A hater:

for the love of god you're a 15 year old suburban white-boy, not some ghetto
gangbanger. I hope this website is a joke because if it isn't than you need
to 1) look in the mirror and realize you're not black 2) stop with the lame
"gang signs" 3) pawn some of that jewelry and buy yourself a bike cuz that's
all your 15 yr old ass can drive 4) realize that you're not hardcore or
intimidating in the slightest bit 5) learn how to spell 6) stop with the
dumbass nick names.
for the record i think that you're in the middle of some terrible identity
crisis, and you should go to the ghetto and try "pimpin" with some real
gangsters and see how long you live.

sometimes the truth hurts

So it's only natural that they would gravitate towards a cover version of Irving Berlin's widely criticized homage to Native Americans "I'm An Indian Too" from Annie Get Your Gun. By twisting the lyrics of a white girl ("Annie") trying to become an "Injun", sung by a black woman singing for the white disco scene, the song transcends it's original meaning and heads into the metasphere. With it's themes of inter-racial sex and "hilarious" name calling (could i be more dripping with sarcasm) the original was ripe for the Darnell/Hernandez treatment.

Just like Battle Axe, Hatchet Face, Eagle Nose
I'm and Indian too!
With my chief in his teepee
We'll raise an Indian family
And I'll be busy night and day
Looking like a flour sack
With two papooses on my back
And three papooses on the way

So maligned is the song nowadays, that it was completely left out of the 1999 revival (starring Bernadette Peters) due to its "insensitivity".

And that's just the way Darnell, Hernandez and "Don" Armando Bonilla liked it! Don Armando's 2nd Ave Rhumba Band was a one-off that members of Dr. Buzzard's Original Savanah Band put out as a sort of "cowboys and indians/old west" meets disco theme. Singular in that oeuvre, the albums pastiche is laid on a bit thick, and as such, it suffers from a bit of tongue-in-chic overload.

It's no wonder that, even though it wasn't the promoted single from the album (that prize inexplicably went to the just O.K. "Deputy Of Love") it has become the song of choice for disco loving DJ's the world over.

Singer Fonda Rae and the rest of the Rhumba Band even donned indian outfits to record the track, that on the album sits at around three and a half minutes, but in it's full 12" glory comes in at nearly eight.

To sample the track go here.

PS. The original version of the song "I'm An Indian Too" was sung by the incomparable Ethel Merman, who revived her original roll on broadway 20 years after her debut in it.

There is no good quality Youtube video of Betty Hutton from the movie singing the huge show-stopping song and dance number that is "I'm An Inidan Too", so may I suggest you go out and rent the movie to get the full impact of the song.

If you can't do that there are two different low quality Youtube videos of Judy Garland performing the number before she was eventually pulled from the project due to "ill health."

Now... can you see why the gays might dig this song?

Adriano Celentano's "Prisencolinensinainciusol" is rap before there was rap. Disco before there was disco. Italo before there was italo. Fosse, well, fosse was around, but I'm not sure he would have ever seen or heard this track.

One word: AMAZING.

The internets are abuzz right now with the discovery of this incredible video from Italian TV circa 1973.

British DJ savant Greg Wilson has released (or should I say re-released, since his original edit of this track was made in the '80's) his re-edit, and holy fuck did he turn up the bass!

Anyways, enjoy the above video, the likes of which you'll never hear anywhere else.

Ciao!

I’m pretty sure they have hooked up, or they want to hook up. They look at each other all the time while we’re playing. I know something is up. It totally messes with my headspace and my singing. I’ve been dating the girl for eight months. The band got the bass player through an audition about two months ago. I guess we’ve become friends (the bass player and I). But this is a deal breaker.

The bass player is a Ned's Atomic Dustbin fan. Before he was in the band, I remember my girlfriend saying she hated Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. The other day, she got a “Best of” Ned’s Atomic Dustbin CD from Amazon and has been listening to it all the time. I’m so sick of this. It stinks because I really like the girl. What should I do?

This singer should:

Also, I have yet to read Aniruddh Patel's Music, Language, and the Brain, but this filmed lecture is interesting if you can tolerate the dorky library music intro.

