Xeroz (or Zerox), Polaroids, copy and pasting…songs about mundane tasks and objects made all the more interesting by a bit of guitar and an electronic beat or two.
Adam & The Ants – Zerøx (1979)
This was a previously unreleased video, towards the end there are some strange outakes. Perhaps it was a bad copy? har har. Early Adam Ant sounds fresher than the later pop-ier, pirate themed stuff. Another favorite is his take on bondage, Whip in My Valise.
Ruth – Polaroid Roman Photo (Synthwave France, 1985)
Ruth was an 80’s synth/artsy new wave group from France consisting of Thiery Müller, Phillippe Doray and Ruth Ellyeri. From what I can gather, they only released one full-length LP, also titled Polaroid/Roman/Photo on the ultra-obscure Paris Album records. The record was out of print for quite some time, but has since been reissued by UK label Infrastition Records
Plastic Operator – Folder (2005)
As someone who does a lot of blogging, I think this tune could be a potential theme song. Always copying and pasting, editing, cropping…come to think of it, isn’t love the same?
Plastic Operator are the perfect pop group for our times. Internationally minded, technically savvy and most importantly blessed with the ability to sculpt sublimely soulful pop moments from raw digital clay, Plastic Operator may exist in a parallel space to the tired pop pap in the Top 10, but what a wonderful space it is.
Dog hair causing tears to form, rooms full of pedigreed blue bloods, cycles that have doomed many to defeat, greenery succumbing to invading hordes, racist dogma, austerity measures and insecurity. The tales of high summer.
This is why Mexico beat France in their last World Cup game. All the talented French kids (with berets!) are busy dancing tecktonik in their parent’s basements instead of paying attention to football.
I’ve discussed Chalga a few times on this blog. It’s one of my musical guilty pleasures. The music is crass, perverted and has become the gooey pop stuff of Bulgarian airwaves. At one time though, Chlaga was known as the Gypsy peoples’ music, traditional with a bit of modern kick. Lots of the newer Chalga is smashed together with American soul sounding runs, reggaeton and hip-hop. And like the genres it emulates, it’s all covered with that characteristic over-produced glossy sheen that somebody, somewhere finds appealing.
In the quest for new sounds to mix with, this Chalga song has moved into a musical sphere that one can proudly listen to with the windows down in the car. It’s a stripped down, old skool bumpin’ beat layered over with a Greek folk tune –Tha Spaso Koupes– plaintively sung by one of Bulgaria’s top pop artists, Sofi Marinova. Add to that some real Gypsy sounding Balkan brass and you got my choice for video of the week!
Eleftheria Arvanitaki – Tha Spaso Koupes
The original Tha Spaso Koupes
At this point, if you are still a reader of this blog, you have to know that my music tastes are sometimes not enviable. I put up any darn thing I like, I’ve always tried not to follow genres or rules. My hope is that there is at least one other person in the world that likes these songs and hopefully, that person would like to be my friend. And then me and that friend can have a dance party and jump around singing “Ramba Ho!”
Hindi+Secret Disco=Song of the Day!
So the second part of my Chalga series was gonna be on Reyhan, beautiful, beautiful Reyhan…The chola looking Gypsy/Roma singer from Bulgaria who sings in Turkish, the language of Muslim Roma in that country. Sadly, she died in 2005, in the prime of her super-stardom, the victim of a tragic auto accident. Men still weep for her on Youtube.
It’s taken me forever to write my post on Reyhan because I felt it deserved something extra special, it might be done one day…
Lime-Babe Were Gonna Love Tonight
Considering the term “Chicano Oldies” is accepted and in popular use, I’d like to create a genre called “Chicano Disco.” Some favorite examples above.
In Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco, author Peter Shapiro explains how the influence of the European musicians’ love for synthesized music fundamentally changed the essence of dance music. Whereas disco used to be based on funk, live beats and real drummers bands like Kraftwerk showed there was another way to create a rhythm. The synthesizer with it’s fake handclaps, hi-hats and bass drums helped create a whole new genre of disco music: Hi-NRG.
Hi-NRG had a huge following amongst Mexicans and Chicanos in the Los Angeles area in the 1980s. It was the musical fuel for an amazing DIY scene of DJs, backyard parties and dance clubs that ruled over large sections of the city. It’s a movement that isn’t well known outside Chicano circles in Los Angeles, back then most people could not care less what was going on in our communities.
