Record Box #6
6. Electronic pure popLori and the Chameleons 'Touch'
M 'Pop muzik'
Sparks 'The number one song in heaven'
I've said it before, I'll say it again. I bleedin' LOVE pop music. The above three songs make me want to jump and down, wave my arms in the air like I just don't care, and so on.
Sparks are a marvellous band. They comprise two bothers, one of whom has a squeaky operatic voice, and the other has a Hitler moustache and barely moves. You've gotta love that. To me they are a great combination of funny, weird and clever. Incredibly, for a period in the 1970s they were the stuff of Jackie annuals.
[I inherited several of these from my older sisters when I was small, and have a clear memory of singer Russell Mael featuring in a 'hunks' section - which seems incongruous, but those were the times of effeminate, non-threatening men in pop like David Cassidy and Leif Garrett, with breathy voices and flowing locks. My other clear memory of these annuals is the disturbing photo-love stories starring acne-scarred girls...]
As I was saying before I got distracted there, Sparks are godlike. This particular track was co-written and produced by Giorgio Moroder, who is a genius (I Feel Love doesn't feature in my record box but it is in my list of top ten records, E.V.A.H. ever). The song is simply about the Number 1 song in heaven - the song you hear 'if you should you die before you awake, if you should you die while crossing the street'. Just download it, then dance. It's just fabulous.
Lori and the Chameleons were a Liverpool-based oufit that were put together by erstwhile Echo and the Bunnymen manager Bill Drummond, with help from Teardrop Explodes' keyboard player Dave Balfe. The song features a brilliant voice-over (to a fictional Japanese boy called Cato, for Pete's sake!) by Lori, who is trying really hard to lose her Scouse twang to sound posh, but failing dismally. It's clearly about a holiday romance ('Oh Cato, will I ever see you again?'). There's some superb cod-Japanese keyboard and guitar in the middle eight, which never fails to crack me up. It's kitsch and silly and a bit daft, but in a word: sound.
Pop Muzik is a song that I have loved for that long, I can't recall a time when it didn't feature in my life somewhere (well, prior to 1979 it didn't feature, but I can't remember much of my early years on this planet anymore). When you drop the needle onto the vinyl, it truly glitters...and in common with the other two songs here, has been over-produced within an inch of its life. Which is always a good thing. Any song with the lyric 'Mix me a Molotov, I'm on the headline' has to be alright, doesn't it?
Let me leave you with these words, see if they don't make you feel fantastic: 'Infiltrate it, activate it...New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody's talking 'bout pop muzik...'
posted by deafdisco @ 12:15 am
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