Finally, is anyone besides me experimenting with YouTube mixing? It's nice to hear and see these cats playing a theremin - once. If you've got the bandwidth, play 'em at the same time or stagger the play buttons here or open in multiple tabs and just as Roy Clark used to say for his TV ads for the Big Note guitar, "Just give a little strum and hey! You're making music!" (or at least something very strange).

The Pointer Sisters - Send Him Back (Pilooski Edit)

Gene Balk from The Emerald City Soul Club. came up and asked me for all the info I knew about the edit. He was amazed at how much energy it had. After telling him everything I knew about it, mainly that I bought it purely on the basis of it being a Pilooski edit (and I loves me some Pilooski!) and that it was by The Pointer Sisters (duh! of course he already knew that!), but that I'd never heard it before I bought the re-edit. So it had to be rare, as it wasn't on any of my early Pointer Sisters albums.

Gene, then, became the font of information for me. He told me it was originally a b-side to an early single on Atlantic, "Destination No More Heartache", from 1972, that really went nowhere for the sisters. Meant to capitalize on the Northern Soul craze, it didn't garner many fans at the time. In 1975, though, the northern soulies re-discovered the b-side, "Send Him Back". It was even played in the legendary Wigan Casino soul night by Russ Winstanley and Richard Searling where it appears it went as high as 17 before falling to 19, and one would imagine, falling off the charts all together.

Needless to say, because of its original un-popularity, the single is rare. A copy sold in the middle of may on Ebay for $40. Most likely its a bootleg copy, as an original would sell for around $200. I couldn't find any copies on Gemm at all.

But hey, you guys are all so lucky, 'cause Gene was nice enough to share it with all of us!

The Pointer Sisters - Send Him Back

Tonight, STUDIO at HAVANA is gonna be a little different. Mainly because Monsieur American Athlete is in gay Paris! That leaves just me and our guest the aforementioned Gene Balk.

Gene is awesome! He has a great collection of records, and on the nights he DJs STUDIO he brings stuff that he usually doesn't get to play at the Soul Club nights, mainly the early proto-disco from the late-'60's/early '70's. It meshes beautifully into the later era disco that both TJ and I play during the night.

So join us!

Send my baby back!

Tralla Tralla Boom Boom!

Veronika Fischer & Band get a beautiful funked out re-work here on this brilliant re-edit by German DJ Hans Nieswandt (aka Edith Honnegger). I have no idea what the hell there on about something about "driving the course"?

Who wouldn't want to get down to some groovy-ass German funk? Who I ask??!?!

I'm sure this will get played out tonight somewhere funky and soulful!

Veronika Fischer & Band - Hey, Wir Fahr'n Mit Dem Zug

I love Demis Roussos' disco tracks. I was lucky enough to come across his albums Magic and Demis Roussos, yestereday, all from the heyday of the 70's, a very prolific time for Mr. Roussos.

His voice is so over-the-top and dramatic it's no wonder many a Brit on holiday came home with his albums in the 70's when leisure time and better economics finally afforded them the luxury of travel outside their own country. It must have been so exotic in comparison with their milquetoast 70's pop.

Here is Demis doing some of his best disco tunes. I never really see this AMAZING solo cover of the track he did to help launch Vangelis' solo career, "Let It Happen", around. It is totally incredible. It sounds completely modern. This is the best version of this song.

Check out the cover art for Demis' self-titled album. The ladies in his beard are a brilliant touch!

I think he needs a shave. He's got something growing in there....

Before 1968, when a new version of a piece of classical, and specifically baroque, music was produced, it often happened in the same way. Example:

A) Take a piece of baroque music, written for the harpsichord, transcribe it for string quartet, woodwind sextet, small string chamber orchestra....

B) Record, and release album with copious notes on how you came to make what decisions, in which instrument would get to play which lines, hardly varying from previous work done by similar artists....

C) Wait for the stodgy classical world to throw accolades upon you for your perseverance and hard work in the challenges of transcribing and recording a piece that had already been transcribed and recorded thousands of times before.

All that changed in 1968.

