make of "Tron" will have a soundtrack provided by Daft Punk. On a smaller level, Röyksopp´s next single -a duet with Robyn- will be called "The Girl and the Robot" and most recently every politician is eager to have a photo taken on which they generously reach out their hand to shake the mechanical extremities of some robot. Say hello to our new overlords.


Robots and art are always a good combination and now someone wrote the first robo-drama for humans and robots. The machines were supplied by Mitsubishi and judging from this still-shot, the whole thing looks very serious.


All this robo-love brings a few metallic words to my head: "I am your automatic lover. beep." Let´s have a few looks and listen to Dee D. Jacksons notorious, cheesy but groovy eurobo-hit "Automatic Lover". Any song that opens with the words "Love in space in time, there´s no more feeling" and goes on with immortal lines such as "He´s programmed to receive automatic satisfaction" is a classic in my book.



Dee D is/was a clever British girl who used to produce sci-fi short films and comissioned the fabled Giorgio Moroder and members of his Munich Machine to do some soundtrack work. From there she took the idea to produce a record which turned out to be the brilliantly titled "Cosmic Curves". "Automatic Lover" and the follow-up "Meteor Man", produced with Gary Unwin and Keith Forsey in Munich became world wide mega hits.


Today, Dee D Jackson lives in Italy and runs her own record label where she reportedly releases hip-hop and trance records. I was secretly hoping that she became a robotics scientist, but running a record label in sunny Turin is certainly not a bad career choice. It goes without saying that she has a superbly awful website, complete with badly scanned photos. Must visit!

It Came from Behind the Iron Curtain

Science-Fiction was always a common vehicle to transport political and social utopia (or dystopia), despite of the political system in which it was produced.


The movies loved Sci-Fi as a great way to sell fear, paranoia or subversive concepts with the use of exciting visuals.
Sci-Fi from the Eastern Block is either hailed as great art (Tarkovsky) or it is basically forgotten like these:

"Через тернии к звездам" - (aka. Per Aspera ad Astra or Humanoid Woman / To the Stars by Hard Ways) is a 1981 sci-fi film, directed by Richard Viktorov in the Soviet Union.

Here is a short scene set to a piece of the soundtrack by Alexey Rybnikov. I love the dominant moog bass, the eerie synths in the background and the anachronistic harpsichord on top of it. Together with the strange and dreary mood of the pictures it creates a very Chernobyl-esque atmosphere. I found the last images of people standing in submerged ruins especially impressive. Since gas-masks freak me out I will probably have nightmares tonight.



Enough of doom and gloom!


You have to watch the next clip! It´s bizarre, beautiful, funny and very relaxing (thanks to the wonderful Russian language). "Moscow-Kassiopea" was a sci-fi movie for children. Directed in 1972 by the same directer as the above, it directly rips off "2001" in a hilariously fantastic way - you know: for kids! Check the colourized landscapes and the monolith, which looks like a wooden door. The aliens look like the Pet Shop Boys, ca. 1993 and towards the 7 minute mark you won´t trust your eyes when a space ship corridor turns into a trippy night-club.



Speaking of DISCO:
Here is more of "Moskwa-Kassiopeja" set to great 70s communist disco music from East Germany. I can´t say enough how utterly amazing this is! Daft Punk had nothing on this!

See kosmonaut-twinks floating weightlessly through their space-ship to the totally tripped out Moroder-esque "In den Kosmos" (into space) by Stern Combo Meißen. This was recorded in 1978, one year after "I feel love"!


Hoch im All (up there in space) is so future-positive that you´d like to travel back in time to enlist for the Russian space program.

Dream Leif

When I was made for dancing (Super Maxi Disco Version) was a big, global hit I was still too young to see a disco from the inside. So I had to keep on dreaming of Saturday nights filled with dry-ice fog, glowing plexi-glass dance-floors and percussion breakdowns.


Major teen heartthrob Leif Garrett would later rely on disco versions of rock ´n roll standards and after the disco backlash his life was spinning out of control.

He has actually released a new album recently, probably trying to cash in on the shocking mugshots that brought him back into the public eye two years ago.

But who wants to see that when you can marvel at all these pseudo-pedo-california-white-trash-pics at the height of his fame?!

I.O.U. Confusion (and some Revolution)

Five months after they dropped the bomb with "Blue Monday", New Order released their follow up single "Confusion". In between their second album "Power, Corruption and Lies" had hit the shops. While the sleeves for all three releases follow the same theme (Titles and Band-name are encoded in an obscure colour-code), none of the singles appear on the album.

For the production of "Confusion" the band went to New York to collaborate with Arthur Baker, the hottest producer of the moment.
I actually prefer "Confusion" to "Blue Monday", maybe because I heard the latter far too often. I can still listen to all four mixes of the original 12" back to back without getting bored. I love the clarity of the sound (especially the instrumentals).

