Vile Bodies

Blow, cat, blow

Rod Start It All Over Again

Robert Palmer Looking For Clues

Rod's Shake It Up has long been a gold-plated standard in Italo productions for me, but damn if the album opener Start It All Over Again doesn't deserve love, too.  Opening with a great guitar riff that's matched with some more jazzy instrumentation (that organ!), trad-disco flourishes and Philly sounding brass, it sashays into the exuberant territory of Kid Creole & The Coconuts (nee August Darnell), amounting to a deeply satisfying way to start a hidden gem of a record.  The brief xylophone lead reminds me of the lead that shows up towards the end in Robert Palmer's anxious new-wave workout Looking for Clues.  So there you go...

I was sure that I had posted Rod's Shake It Up, but I've spent a number of years suffering from the petty DJ affliction of claiming songs for one's own and hoarding them.  Sort of foolish in the age of musical abundance.  Never mind that when I DJed with Vancouver's (super-skilled, really nice) Kutcorners at Blue Dog in Montreal a while back, it was a prominent set-piece...  The song is a lot more well known than I had imagined.

After much digging, I've got a lengthy post coming up this week on Anthony Malloy, of Anthony & The Camp, who deserves far more attention for his contribution to house music than simply being the target of some sticky-fingered lifting by Tensnake. (Much love to Coma Cat, though).

Brusque Twins at the Belmont

Brusque Twins Our Love

This Sunday, June 6th, local neu-Italo duo the Brusque Twins make their onstage debut at the (best kept secret venue) Belmont along with a whole slate of knowledgeable and talented DJs to round the night out, including DBM (Le Matos) & SHOT BY JFK (aka ARCADE), DINO SECONDINO & SIZAN (of the wonderful Feeling Nouveau), CORESAIR and PARIS FRIPON. Visual by Gyroscope. Deep rhythm and mood from a cast that's charting a new path for Montreal nightlife.

More info on the Facebook event page.

Waterfront Property (Adam Wilcox)

photo by Richmond Lam

Waterfront Property Vacances Tragique
Waterfront Property Gaywave
Nayobe It's Too Late (Waterfront Property Remake)

I guess it's a function of my updating this blog during the day that the music I DJ and listen to while going out is so poorly represented here. Consequentially, I think I'm giving short-shrift to fine and talented local musicians (as well as friends) like CFCF, the Night Trackin' kids, William Saman and Heidy Pinet at Movement, and other young Turks who are rescuing house music from fluo-brimmers types (or maybe they've already rescued it and that phrasing dates me) for the benefit of us all.

Case in point, the subject of today's post - Adam Wilcox, the Pride of Pointe Claire, a Leo, and as sociable and clubbable a fellow as one could home to come across, brings one of my favourite new developments in local music in recent months, Waterfront Property. At only 2:20, Vacances Tragique hints at Wilcox's prowess in the studio, his ability to craft a pitch-perfect homage to those strangely compelling New Order album instrumentals. Gaywave is a darker, crispier and brassier gift to genre-naming with swashes of Italo and Lindstrom-esque tempos. Obviously, Wilcox is equally at home plotting for the dance-floor as he is for the very distinct pleasures of home-listening. And finally, with his re-working of It's Too Late, Latin freestyle also-ran Nayobe has never had it as good. And all that from a chance meeting in a dollar bin.

All that said, I'm sure that you'll hear a lot from Waterfront Property in the coming weeks and months, and from sources larger and more reliable than me. Enjoy!

The hips locked, o'ho, and I made jam!

Pino D'Angio Ma Quale Idea
Creative Connection You're My Heart, You're My Soul

Italian Pino D'Angio's Ma Quale Idea occasionally gets credit as the first instance of Italo Disco Rap, and while that's an arguable point (Kano's I'm Ready also came out in 1980), the song, built atop McFadden & Whitehead's Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now, is just frankly awesome. It's a baritone-voiced roller that fills dancefloors with people and minds' eyes with visions of sparkling lights, dart collars and louche ladies wearing Thierry Muegler gowns. And an old guy rapping about... a disco lady with snake eyes? Okay, so it's stretching it to call Italo Disco Rap a genre, with all of the conventions and trappings that ensure a section in a record store or a folder in someone's MP3 collection, but as Carmen's Throw Down and MC Miker G & DJ Sven's Holiday Rap would follow later, and I love all of these songs, it's enough of a genre for me.

It's hard to pinpoint the moment where Italo Disco turns over and becomes fully absorbed by Hi-NRG. Probably when it became all octave-bass lines, 130BPM, and that Mike guy put on the oversized sunglasses. Creative Connection prove that the cross-over wasn't entirely terrible, with their 1985 cover of the Dieter Boehlen penned and produced Modern Talking song You're My Heart, You're My Soul.

For your edification and entertainment, here are the translated lyrics to Ma Quale Ideal...