Wendy Carlos, then going under her given birth name, Walter Carlos, with the help of Robert Moog, recorded and released Switched-On Bach. Using multiple tracks to record all the parts of the various pieces from Bach's cannon, Carlos created one of the first versions of classical music performed entirely on sythesizers.

At first, deemed a gimmick by the classical community, that same community as a whole must have been aghast as Carlos went on to become the first classical artist to have an album of work go Gold (sell 500,000 copies) then Platinum (1,000,000 copies) in the following years. Switched-On Bach went on to win three Grammy awards in the classical music categories, one of which was Best Classical Album, the classical category version of "Album Of The Year".

Upon first hearing these works, many received them as "gimmicky", and in fact to this day some people see them as oddities (just look at the reviewer for Amazon.com who calls her work "quirky", "hilarious" and "wacky"). But while many in the classical world stood aghast at what Carlos had done, bringing, essentially, a pop music instrument in to the lofty world of classical music, others valiantly stood up for her and her recordings. Glenn Gould once wrote of Wendy's Bach recordings (incidentally on the back of her Well Tempered Synthesizer LP), "Carlos's realization of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto is, to put it bluntly, the finest performance of any of the Brandenburgs--live, canned, or intuited--I've ever heard."

Special note should be taken of the fact that at the same time Wendy Carlos was releasing her first seven albums,all released under the name Walter Carlos, she was hiding the fact that in 1967, before Switched-On Bach, the first album, was released, Walter had had sex reassignment surgery, becoming Wendy. Because essentially these were recorded works that took hours of studio time, but could never be performed live, the secret stayed safe. Until 1979 when Wendy came out with the released the double album of all six Brandenburg Concertos, Switched-On Brandenburgs: The Complete Concertos under the name Wendy Carlos.

Carlos has a fantastic essay on her personal website titled "On Prurient Matters" which details her feelings about anyone dwelling on this topic alone. (Interesting note to Seattle NPR liberals: the essay includes a link to a list of people on Wendy's Hall of Shame for their Cruelty in discussing matters of gender which includes the names Ira Glass ["Demonstrates sexual hang-ups, and little or no empathy"] and Sarah Vowell ["Has a sexual axe to grind, and needs sensitivity training"]) And by Wendy's own advice I shall leave the topic at that.

Well, except to say if you 'd like to read a fantastic essay on electronic music and sexual transgression you should pick up Peter Shapiro's Turn The Beat Around and read chapter 3, "Like Clones And Robots That We Are" which nicely sums up why so many "outsiders" come to electronic music to find community.

On to the Brandenburgs themselves.

Wendy Carlos' recordings are spectacular. They don't just mimic the sounds of a string or woodwind orchestra. They clearly define each line, each phrase, each note with a clarity that is truly phenomenal.

Yes there are "violin"-like and "harpsichord"-escque sounds and "flute"-like passages, but while these are pleasant enough, Carlos also surprises by throwing in phrases performed with gusto by angular synths that surprise and delight in their reverb and force, chewing into movements giving them that slightly spaced out effect that sends Bach from well-grounded and dated sounds into the futuristic space that Carlos carved out for herself.

Add to this that the Moog synthesizer was not the most predictable instrument to play(to this day some Mini Moogs are often found to have tuning that is slightly off-pitch), sometimes requiring multiple tracks to just get "chords". Anyone who has fooled around with Moogs knows they don't like legato sounds very much and often needed to be forced to except fingers moving from one key to the next.

Never mind the limitless ability of the synthesizers to "create" synthetic sounds in the first place. The number of choices for sound and the way they were made must have been daunting in itself, add to that the performance and production of such a monumental work and you can get a feel for what an astonishing album this was to create.

The clarity and beauty with which these concertos speak is wonderful and can be recommended to anyone who enjoys both electronic and classical music. But don't stop there, if you hate classical, or dislike electronic music, listen to these concertos, and Ms. Carlos' work in general to have your ears and senses opened up. That, I believe, is exactly what Bach would have wanted them to sound like today, if he was still alive.

Lively, prophetic, intriguing and beautiful. All thing, the master himself was, reiterated by the new master of her genre, Wendy Carlos.

