Monthly Archives: September 2008

Top ten disco tracks for Scott Carpenter

Our musical correspondent Scott Carpenter asked me to make this.

You may have read Scott’s comments on this blog:

“I am an acolyte of jahsonic, mudd up![1], Mutant Sounds[2] and Analog Africa[3]. … for the disco, cosmic, Balearic sounds you cannot go wrong with Another Night on Earth[4] and alainfinkielkrautrock [5]. —Scott Carpenter via “[6]

Here we go.

If we assume disco started with “Soul Makossa” by Manu Dibango in 1972 we can make a top ten of disco tracks by moving chronologically from 1972 to 1981, and moving from proto-disco, to disco and touching the beginnings of post-disco.

Looking at this list after making it, I can’t fail to notice that I have not included enough of the gay thing in this list. Only “Free Man“and “There but for the Grace of God Go I” fit that bill.

Making top tens is difficult.

Marc Moulin (1942 – 2008)

Placebo (Marc Moulin)

Cover of the first Placebo album

Francophone Belgian producer Marc Moulin (1942 – 2008) died last Friday. He was 66.

His mid-eighties work with Telex is still influential to the electroclash scene; the track, “Moscow Diskow[1], was a staple for DJs Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy on the dance floors of late 1980s Chicago clubs that were instrumental in the development of Chicago house music, and house music as such. What is to be appreciated is that Telex had a great sense of humor – for example – one of their compositions was called “Temporary Chicken.”

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RaeUN20sDE&]

“Humpty Dumpty”

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHgY9Lq1Wig&]

“Balek”

Just the other day, in my hometown record store, my brother overheard Quiet Village member Joel Martin ask: “Did you find me any Placebo yet?”. Placebo’s records (three were released between 1971 and 1974) are highly collectable and priced about €125 each when I last inquired.

Serial killing was a rare phenomenon before 1900

Jack the Ripper / Der Dirnenmörder von London (1976) – Jess Franco

120 years ago today, in 1888, Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims Elizabeth Stride[1] and Catherine Eddowes[2]. Footnotes NSFW.

Jack the ripper was only the 16th serial killer before 1900, serial killing had been a rare phenomenon until then.

It was probably the first case where all the victims were photographed.

Jack was never apprehended.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_EuCSEnuKg]

Der Dirnenmörder von London

Jack was at one time played by Klaus Kinski in Der Dirnenmörder von London. Here is the trailer [3] to that film.

Not fluffy clouds

DSC01318DSC01316DSC01317

From left to right: 16:58, 16:58, 16:59.

Antwerp, from South to North

Totally unrelated, outside of a storm cloud soundbite on the same record this track came from (actually I meant the Party Time album by The Heptones) is “To Be a Lover” by George Faith,

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7rgNM0IwzI]

in a Lee Perry production but a cover of William Bell‘s U.S. hit record …

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkHO7OngDiY]

..”I Forgot To Be Your Lover[1] (1968).

Perry’s version was probably recorded on a TEAC 3340[2] in the Black Ark studio.

George Faith’s album seems to have been different from the contemporary Perry productions: no broken glass, ghastly sighs and screeches, crying babies, and mooing cows here.


Introducing Quiet Village


[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

Quiet Village is a UK-based band, who released their debut album Silent Movie in May of this year. The album reminded me of the compilation work of Andy Votel on Vertigo Mixed, one of my favorite records of the 2000s.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLkhKrEoo7U&]

Circus Of Horror” (2008) Quiet Village

Their band name was taken from the 1952 Les Baxter musical composition “Quiet Village,” first released on the album Ritual of the Savage.

Ritual of the Savage

Ritual of the Savage by Uh … Bob

Silent Movie is definitely crate digging music but not “retro“, which I’ve come to see as a derogatory term. Just like Andy Votel’s Vertigo Mixed it celebrated the art of record collecting, one of my favorite pastimes between 1996 and 2002.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta4AWh-AfzI&]

Gorillaz-Kids With Guns (Quiet Village Remix), hear the Burundi beats?

Silent Movie is bound to end up high on year-end-lists of people who known their music.

