Sweet Erotic Sexy Sylvia

Proto disco sexpot and mother of hip-hip Sylvia Robinson died this morning. 


Sylvia Robinson.Sweet Stuff [SoulTrain.1976] by capitainfunkk

She was an incredible producer, a talented singer, a snappy dresser, and the sexiest moaner I've ever heard.

Here she is, showcasing her moan on J Dilla's Crushin'. 

J Dilla - Crushin' (instrumental)

R.I.P. 

Diesel Dykes on Ninja Bikes

Heavy Breathing by Disco Dykes

My obsession with Gregg Diamond continues. His album Starcruisin' eventually arrived in the post, and to paraphrase David Guetta, it's not credible, it's incredible. Every track is amazing. My only disappointment is that the heavy breathing by disco dykes, credited on the back, turns up nowhere. There's not even a heavy whimper. 

Luckily I discovered Sylvia and her sultry proto-disco track Pillow Talk, which delivers heavy breathing and then some. Apparently this song was originally intended for Al Green but he felt it was too risque and against his religion - what better recommendation!

Sylvia - Pillow Talk

TIGER TIGER

The full scale of the damage caused by last weeks riots is slowly becoming apparent. Somebody made off with one of my favourite pieces of public art, the carpet picture of a tiger that doubles as the sign for Budget Carpet Warehouse at the corner of Walworth Road and Penrose Street. Looting scum. 

Disco elegy courtesy of the amazing Gregg Diamond.

Bionic Boogie - Tiger Tiger(feel good for a while)

The Shaggs

Times of crisis can also be times of great innovation. Yesterday the bumbling Commissioner of the Met, Tim Goodwin, appealed to parents to help control the riots by keeping their children off the streets, no doubt with cuts to the prisons budget in mind. Meanwhile Conservative MP Jane Ellison went one better, encouraging parents to ask "tough questions about new trainers", and if necessary  'march their children to the police station'. 

So in addition to fucking you up, your mum and dad are now expected to interrogate and incarcerate you. Back in 1968 (a vintage year for riots) Austin Wiggins decided to keep his daughters off the streets by forcing them to form a band, which he named The Shaggs. 

He was  convinced by a palmreader's prediction that they were destined for super-stardom. The girls were reluctant but as Dot recalls "he was something of a disciplinarian. He was stubborn and he could be temperamental. He directed. We obeyed. Or did our best." The resulting record, which came out in 1969, has been variously described as an idiosyncratic masterpiece and the worst album ever made. 

In 1975 as they were about to record their second album Austin suffered a massive heart attack and died. The group promptly disbanded.

The Shaggs - Who Are Parents?
The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World

Disco Diamonds

Gregg Diamond - what a disco talent. He died of gastrointestinal bleeding in 1999 at the young age of 49.

I spent the weekend dancing to songs like this through a heavy fog. Both tracks are off his 1978 album Starcruisin' which is temptingly affordable on discogs.

Gregg Diamond - This Side of Midnight

Gregg Diamond - Fancy Dancer

Lets get Physical

For those amongst you who don't fancy creatine how about a spot of aerobics? Help yourself out with Olivia NJ as channeled through Fil OK in the early noughties (from Peckham with Love...)

Fil OK vs. Olivia Newton John - Lets Get Physical

Or alternatively, something a little more exotic, lose weight and learn English at the same time with the Zuiikin girls.



Yamasuki were a French pop group who released a psychedelic-Japanese-themed-concept-album in 1971, complete with screaming Samuris, clattering woodblock percussion and a slightly atonal choir of Japanese children. Ideal background music for an aerobics class, or a death cult. 

Yamasuki - Yamasuki

HATE MUSCLE

Nitzer Ebb - Join in the Chant

LOVE MUSCLE

Remember boys and girls, it's never too late in the summer to start taking creatine. Say goodbye to rainy June and July....say Hello to Hot August with a Hot Body.