Samples of some of the Brandenburgs can be found here.

Since I don't read or speak spanish, I can't tell you anything about this group or record, which I'm sure was some east coast, resort town, hotel bar band, that some intrepid tourist bought and brought home, only to dump in a used record store years later for me to pick up and share with you.

As you can tell from the cover - it's DISCO! It's a medley of famous mexican tunes like "Cielito Lindo" (aka the Frito Bandito song), "Tipitipitin", "Volver Volver" and "Alla En El Rancho Grande".

So grab a bottle of Tequila, start up the grill for some homestyle carnitas and dance your day away....

Brujos Y Brujas - Fiesta Mexicana

And a closer look at that band....

I was 9 years old at the time, and my father was the science and math teacher at a small indian reservation high school in northeastern Washington. He loved Carl Sagan. He read his books, followed his writing in magazines, and was thrilled to see Spokane was going to air the series along with most of the rest of the PBS affiliates in the United States. Why my father, a devout Episcopal secularist, loved Sagan so much, yet also sent me and my brother to a small christian private school is beyond me. I assume he wanted us to have a good education, and maybe at the time, the Spokane school district wasn't good. Who knows? But as rigorous as our private christian education was, so was our scientific education via Carl Sagan.

My brother was a math geek, so he probably remembers these things better than I, but what I do remember was the amazing, at least to me, at the time, special effects achieved in the series. While spaceships flew out into orbit, Carl Sagan walked around them as if he was on a life size set. Showing us quasars and imploding galaxies. Pontificating about what ancient scientists might have thought of the heavens, while reaching out in wonder and talking about the life he was certain was out there looking back at us.

The other important memory of the series i have is of the amazing and evocative soundtrack. As I've talked about before, I've always had a love of classical music, and love to see in what ways it can be referenced in modern electronic music. The music in Cosmos did this beautifully. Classic baroque by Bach and Pachelbel, intermingle with modern works by the vanguard of electronic music, Vangelis, Tomita, and Takemitsu. Vangelis and Tomita hadn't yet achieved the status that they would in the following years when Vangelis' soundtrack work (Chariots of Fire) and Tomita's classical recordings (The Planets) made them household names. But this was the television event that really put them all on the map. I remember my parents going out and buying Vangelis' two albums, Heaven and Hell, and Albedo 0.39 after songs from them were aired on the series. And being a "classically trained" household, my brother and I were force fed infinite listenings of Tomita's various albums which my mother would special order from the small local record store.

Needless to say, when I found this record in a dusty bin of "New Age" music a few weeks ago, a rush of memory flared out to me, like lens glare on film. Bach's "Partita" and Vangelis' "Alpha" started playing loudly inside my head, blocking out the Judas Priest that was blaring in the used record store. Mixing and intermingly their tones as I gazed at the martian landscapes inside the gatefold cover.

It would have been easy for the producers of the series and album to put together a little compilation with snippets from each artists, one after the other, but that's not what they did. Sagan and his producers and sound engineers put together a thoughtful soundtrack which literally mixes classical pieces with the modern spacey electronic music, and programs them into "Parts" titled "Space/Time Continuum", "Life", "The Harmony Of Nature", "Exploration", "Cataclysm", and "Affirmation". Each part has one to four songs ranging from Hovhaness and Japanese flute music to Stravinsky mixing in with Kitaro, Tomita and guitarist Roy Buchanan.

It's really cool.

I don't know. Lineout readers might be too young for this kind of aural deja vu, or memory evocation, but just hearing this creative mix of great music brought me waves of nostalgia for a time when, I think, I was happy, well adjusted and my father and I could find something in common to gaze at in wonder.

The Music Of Cosmos.

Part 1: Space/Time Continuum A: Vangelis - Heaven And Hell, Pt.1 B: Shostakovich - Symphony No. 11 C. Vangelis - Alpha

Part 5: Cataclysm - A: Roy Buchanan - Fly Nighy Bird B: Vangelis - Beaubourg, Part 2 C: Stravinsky - The Rite Of Spring

One of the most interesting example of this from the disco era is this fine 1976 album by Roberta Kelly, Zodiac Lady.

