Putting the Christ back in Christmas

                                                       (photo -  Peter Fingleton)

Say what you like about the Catholic Church, they know how to put on a good show. I'm back home in Dublin for Christmas, and last week I spent a lovely afternoon reacquainting myself with the nativity story at  the movin' crib on Parnell Square. The Crib is a series of 12 tableaux depicting scenes from the Old and New Testemant, populated by an insane cast of animatronic angels, shepherds, virgins, whores, priests, sword swallowers and negros. Not to mention Santa Claus. It's the only nativity story where the three wise men rub shoulders with the three little pigs. Truely this is one of the seven wonders of the Irish Catholic World.

The crib dates from the 1950s and I noticed a worrying amount of exposed wiring on the Angel Gabriel, so go see it before it collapses or combusts. And check out my video!

'Tis the season to be sassy

Hello?

Yeah, it's me.

What's up?

Just calling to let you know I won't be needing your loving services any longer.

Oh really?

Yeah. Just figured I'd clue you in on a few things.

 Ouch. Sassy electro funk classic from 1982, mixed by Shep Pettibone. The instrumental on the b-side was apparently so amazing that it sparked off the whole trend for disco dub versions (according to this interview with Pettibone (well, I guess he would say that)).

In other news, the Observer reports that Christmas is peak season for separations and a certain firm of enterprising London soliticors (Scrooge and Marley?) are doing a roaring trade in festive divorce gift vouchers. Imagine! 

Sinnamon - Thanks to You

Quattro Formaggio

Some music to warm the cockles of your heart this icy December evening.

#1 Hot Chip -  One Life Stand: fine first single off their new album, it's "one for the ladies" (!)
#2 Bananarama - Venus: fromage edit of the 80's goddesses' biggest hit
#3 Pino D'Angio - Ma Quelo Idea: if you like Italo, Fred Astaire and marmalade you'll love this
#4 Desire - Primitive Desire - Lovelorn disco from Canada 

Young, beautiful, talented, and scantily clad

Maybe its just me but it seems like a lot of bands are baring their flesh in videos of late. Not that I'm complaining. Two groups currently stripping off to promote their forthcoming (January(just in time for my birthday)) albums are These New Puritans and Delphic.



These New Puritans are playing Bush Hall on 25th January. Why not come?




This actually isnt Delphic in the video for Doubt, I've just discovered, kind of ruining the logic of this post. They employed handsome models as stand ins, a bit like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. How disapointing.
Here's a nice remix to make up for it.

Delphic - Doubt

Delphic - Doubt (Riton Vox remix)

Paris is Mourning

Saint-Saens - The Tortoise

Sad news from Paris, Kiki the tortoise has died aged 146. Staff at the Paris menagerie paid tribute to the giant tortoise whose 'demonstrative lovemaking' made him a favourite with the French public.

"He had a kind of charisma … a certain personality." said deputy director Michel Saint Jalme. According to Marie-Claude Bomsel, a vet at the zoo, he was so vigorous in his pursuit of female tortoises that his grunts could be heard from the other end of the zoo and the Jardin des Plantes.

Frédéric Lewino, a science writer at Le Point magazine, wrote that, though advanced in age, Kiki remained "fresh" to the end. Kiki weighed 250kg and had to be moved about using a forklift. "However crushed they were...the females suffered his assaults without any complaint," he remarked.

Read all about it

R.I.P Kiki

Fever Ray at the Forum

My luck was in on Saturday night - I got my friend Julie's spare ticket to go see Fever Ray at the forum. Not that we actually got to see Karin Dreijer Andersson, the shadowy Swedish chanteuse. She was well hidden, behind the smoke and lazers, beneath a burka-like robe and an enormous face mask - all I could make out was a billowing black column through the fog. Sounded great though.

Here's a remix of Seven by the Twelves.

Fever Ray - Seven(Twelves remix)

STOPP JA

Switzerland, spiritual home of brotherly love and cuckoo clocks...bans minerets in a spontaneous act of populist Islamophobia? I think they were just doing it for the attention. God knows when Switzerland will be topical again so I might as well take the opportuity to post a couple of tracks by one of my favourite Swiss bands, Kleenex.