The video shows the band performing on stage, posing for photos and later on their way to the legendary Funhouse Club (or is it Danceteria?). I always wonder if this is a subtle hint that the band had not that much to do during the session with Baker, who is seen working in the studio without the band and who was clearly attempting to get some of the fame as the producer for himself.
Intercut we see a young girl working in a Pizzeria and getting ready to go out to the same club.
This harks back to Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, and also works as a future echo for Daft Punks amazing clip for "Revolution 909", which also adds a italo-american touch to it´s story.

While The band is getting frisked to get into the club, Arthur Baker (who looks like a twin-brother of Rick Rubin) hands a Reel-tape with the rough-mix of "Confusion" to resident DJ Jean "Jellybean" Benitez who puts it on immediately. Everybody´s dancing.

New Order: Confusion (1983)


Daft Punk: Revolution 909 (1997)


Only a month later another British band went to Baker for a production job. "I.O.U." by Freeez is actually a far more poppy and polished take on Baker´s sound and it became one of the biggest hits of 1983 and the electro era. While "Looking for the perfect beat" and "Planet Rock" were also massive, it was the crossover appeal of Freeez that made "I.O.U." a true classic.


The video also shows the strategy that was behind Freeez: Originally a five-piece band, they are now presented as a duo. Maybe the airfare for the video-shot was too tight or management decided to chose only the two most Wham-ish looking members?!

However, one can´t help noticing that the breakdancing in the video is handed over to the white kids. The much better and talented black dancers are actually pushed into the background. "I.O.U." ends with the band entering a club, 7" white-label single in hand. They throw the single to the DJ who puts it on immediately. Everydody´s dancing.

Freeez: I.O.U. (1983)


While the New Order video works as a time-capsule offering a mostly accurate look at an existing scene, the Freeez video is already coming across as a cynic exploitation of a marketable fad.
The white kids have taken on black music and culture once more and are now literally throwing it back at them.
Interesting to see that "I.O.U." was done only one or two months after "Confusion".

Six degrees of "The Apple"

After coming home from work on friday night I still had to do some preparation work, so I switched on Turner Classic Movies hoping that "TCM Underground" would provide some background entertainment. Pretty soon I found myself totally drawn into one of the weirdest and...well, weirdest films I have ever seen.

Since I didn´t pay attention from the beginning I had no idea what cinematic attrocity was unfolding in front of my eyes and ears.
In short it was a science-fiction musical that was set in a sort of future disco-tyranny.

Since I love disco-tyrannies and I desperately wish to live in one, I pretty soon forgot about my work and concentrated on this "vision of the future 1994" ca. 1979.

My eyes were blinded by Halloween-Halston costumes, dayglo-make-up, effeminate black minions, butch muscle-demons (who were visibly embarassed to be there), a ridiculous villain (whose best scene was a single-shot press interview which he gave in five languages.), and a real monorail which was shot from all angles to impress us with the flat-out science-fiction values of the production design.

I was so mesmerized by the inane story, the abysmal acting and the "songs" that I literally had to do a double take when I suddenly recognized a familiar background. Although the film was set in future America it appeared that this dystopia looked a lot like the Berlin of 1980!

Suddenly, most of the "jewish-mother-jokes" became rather eerie: [Landlady looking at sleeping place] "Oh, my God, what happened in here last night, a pogrom?";



Did I already mention that the story takes place in the music world and offers "insight" into the record business? After the record company is controlled by the state, they force the population to buy their merchandise, wear it visibly (neat, little triangles) while dancing to their corporate disco-muzak every day!

Of course I felt immidiately guilty of my very existence!



So how is the music?! Imagine a whirlwind mash-up of all the worst musical numbers you have ever had to endure. I am talking "Phantom of the Paradise", "Shock Treatment", "Xanadu", "You can´t stop the music" and "Grease 2"! Put them in a blender, add lots of money to burn taxes and you come up with lines like these: "From New York out to L.A. Everybody does it her way. Pumpin' power by the hour: Speed! I can feel the earth start quakin' when America starts shakin'. Pumpin' power by the hour: Speed!

In the end God (Mr. Topps) descends from the heavens with a pimp-mobile, frees the opressed hippies from the tyranny of the disco-dictator and leads the sleazy bunch to paradise in one of the worst SF/X-scenes I have ever seen. The End!



After I came to my senses again, I immediately searched IMDB to find out what in the hell I just saw and why it was on TCM. It turned out that I witnessed a broadcast of "The Apple"! Directed by 80´s soon-to-be-film mogul Menahem Golan (who now claims that he just can´t remember anything about the making of the film), it was indeed shot entirely in Berlin (although I thought I saw a glimpse of Hamburg).