I caught her in the disco with a snake look
I went close to her
She was already out of her mind
I looked at her
She looked back at me then I let myself go

In comparison Fred Astaire was static and clumsy
I shot a kiss in her mouth
A kiss with a bang

On the footloose dancing floor then I shook her up

sending her to the air
catching her back
leaving her breathless
She fell into my arms
She was madly in love

I held her fast by her hips
I turned her into jam
Oh yea Oh yea..Is that how you say it ?
And then...and then

What an idea ! But what idea ? Can't you see she is not easy ?
What an idea ! But what idea ? She's malicious but knows
How to take care of a big bully like you
And besides what makes you so special that another one hasn't got ?
What an idea ! But what idea ? Can't you see she is not easy ?
What an idea ! But what idea ? Beware, she is smart
She will lead you in circles but you will never get

The things you want and tell me, what are you going to give her ?

I had a great thought, I brought her in my den

I poured an orange juice and she burts into a laughter
She clung to my whiskey
She gulped down five litres

She seemed to be out of her wits
She kissed me
I kissed her
All of a sudden I held her tight but she slipped away

She looked at me
I looked at her
I stopped her
I caressed her fairy face
But she looked like a potato
I caught her, shook her up and down
Turned her into an omelette
Oh yea is this how you say it ?
And then

What an idea ! But what idea ? Can't you see

Montell Jordan, Disco Divas & Kraut Rock

Could it have been that wise to own a parrot during the cocaine excess of the disco years?

Edititude City Love 4 the Sake of Love (Crisco Dancing Edit)
Montell Jordan Get It On Tonite

In 1999, Kappa Alpha Psi frat brother and R&B superstar Montell Jordan took a trick from the Puff Daddy toolbox, sampling Claudja Barry's Love For the Sake of Love for his chart-topping single Get It On Tonite, the video of which featured an early example of text-message infidelity, making a case for the zeitgeist-anticipating qualities of the R&B genre. In 1980 was there a rock band with a track as prescient as Ronnie Jones' Video Games? (Incidentally, that song was also produced by Claudja Barry's pet-producer, who I discuss later). Not likely!

David Shaw is one-half of the Loose Joints duo here in Montreal, an incredibly talented graphic designer, and an extremely nice & hilarious guy to boot. He's also associated with the international DJ & production cartel Attitude City. For whatever reason, David & Davey Lahteenma (the other 1/2) are one of Montreal's best kept secrets - mixing & mastering for years and earning them the righteous love and appreciation of everyone who ever manages to catch their set, as well as bringing in Hercules & Love Affair, Brennan Green, Mike Simonetti & countless other guests before their big moments in the blogspotlight. Hopefully I'll have some other edits to post in the next little while, but in the mean-time, here's a live-set of David Shaw recorded last year entitled Disco's Dead. (Full-disclosure, I had the great privilege to DJ with him this past Saturday at Pop Montreal's Italo Disco Bike In and it was awesome.)

And now to our diva... Jamaican-transplant turned Torontonian Claudja Barry left Boney M in 1976 to pursue her own singing career, and thank God, because it gave us many great & fine songs, not the least of which is the simple and strutting song Love For The Sake of Love, the b-side to 1976's Sweet Dynamite. Production duties on this (and many other Claudja Barry tracks) were handled by German producer Jurgen S. Korduletsch, who prior to this was working with kraut-rockistes Amon Düül II.

Can I Want More

Kraut-rock & disco are not mutually exclusive, which is where Can's I Want More comes in. Also released in 1976 (on the album Flow Motion), the seemingly disparate worlds of the dancefloor & Deutschland find themselves in perfect union here, and thus became their only Top 40 hit in the UK and earned them a slot on Top of the Pops. The guitar-work & full-group vocals on this song are amazing, and the organ-stab anticipates the same stab on Diana Ross' My Old Piano.

Kano's "Don't Try To Stop Me" & Ring My Bell: Pop Montreal Italo Disco Bike-In

Kano Don't Try to Stop Me

A sleeper Italo Disco Funk hit from Kano from their 1981 album New York Cake. It's a super fun boogie vocoder-laced workout, similar to their dance-floor slayer I'm Ready.

I'll be DJing (as Jay Watts III, natch) the 3rd Annual Pop Montreal Bike-In this weekend, along with the ever-talented Why Alex, Why?, David Shaw (Loose Joints), and Bethany Benzur (New York City) at Terrace McAuslan. In previous years, the themes have been R. Kelly & Bollywood, (I'm hoping next year it'll be a Hip-House Bike-In) while this year we'll be celebrating the artistic heights that the greats of Italo Disco managed to scale. If the names Kano, Jimmy Ross, Scotch, Carmen, & Pineapples mean anything to you, or you consider the ouevre of Ken Laszlo to be beyond compare, then I'm sure you'll appreciate the night.

There's also a screening of Michaelangelo Antonioni's dubious masterwork Blow Up happening at dusk. All free, just pay for your drinks & food!

The Hour's Brendan Murphy wrestles the zeitgeist to the ground and steps on its throat, describing Bixis as "the new fanny packs," but being okay with Italodisco.

Jack Oatmon loves anything on two-wheels and calls me an 'inimitable pop sophist.' Thanks?