Kleenex were an all girl punk group who exploded out of the suburbs of Zurich's famously dull suburbs in the late 70's. The tissue manufacturer sued them shortly after and they were forced to change their name to Liliput. Their songs are nice and ramshackle, and they sound like they were having a lot of fun. There's a interviewing interview with Marlene Marder, the lead guitarist, here

Kleenex - Ain't You
Kleenex - Heidis Head 

FAKE FOLK

Crystal Fighters make music inspired by the traditional folk songs of their native Basque country and on their myspace photo they look like ethnic dolls. I really want to go see them at Fabric on 11th december and find out if they really wear those cute costumes but tickets are £17. eeek.

I like this low budget video they made for their new single I love London. It obviously takes a bit more than a girl freaking out on a bridge to pierce through Londoners apathy.

Crystal Fighters - I Love London

I can't stand the news

You know things are bad when the word 'biblical' is used to describe the weather. But for Sky News every cloud has a silver lining. Their coverage of the floods has been a voyeuristic frenzy of traumatised narratives and dramatic footage(!) of devastated villages and collapsing bridges(count them). They have a knack for translating real tragedy into unreal disaster-porn.

How could they rachet up the pathos a few more notches I wondered? Then I thought of Tina Turner. What better to underscore a "Flood Victims tell Sky of their Woes" montage?



The Mindless Boogie label have released a great edit of this song and they're giving it away to celebrate their 20th release, so enjoy it guilt free.

Tina Turner - I Can't Stand the Rain (Villa edit)

It's good to go outside

After a horrible hermit like week of exam panic I left my house last night to go see the guys from Optimo dj at Dalston Superstore. I'd been looking forward to hearing them for ages and it was every bit as good as I hoped it would be. Thought I'd post a couple of the songs I most enjoyed to distract me from my hangover.

Release the Beast by Den Haan. Dark menacingly camp italo-disco, people were dancing on tables to it. Den Haan means 'the cock' in Dutch I now know.

Simian Mobile Disco's new single Cruel Intentions. It's got Beth Ditto on vocals and an angsty lesbian armpit orgy of a video, can't wait for the album.



Den Haan - Release the Beast
Simian Mobile Disco - Cruel Intentions(Maurice Fulton remix)

DFA does Suicide

L.C.D Soundsystem are back, way back in 1981, with their cover of an Alan Vega song, Bye Bye Bayou. It's a good cover but I wish they'd kept some of the original's yelping. James Murphy is so good at yelping. He sounds like he's just woken up after a long sleep on this.


Hype Machine is full of LCD Soundsytem at the moment between Bye Bye Bayou and the 45:33 remixes but nobody on there is paying much/any attention to Q&A who just released their first 12' on DFA. They describe their sound as "Mr Fingers meets TELEX and Carl Craig at The Hacienda" which is a better description than anything I could come up with. I've been listening to Tumbling Cubes a lot lately and it really grows on you. I feel bad giving away a free download of this because they probably could use the support, you can buy it here for 70p if you really like it.

LCD Soundsystem - Bye Bye Bayou
Alan Vega - Bye Bye Bayou

'I'm still the greatest' says Bobby Orlando

Ugly Megan - Bobby Orlandisco

"I failed as a hippy because I was too much of a capitalist." says Bobby, swivelling in his chair to view the mirrored building that is now partly his. "I mean I had a chequebook, no hippy ever had a chequebook, so I was a total failure. But glitter rock, oh I was a real glitter boy. I had very long hair - you just wouldn’t believe. I was very pretty, exceedingly like real very pretty. And with glitter rock you didn’t have to take drugs and it was OK to be a captialist. I mean platform shoes are expensive, right?". He didn’t have the balls to wear make-up but the romance with the high camp has yet to end. New York Dolls, Divine, same difference. The fast talking, intensively macho exhibitionist is also a voyeur. A homophobe who once pulled out of buying an apartment after discovering that the previous owner was gay, he has built a career on making music for a predominantly gay audience.

Bobby O’s history of working relationships reads like a Bel Air alimony lawyers’s casebook. One of his most successful associations ended understandably abruptly when he claimed he could "cure" the artist of his homosexuality, but men continue to be mesmerized by the electric vitality of this irresistible, impossible character. Women, too, are oddly tantalized by a man fixes his dark eyes to theirs over dinner, tells them just how he likes to make love, and what a great lover he is, and then kisses them goodnight on the cheek only to call at midnight to ask if they are naked.