Vanessa - Upside Down

Underwater Moonlight

My favourite bit of Glastonbury this year was seeing Robyn Hitchcock and his Invisible Band playing on the Spirit of 71 stage to a near invisible audience of 40-odd hippies and me through a fog of marijuana. He did a costume change halfway through, and came back wearing an almost identical shirt but with a slightly larger polka dot. I think he was trying to mess with our heads. He played lots of songs off Underwater Moonlight, love songs - like these.


The Soft Boys - Insanely Jealous

The Soft Boys - Tonight

TENTTENTTENT

Inner London Earwig

(via Somerset)

Bonzo Dog Band - Tent

I'm slowly readjusting to the strange luxury of a sprung mattress, real plumbing and disposable tampons after a week amongst the mud and mooncups of Glastonbury. I miss my tent and the prehistoric earwigs I shared it with.

Ecstasy

 "I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying."

BKS - Living in Ecstasy

Ecstasy - Don't Play Me Raw

The Poke

"Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.' Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God!' Then Jesus told him, 'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed' (John 20:26-29). 

I went to Rome at the weekend and saw lots of Jesus relics and statues of saints in ecstasy. My favourite relic was Doubting Thomas' finger, as immortalized in the sexy passage from the Gospel of John quoted above.  

Adonis - The Poke

POLY FILLER

X Ray Spex had a brief reunion in the mid 90's and released an album, Conscious Consumer, which was pretty rubbish in comparison to Germ Free Adolescents. Even so, some of the tracks are amazing, if only for Poly's lyrics comparing eating beef to cannibalism, and abattoirs to Nazi gas chambers. The band's comeback ground to a halt when Poly got run over by a fire engine in central London.

X Ray Spex - Peace Meals

X Ray Spex - Dog in Sweden

POLY AMOUR

This is a very belated RIP for Poly Styrene, who died last month. Most of the obituaries were published alongside photographs of her as a 17 year old and that's most likely the image that will fix in peoples minds, the girl with the braces who screamed oh bondage up yours! But she was such an interesting pop star and there was so much more to her than that. It would be shame to forget about post punk Poly, earth mother Poly, Hare Krishna Poly and Black Christmas Poly. 

Her 1980 folk/calypso/reggae tinged album 'Translucence' was an unlikely follow up to the brash punk of 'Germ Free Adolescents'. The songs are a mixture of vitriol and syrup, but the vitriol is mostly in the lyrics. Poly's vocals are the best bit, heartbreakingly beautiful and she doesn't shriek once.    

Poly Styrene - Dreaming

Poly Styrene - Toytown

Royal Trux

Royal wedding hysteria is BORING. I need some medicine for my stomach. I waiting for somebody to pop the banana question.

Royal Trux - The Banana Question

The Taking of Christ

Italo allegory - Miss ChaChaCha as the Messiah reborn, with yet another face. A cast of thousands - some sexy Latino disciples and a bunch of portly Pharisees. I think Doctor B is Judas - there's something shifty about him.



Bandolero - Paris Latino

KISS KISS

Fern Kinney couldn't catch a break, she had failed careers in three different musical genres. But her disco records from the late 70s/early 80s are absolutely amazing - sexy and sad. And totally sultry. I can't get enough. If somebody would like to buy me the Channel 83 edit of Love Me Tonight on vinyl that'd be lovely thanks.






Fern Kinney - Groove Me
Fern Kinney - Baby Let Me Kiss You(Danny Mekanik edit)

Tropical Summer!

Agnetha gets tropical for her post-ABBA comeback in an outfit that's equal parts Guantanamo bay and Big Bird. If you close your eyes she almost sounds like Kate Bush on this one. Recorded back in the year of my birth but still sounding beautiful today. Best served at temperatures exceeding 20c. 



Agnetha - The Heat is On

Enigma

I just can't make you out. Are you real or am I dreaming? This is all very confusing...especially when you start...speaking

Amanda Lear - Enigma

DANA International

I found an old vinyl copy of Ireland's 1970 Eurovision winning song 'All Kinds of Everything' in a charity shop recently. Patriotism compelled me to buy it, Barnados Brixton is no place for DANA, not least due to its proximity to a family planning clinic.