RIP Henri Pachard and World Cinema Classic #64

Henri Pachard died. Henri who? Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of him either. He was a porn film director, but judging by way of this clip of the 1984 Great Sexpectations[1], one with a sense of humor and an understanding of the film medium, which is rare in the genre,  but successfully displayed in John Byrum‘s Inserts, which to tell you the truth, wasn’t a sex film at all.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0m42FFeyDY&]

I am quite surprised by this clip of Great Sexpectations. I thought that scripted pornography was a thing of the past after the home video revolution, making way for boring wall to wall sex and killing the softcore and porno chic film industry.

Common wisdom has it that:

“by 1982, most pornographic films were being shot on the cheaper and more convenient medium of video tape. Many film directors resisted this shift at first because of the different image quality that video tape produced, however those who did change soon were collecting most of the industry’s profits since consumers overwhelmingly preferred the new format. The technology change happened quickly and completely when directors realised that continuing to shoot on film was no longer a profitable option. This change moved the films out of the theatres and into people’s private homes. This was the end of the age of big budget productions and the mainstreaming of pornography. It soon went back to its earthy roots and expanded to cover every fetish possible since filming was now so inexpensive. Instead of hundreds of pornographic films being made each year, thousands now were, including compilations of just the sex scenes from various videos.”

I haven’t been able whether Sexpectations was made for a theatrical release or was shot for video. Thanks to Joplinfantasy for uploading this.

Inserts (1975) – John Byrum

Inserts is World Cinema Classic #64. Moon in the Gutter did an article[2] on it.

Service your engine if you want it to function

Fritz Kahn @120

click the images for larger versions and credits

Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) by Marc Wathieu

Fritz Kahn was a German writer and illustrator in the 1920s who specialized in illustrating the physical processes of human bodies as though they were machine powered.

Fritz-KahnNEW by raspberryteacup

This man machine trope can also be found in Lee Perry‘s “Throw Some Water In[1] with the lines “Service your engine if you want it to function” by Lee Perry, from his album Roast Fish Collie Weed & Corn Bread .

Der mensch gesund und krank by Marc Wathieu

Additionally Horace Silver and Andy Bey recorded “I Had a Little Talk,” in which the narrator has a little talk with each of his organs:

Das Leben des Menschen... (The Life of Man). Vol. 5 by Marc Wathieu

“I had a little talk with my lungs and I’ve decided to treat them right. We made a mutual agreement and I think, at last we both see the light. ” –Bey/Silver

Man as machine by densitydesign

The Andy Bey track can be found on the Blue Note kozmigroov compilation The United States of Mind.

I almost forgot The Man-Machine, the 1978 album by Kraftwerk, perhaps the ultimate cyborg manifesto.

Icon of Erotic Art #33

Fischl Eric bad_boy by m_orfeo0111

Bad Boy (1981) by Eric Fischl

Today is Icon of Erotic Art #33 day. Remember this series is handmade, I’m not pulling this out of a list. So it was with great pleasure that I was reminded Eric Fischl‘s Bad Boy painting[1].

Bad Boy (1981) depicts a young boy looking at and older woman shown in a provocative masturbatory (a beaver shot to be precise) pose on a bed, while the subject is surreptitiously slipping his hand into the woman’s purse and presumedly stealing its contents.

The painting unites eroticism and crime, between the two is a very strong link first explored by Sade and verbally juxtaposed by Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly in Happiness in Crime, a short story first published in the 1874 collection Les Diaboliques. I hope to explore this connection later.

Bad Boy is a painting which provokes the imagination, an equal amount of events seem to be in the painting as outside of it.

I imagine the neighborhood outside the room depicted suburbian. I imagine her husband (she is married and sexually neglected) watering the garden in a David Hockney painting manner. Maybe her husband is taking a A Bigger Splash[2] in their pool. Or the same husband is entertaining his gay lover in Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)[3].

Since all figurative painting involving the human figure is narrative painting a number of questions can be raised:

What is the relationship between the older woman and the boy? Is he her son? Or is she barren? Is he a neighborhood boy who entered her house without her knowing? Is the woman aware that she is being stolen from and spied upon at the same time? Is it a game they play regularly and is the boy rewarded the money afterwards? Who is to tell?