The technical skill involved in such heavyweight flirting requires not only a core of pure narcissim but an ability to use the power of sexuality without feeling the surge of any real lust.

His most enduring partnership has been with The Flirts, a sort female Menudo, the three girl line-up changes with almost every release and on the new, their second album, "Questions Of The Heart" - a deliciously crass concoction of Euro pop, Janet Jackson and Sixties girl groups - they’re looking, frankly, a little old. The models won’t mind if they‘re dropped; the group exists only as an LP sleeve. Apart from a brace of session singers, Bobby O is The Flirts. Songs about sex, not lust. Sex on the phone, sex on the mind, everything but the real kind.

"I'm a sinner and a scumbag. I know it," he confesses. "but that's where salvation comes in. My real citizenship is in heaven, I'm just an ambassador right now. The Bible clearly states 'be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth' and that's what I do, I'm being fruitful, I'm multilplying - I put out more records than anybody in the world, there's nobody puts out more records than me. If a producer has the ability to put out that many records and he doesn't then he is disobeying God's command."

(Interview by Kimberley Leston from the Face, 1987: read the full interview here)

Ugly Megan are an incredible band who deserve your support, so if you like this song email them at uglymegan@yahoo.com and buy an ep, or check their myspace

Bobby O - I'm So Hot For You

Coco-Loco

Pop magic from the year of my birth, 1983!



Toto Coela were a one-hit wonder, and this wasnt even the hit. Its probably for the best that this song didnt chart, they just would've spent the money on drugs. Feminists with vibrant imaginations have tried to reclaim 'Milk from the Coconut' for the sisterhood, interpreting it as protest song about domestic violence ('I say hey hey you don't you break my shell').

POP TRIVIA: Jules De Martino from the Ting Tings was president of the West Ham branch of Toto Coela fanclub back in the early 80's.

Returning reluctantly to 2009, Senor Coconut, the groundbreaking German/Chilean Electrolatino pioneer is back with a new album, working his "special Coconut magic"(TM) on an assortment of unsuspecting tracks. It's a mixed bag, but I like his xylophone heavy version of Daft Punk's 'Around the World'. 

Senor Coconut - Around the World
Toto Coeda - Milk from the Coconut

Lust for X

"A lifetime of disco music is a high price to pay for one's sexual preference"
                                                                           - Quentin Crisp

I don't like to disagree with Quentin, but I think its a bonus. Gina X's disco classic No GDM draws upon Crisps idea of the great dark man, his self hating sexual fantasy of a lover who 'if he met me...would not love me. If he did love me, he could not be my Great Dark Man.'

According to Gina X's bio-page Gina met Crisp in New York in the '80s and they became friends. I can't imagine him liking the song much but I'm sure he would have been too polite to say it to her face.
Nice Mover is a similarly beautiful piece of narcotic disco with icy detached vocals, also off their debut album.

Gina X - No GDM
Gina X - Nice Mover

Lust for XX

Everybodies favourite miserablists - disco'd up!

The xx - Crystalised (Rory Phillips mix) 

Lust for XXX

Have you ever used your boyfriends willie as a microphone?



Girls - Lust for Life

I wanna suck your....

...blood of course. It's a seasonal thing.

I first heard Drac's Back by the Bollock Brothers when my friend Ken played it at a Halloween party in my house a few years ago. It's a story about a vampire preying on 'easy pickings at the discotheque', delivered in a fabulously deadpan voice over a tinny dicso backing. So be careful what you get up to this Saturday night or you might wake up next to a monster.

Posting this next track involves a confession, I'm a Cliff Richard fan. The man is sex on legs, and he's also pure filth. Under that chunky jumper beats a dark heart. We rarely get to see the real Cliff, but he surfaces on his 1976 track, and career highpoint, Devil Woman.

Cliff singing sweetly as an angel, and seemingly oblivious to the sexual groaning in the background, warns us to watch out for the devil woman. Lets be clear, the song isn't about a woman at all. It's about a 'tall dark stranger giving you what you hadnt planned' This devil is 'gonna get you from behind'.

