Category: moving pictures

Cold Wave

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Guerre Froide – Demain Berlin


Guerre Froide – Ersatz

French Cold Wave circa 1981

A cold wave is expected to hit Los Angeles today and the chill is making it’s way through the cracks in my house.

A northern cold front is expected to move into the Los Angeles Basin early Tuesday, colliding with subtropical moisture that has been sitting off the Pacific coast for several days. Periods of intense rainfall through Wednesday will bring an additional 5 inches to coastal plains and valleys and up to 10 inches in the mountains, Meier said.

–L.A. Times

Secret Disco: ESG

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ESG-UFO (original version, slightly sped up)

Oh, you thought the whole Secret Disco thing was over, eh? Not yet. I’m hoping to wrap it up by the end of this year and I still have a few more entries. For now, there’s this well-known and heavily sampled song by the Brooklyn family known as ESG. As far as I know the fast version is the original and the slower version was the one favored by break-dancers and hip-hoppers.


ESG-UFO (33 1/3/slow version)

Amen break in full effect!

For a list of songs using UFO samples, see here.

Favorite Song of the Day: Bogus Totem Summer

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Two guys from Glasgow, Scotland made this song. A song which I really enjoy. They didn’t make this video though.
I was in Glasgow for a week once in March, it was cold. I saw a Rangers-Celtic game on St Patrick’s Day in the university pub where pints of Guinness went flying across the room when the Celtics tied Rangers. I was told by a crying drunk Celtics fan “Ya don’t understand the passion!”
The next night, a drunk Glaswegian guy talked to me for like fifteen minutes at a rave at the People’s Palace, a museum for the working class of Scotland. For fifteen minutes in a glass house surrounded by palm trees that grow out in the open here in Los Angeles, this guy went on and on and I did not understand one single word he said but nodded my head like I did until he finally yelled “Yuh doonut unduhstand a single wud I’m saying!” I’m sorry, I replied. There were so many things I didn’t understand in Glasgow like Branston pickles, for instance.

People do lots of drugs in Glasgow…when they’re not drunk. In Glasgow was the first time I met poor White people. My friend (who went by the name DJ Loco, do you know him?) said I was from Mexico because he didn’t like Americans. Someone asked me how I spoke English so well. I would not recommend eating a burrito in Glasgow unless you like white rice wrapped up in a cold flour tortilla.

This is what they sound like.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before

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Jorge Ben – Taj Mahal


Two Men Sound – Disco Samba


Rod Stewart-Da Ya Think I’m Sexy

From IMDB:

Rod Stewart was successfully sued by Brazilian singer Jorge Ben who claimed the tune to Rod’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” was too similar to his song “Taj Mahal”. Ben won the lawsuit and asked Rod to donate all his profits from the song to UNICEF.


An awesome album with Gilberto Gil includes an improvised version of Taj Mahal.

Favorite Song of the Day: Wut

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Girl Unit-Wut

I’ve been driving my housemate crazy with repeated listenings of this one. Actually, it’s probably my neighbor who is more annoyed – that deep, bouncing bass gets into the walls and rattles the wood of my 1917 duplex. And it’s meant too, it’s the kinda bass for cars with loud stereos, where you can feel the air being compressed around you as the car gets closer and you began to wonder if some kinda assault is about to begin. Yes, this song is an aural assault on your ears.

Here’s more on Girl Unit from the site Bookmat:

Solid gold anthem business from Girl Unit on the follow-up to the killer ‘I.R.L’ 12″ for Night Slugs. It would appear from his form this year that Girl Unit specialises only in BIG tunes, which is no bad thing when you’ve got a rave to rub up the right way. At the pinnacle of this particular monolith is ‘Wut’, his scorching fusion of Araab Muzik-style martial 808’s and purest R&B synthline saturation that’s become a staple in the sets of Jackmaster, Ikonika and Oneman since the summer. There’s no avoiding it’s lazered brilliance, beaming rapturous organ and that earworming vocal snippet like the light of the second coming. OK, maybe that’s a bit strong, but we’ve definitely seen nerds prostrating at the speakers when this is dropped.

Old School DJ New Wave Set

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The Los Angeles “Disco” scene of the 80s/early 90s was notable for it’s backyard party scene organized DIY style by primarily Chicanos from the Eastside and the San Gabriel Valley. Most of the DJs grew out of the early hip-hop and break-dancing crews and for the most part, their DJ sets were chockful of freestyle, electro, hip-hop and the more Latin-ized disco songs out of New York i.e. Mandolay. However, due to the popularity of local radio stations like the new wave friendly KROQ, fast, danceable new wave songs began to creep their way into some of the “Disco” DJ’s sets. Eventually, these new wave sets became standard and part of the Old School classic DJ repertoire.

Here’s a few examples. Any others?


Berlin – The Metro

You can still go to parties, quinces and weddings and watch forty-year old plus women jump on the dancefloor when the first few seconds of Berlin’s The Metro are recognized.


OMD – Electricity


B-MOVIE – Nowhere Girl


Spandau Ballet-To Cut A Long Story Short


Haircut 100 – Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)


Blue Monday by New Order


Yaz – Situation


C-Bank with Jenny Burton – One More Shot

One More Shot was strange because it was a freestyle song that was played on KROQ which firmly stayed away from any other songs of this genre.