I wasn’t part of this scene but my brother was a DJ and a member of Boyz in Kontrol, one of the hundreds, if not thousands of party crews that existed at the time. The crews were responsible for organizing parties, dance contests, DJ battles and cruising (cars) spots. While punk may get a lot of credit for being a DIY scene, the disco scene of 1980s rivaled punk in it’s “let’s organize ourselves” philosophy. Unlike punk it wasn’t a political choice, the self organization was done out of sheer necessity. Our neighborhoods offered very few forms of entertainment or diversions for youth.
Towards the late 1980s, the backyard parties started attracting the attention of the authorities, and by using the excuse of minor incidents of violence, these authorities begin to systematically shutdown and target the parties. Some involved with the scene said this heavy handedness by LAPD and the sheriffs department helped to create the revival of cholos and gangs on the Eastside. During the height of the disco scene, to be a gangster or cholo was the epitome of being uncool. Kids would snicker at the site of old veteranos riding on the bus with baggy pants like some anachronistic figure of the past. The disco scene had Latino kids going from neighborhood to other neighborhoods across the city to attend parties and to battle each other on the dance floor. The rivalries that existed and any tension were quickly diffused through dancing and partying. The violence that occasionally happened at these parties was mostly due to fights over girls/boys and the usual love dramas.
When the authorities started cracking down on the party crews and cruising, the essentially were forcing teenagers with lots of energy to stay home. And who was waiting for them? The old gangs who provided them with diversionary outlets. Many of us saw this process play out in front of our eyes. I’m not saying this was the only catalyst for the upsurge in gangs but it was a significant one and gives us a few clues to how we can deal with our current gang problem. The more you try and control youth, the greater the eruption of chaos. Young people need something to do, they have a lot of energy and excitement for their new world that cannot be bottled up and funneled into a path that adults approve of. Let the kids party!
Hi-NRG is still popular among successive generations of backyard partygoers. Go to any baptism, quinceañera, wedding or birthday party on the Eastside or in the San Gabriel Valley and there will be at least one DJ set devoted to the pantheon of Chicano Disco aka Hi NRG.
I think Sunday is a good day to post this song because if I believed in the sacred, this song would be it. This music is what religion should be: visceral, calling to a power outside and within oneself. It is dripping with magic.
A couple of months ago I traveled to Guanajuato, MX with friends and through one of these friends, met the drummer for the only punk rock band in the city. We spent the night chatting in this cave-like bar filled with hip youth from the nearby college. It was a warm, gothic-y place lined with red velvet wallpaper and playing the latest indie tunes from around the world. The energy of this punk rock guy, appropriately nicknamed Godzilla or Godzi for short, was intense and heavy. So looming was his presence that his entrance into the bar caused the students sitting around us to look nervously over their shoulders. He could make the rock walls of the building we were sitting in feel threatened, so formidable was his presence.
With a beer in hand he began to tell one story after another, breathlessly, continuously, hours passing quickly, each story revealing his wry sense of humor and unexpected wisdom. Finally, in a rare pause of the conversation, I asked him if he’d ever been to Veracruz. His eyes glowed for a moment, remembering. He said in Spanish: Yes, that is a beautiful city, full of magic. Magic? I asked, Real magic? Not magical? Magic, he says. There is magic in the earth there, it is a special place. Different cities in Mexico contain all kinds magic, some places it is stronger. For instance, near Leon there is a town which is very dark, there is bad magic there. You don’t want to visit this pueblo…but I go occasionally. A small moment of silence passes and he grins, leaving me to wonder what he does in the bad magic pueblo. Then his words rumbled off into a subterranean place of slurred speech and I sank back against the crumbling rock walls wondering how long the night lasts in Guanajuato.
I immediately thought of this story when I heard first heard this song, there is magic here. It is up to you to decide what kind of magic it contains.
I got the voices of many in my throat
the feet of a frog and
the tail of a goat
According to book The Secret History of Disco and comments left on the Youtube page for this tune, this song was popular at early disco clubs in New York. It was part of a musical trend that included other African inspired music like Babatunde Olatunji.