Actually I was a bit embarrased that I have never heard of "The Apple". Reading several comments and outside critics, I learned that it is indeed refarded as one of the best worst films ever! Rightly so.

Since I work in the film business I checked the full cast and crew only to find out that I actually know two crew-members! To make it even better: One of them is employed at my current production here in Canada!

The next day I interviewed her about every minuscule detail about the production.
It turns out that it must have been indeed a sort of a write-off project since she claims she never earned more money on any film she did afterwards.

She also told me that she got pregnant during the production and won 32.000 Deutschmark in the lottery, but she never saw the movie!
After all she has only the best memories of the productio and told me only of a few fights with the director. But I will not write about that.

I also could not bring myself to tell her about the rumours that the premier-audience hurled their give-away soundtrack albums at the screen!

So, if you ever played Six degrees of Menahem Golan and you are missing one person: Write me a comment, i am no. 5!

Read a pretty funny write up of "The Apple" at BadMovies.org. They also have sound- and video-clips! (The pics are also taken from there)

It Takes Me Higher

For car design "the future" was everything with a fin on it. For faceless studio musicians "the future" was wearing cheap alien masks and gold-lamé ponchos.

Enter Austrian "Space Disco"-Band Ganymed. Having access to the right machines and the wrong clothes at the right time, they immediately took off with their simple but effective debut single "It takes me higher".
Mixing Cerrone, Moroder, Munich Machine and fellow countrymen Supermax with embarassing Kindergarten antics gave them an instant million-selling hit. It´s camp and hypnotising at the same time and much funnier than Space, the French band that came from a similar wormhole.

"It takes me higher" is re-discovered every few years when people recognize the tight production and the full, atmospheric sound.

I used to play this over and over to my friends on dad´s brand new Grundig stereo, which was one of the first models with a wireless (ultra-sonic) remote-control. The volume- and bass-potis would move up and up, controlled by invisible hands and our ten-year old disco-minds would be totally blown by those space-warp syn-drum shots. I guess dad would have been impressed if he knew that his stereo was really capable of bringing the house down.

The album "Takes you higher" rode the space-theme to death. Lots of cringe inducing filler material ("Come on and dance with me") stood against tightly produced electro-funk like "Movin´on a disco planet", "Music drives me crazy" and great instrumental italo-space disco "Saturn".

Here is the stupendous 12" version with an edited appearance in legendary German tv-show "DISCO":


Ganymed released two more pretty mediocre albums with more half-assed space-oddities, but there were more and more earthly themes sneaking into their songs. "Dancing in a disco"(!) and "Rollerskater" must have been attempts to cash in on current fads. In 1980 not only disco was dead, but Ganymed proclaimed "Death to the alien".

They would disband in 1981. By then their bass player was a young, ambitious musician by the name of Johann Hölzel. One year later he would become Austrians biggest pop-star since Mozart: The late FALCO.

American Generation

Inspite of this:


There is still this:

You know me better (than I know Roisin Murphy)

Updated re-post:

"You know me better", one of the most impressive songs from Roisin Murphy´s "Overpowered" is now released as the third single.

At first glance, the video doesn´t look like much, but it is actually a stunning and great piece of work. And put in context with the former "Overpowered" and "Let me know", it makes perfect sense.

The whole sleeve and video concept shows Roisin wearing extremely unusual outfits in ordinary situations (the mobile stage outfit, complete with lighting-rigs and curtains should be pret-a-porter).
In the three videos she is always isolated and completely left alone with herself, almost oblivious to her surroundings.
She either walks home alone after her gig and goes to bed in full stage outfit, or she dances for herself in a restaurant which turns into a nightclub, while she is waiting for her lunch (of course none of the guests give a rats ass about all of this).

The amusing and carefree attitude is always overshadowed by a feeling of total isolation and loneliness. But - in true pop-fashion - we never know if she is happy or sad. She could be heartbroken, absentmindedly in love, or she could be totally and utterly mad!

And now, in "You know me better", we see her in multiple roles (or mind-sets) losing her mind in suburbia.
Once again we are led astray by a plethora of strange costumes and wigs. The visual style of her appearance echoes Cindy Sherman, while the setting and direction is a mixture of Douglas Sirk, R.W. Fassbinder, Ingmar Bergmann and a bit of John Waters.
Behind a fractured succession of banal moments we see hints of desperation, compulsive behaviour, loneliness, schizophrenia and paranoia.

In the end one of her incarnations dances alone in her living room. The same dog appears with different "characters" and before the camera retreats like a shameful voyeur, we sense that the meaning of the lyrics could mean something totally different.

For itself "You know me better" is a great but harmless pop-song. But this simple, yet somber video turns it into a sinister dream:

On the other hand...maybe she is only waiting for her hubby to come back home!

UPDATE: Following the tradition of her latest videos, here is a making-of. It shows that a fairly large crew was involved with this, which is rare these days.