The video is amazing, I think it must date from around the same era as my parents wedding album because the special effects are very similar - Cliff inside a crystal ball, Cliff in an eyeball, Cliff seen through a giant bubbling potion.

And check out those moves. Cliff claws the air like his life depended on it. I'd love to dance to this in a club sometime. The dance would probably also work to 'Lovecats'. In fact, I can't think of a song that wouldnt be enhanced by it.

Why not find out for yourself?

The Bollock Brothers - Drac's Back
Cliff Richard - Devil Woman

Dial 'O' for Animal Noises

Karen O has been busy in 2009. On top of releasing and touring 'Its Blitz' with the YeahYeahYeah's she's found the time to contribute animal noises to a song off the Flaming Lips new album. Unfortunately it's not Karen leaping around in the video.





She's also recorded a soundtrack to Spike Jonze's new film 'Where the Wild Things Are'. It's credited to Karen O 'and the kids'. The kids turn out to be members of the Raconteurs, the Bird and the Bee, Deerhoof and Queens of the Stone Age. This is how she described the album in an interview with NyLon magazine

“We wrote music that would be easy for kids to sing along with.  The songs have that innocence and spirit with poppy hooks here and there.  Simple, emotional, sweet stuff.”

The Flaming Lips (feat. Karen O) - I can be a frog
Karen O and the Kids - All is Love 

Are you ready for mammal beats?

An animal themed mix inspired by Mrs Barbara Woodhouse and a trip to the pet cemetery at Powerscourt.

Download it here

Tracklist
Les Georges Leningrad - Mammal Beats

This raucous three-piece from Montreal make songs that sound like they're barely held together. Taken from their 2006 Sangue Puro album 

Y Pants - The Fly

Y Pants, an all-female punk band from New York, had a unique sound based around a toy grand piano, a thumb drum and a ukulele. They only released one album, and this is my favourite song off it, a story about a woman who, at the moment of her death, is visited by a fly. Despite the gloomy subject matter the whole thing is quite upbeat. The lyrics are taken from this Emily Dickinson poem.

Suburban Wives Club - Casual Cat at a Laudromat

Another all-girl group, Suburban Wives Club wrote punk songs about the overwhelming minutiae of suburban life. They imagined how Chairman Maos wife must have felt picking his socks up off the floor, they fantastised about finding love at the laudromat.


Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds - Rare as the Yeti

Kid Congo was a member of the Cramps, Gun Club and one of Nick Caves original Bad Seeds. His music has a primal swampy garage rock feel to it. For some reason he seems to be doing an impression of Dr Frankenfurter on Rare as the Yeti.

Interlude - a few words from Mrs Woodhouse

Prince - Pussy Control

Pussy Control sees Prince try his hand at gangsta rap. It dates from his creatively dodgy 'artist formerly known as' period in the mid 90's when he was madder than a bag of cats.  Despite all of the above it's completely amazing. 




White Lies - Farewell to the Fareground (Rory Philips White Horse remix)
La Horse - Cyanide and Happiness


BowWowWow - Where's my snake?

BowWowWow were formed when Malcolm McLaren nicked Adam Ant's backing band and paired them up with 14 year old scantily clad sex kitten Annabella Lwin. Like most of their songs 'Where's my snake?' is less than three minutes long and fuelled by a combination of furious tribal drum beats and innuendo.



Bumblebee Unlimited - Ladybug (Devlin extendit)

Taken from their disco concept album 'Sting like a Bee' this song tells the story of the romance between two insects - Ladybug and Barry 'B', which, alarmingly, seems to culminate in rape.




Golden Bug - LookLookLook

The Pixies - Monkeys gone to Heaven (Minigroove 45 remix)

Simian Mobile Disco - Hotdog (Cosmo Vitelli remix)

SMD celebrate their favourite mammal-based snack.





Woolfy - Oh Missy (In Flagrantis 'Barbara Woodhouse' remix)

In Flagranti's remix of a dreary Woolfy song thankfully bares no resemblence to the original. With some added encouragement from Barbara.





Idiotproof - Gorilla (Siriusmo's Ass of the Baboon remix)

Crash Course in Science - Cardboard Lamb (David Caretta remix)

David Carretta's incredible 2003 remix of CCIS's 1981 original. I love the way the singer manages to work a W into her pronunciation of cardboard.