I'd forgotten how ropey the song is, but it manages to encapsulate the psychosis of Catholic Ireland, complete with the percussive ratcheting of screws being tightened on heretics thumbs. The B-side, 'Channel Breeze', sounds like something that might be played over the tannoy at Dignitas to hurry people along and boost productivity.




DANA - All Kinds of Everything
DANA - Channel Breeze

White mice

Don't be stupid Don't be limp

No girl likes to love a wimp

Dance and make fun, nicely done

Come and be my Number !

The Mo-Dettes - White Mice

Freedom's like a rash

Viral phenomenon Queen of Vagina is reaching pandemic levels, globally. Symptoms include painting your house whore scarlet and asking strangers if you can have sex with their penis.



I've already got a red kitchen, and well, lets just say I moved straight on to Level 3 Queen of Vagina which manifests as an obsession with Nigerian disco. A vast amount of incredible disco music poured out of the country in the late 70's/early 80's, the years of Nigerian's Second Republic. A democratic government was in power for the first time in decades, the oil driven economy was booming and the growing Nigerian music industry was developing a down-tempo afrobeat influenced take on the commerical disco sound. This song by Oby Onyioha is amazing, combining a strange metaphor of freedom as a rash that keeps on spreading with references to Humpty Dumpty. Have a ball if you want it - it's your life!

Oby Onyioha - Enjoy Your Life

My funny valentine

Dee D. Jackson - Automatic Lover

Remember the future?

The Telstar satelite was launched in July 1962 and relayed the first telephone calls and television signals through space. Six weeks later the Tornados released their single Telstar, produced by Joe  Meek, one of the early pioneers of experimental electronica. It's weird distorted retro-futuristic sound was created in Meek's flat, on Holloway Road above a shoe shop, where he lived, worked, and died. He was one of the first people to treat the studio like an instrument, instead of trying to record sounds faithfully he would compress them, or layer them with echo or reverb until he got the effect he wanted.

I hadn't heard of Joe Meek or this song until last week when a friend played it for me. There's something strangely sad about it, perhaps just in retrospect. It was Meek's biggest hit, afterwards his success diminished and his paranoid grew - aggravated by his obsession with the occult, a fondness for amphetamines, and the pressure of keeping his homosexuality a secret. In February 1967 he killed his landlady with a shotgun, before turning it on himself. 

According to Wikipedia(and I'm not sure whether to believe this because it sounds too good to be true) a Scottish group called the Knits recorded a song called Passivism in the 80's which overlays passages from Marx' 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte onto samples from Telstar. It sounds mental and I desperately want to hear it!

The Tornados - Telstar

Sideways Ponytail (you better straighten up baby)

I spent the afternoon listening to italo disco and making ponytails out of cheap synthetic hair. 

Like this for example. What a performance! The flamer in the middle is such a hypocrite though.

B.B. & Band - That Special Magic(12' Version)

All you can eat

Look what google ads did for me for my birthday!!

Why not play it for yourself and see what you get?

The Carpenters - Solitaire

Disco Hoedown

Ain't gonna wait til tommorrow

I need your love RIGHT NOW

Come on and touch me

DO IT RIGHT NOW

Bravo - Touch Me Now

Hot Shot

RIP Karen Young.

What a singing talent !!

She died of a Bleeding Ulcer in 1991 at the young age of 39

Karen Young - Hot Shot

Duvet Disco

DUVET DISCO by gibletsounds

Don't get up. Tuck in. Cuddle up.

Tracklist:
When We Kiss – Bardeaux
I Keep Forgetting – Michael McDonald (Andrew Clarke re-edit)
Life Time Groove – Marcos Cabral and Shux
Deetour – Karen Young
This Brutal House – Nitro DeLuxe
Don't You Want My Love – Vera
Addicted to Love – Sondra Prill
I Can't Go For That – Hall and Oates (Kati K edit)
Love Me Tonight – Fern Kinney (Channel 83 edit)
I Allways Say Yes – Glass Candy
Lucky – Donna Summer
Don and Sherri – Hot Chip
With Every Heartbeat – Robyn (KLEERUP remix)
Concentrate On Us – The Isolators
Transdance – Night Moves