In 1975 Roberta recorded an album with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte called Troublemaker. The album was wall to wall disco smash after disco smash. It was a dancers album, the kind that had no huge hits, but was a sensation to those who loved to just get up and boogie. Her highest charting track from Troublemaker was the sensational cover of "Love Power" (A cover of obscure r&b vocal group The Sandpebbles 1968 hit, which went on to win a Grammy for Luther Vandross when he covered it in 1990). The album was essentially Moroder and Bellotte's first certified disco hit.

They of course went on to release Donna Summer's first big Disco album, Love To Love You Baby that same year, and went on to super stardom.

Roberta was, sort of, left in the dust, and when they brought material to her for a second album, even though it was rehashing the same throaty, gospel inflected vocal style, the b-list material was explicitly secular in nature.

Zodiac Lady is all based on songs about the zodiac and the stars. Tracks like "Zodiacs" and "I'm Sagittarius" reference the disco-era fad, but other songs like "Love-Sign" and "Moondreaming" seem attached by a thread to the album. Regardless, all the Munich Machine regulars play and sing on it, so the quality of the 4/4 beat is peerless.

Surprisingly as the album became a hit in European country after country (there are versions released in the U.K., Spain, Italy, France, and Germany), America balked. Casablanca Records, the label that had distribution rights to most of Moroder's work, refused to put out the album as they thought the references to star-signs and zodiac would be frowned upon by a conservative stateside populace.

Remember, disco was just beginning, and at this point those who went to discos were looked down upon as nothing short of a newer cleaner version of the "hippie".

Luckily for us, the Italian distributor of the album made enough releases that the album was imported to America to become a cult, if not a chart-topping hit. The album can be found, but is rare on the west coast as most imports landed in NY and were eaten up by the nascent loft party and club scene there.

Roberta would repent for her sins as the Zodiac Lady two years later and release the only full on hi-nrg gospel/disco album I know of produced by Giorgio Moroder called Gettin' The Spirit. Disco fans were not pleased, and while it did spawn a couple of dancefloor fillers, Roberta Kelly faded into musical obscurity.

Of note: Roberta Kelly was one of Donna Summers best friends while Donna was in Munich and Europe recording her first few albums with Giorgio Moroder, and it is rumoured that Roberta Kelly is responsible for Donna Summer's "coming to Jesus" moment in the late "70's that caused such a kerfuffle for her in the future. In fact, Kelly worked in the front office of Summer's music publishing firm throughout the early 80's and sang back-up on a number of her albums from that decade.

To here the full glory of "Zodiacs" and more from the album check out this link.

And here is the wonderous vido of her singing the track for an "enthusiastic" German audience. Enjoy!

"DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO.....DOOO!!!!"

For some reason this album, of her three traditional disco albums, did the least well, and seems unpopular to this day.

But this album is fantastic! The medley on the first side, of all original tunes, that goes from sin to redemption has become one of my favorite listens in the last couple of weeks.

By 1979 the public had become tired of the disco "sound", and this album by Grace was no exception, but this albums' credentials are stellar and its sound is singular, even for the time. In fact right now I'd say its one of my favorite albums from the setting of the disco era.

Thor Baldursson, co-hort of Moroder and member of Munich Machine did production duties on this one, and even duets with Grace on my favorite song, "Suffer". Tom Moulton does the mix so it's all got that wonderful propulsive drive. But the album goes even further with its concept first side. "Sinning" has Grace singing about being a devil-may-care "bitch", "Suffer" has her under the thumb of a punisher whose audible whippings make her moan and groan, "Repentence (Save Me)" has her asking for forgiveness, and the last song "Saved" has - I kid you not - Grace Jones singing hi-nrg gospel/disco.

The flip has the popular gay anthem "On Your Knees" (which incidentally went nowhere upon its release), and "Don't Mess With The Messer".

If you're a Grace Jones fan, but don't know of her amazing work pre-Compass Point work, you need to hear those albums to understand what a force she was in the '70's, before being totally re-created in the '80's by Sly and Robbie.

If you want to hear what I'm talking about try this link.