Nothing But the Appreciation of Obscure Album Art That Is Both Wonderful and Terrible

(see title.)

(and if you must know, the android sisters sound exactly as you would guess, though perhaps more creepily sexual.)

(no, i don't know why either.)

(happy friday.)

As You Walk Along With Your Ding-Ding-Dong

Just watch this this 1975 video of the song “Ding a Dong,” the winning entry of the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest, as performed by the inexplicably named disco band Teach-In.

Okay, so a few things.

Why does the audience look so miserable? Okay, sure, the song sucks, but why would they go to this show in the first place?

Wait, was this actually East Germany?

Was attendance to the disco party compulsory?

Were they shopped in after the fact using so-called “green screen” technology?

Is there a song where the word dong gets mentioned more often?

I think Dina put it best when she attempted to comprehend how this thing came about: “Someone had to have written this down at some point. And then showed it to someone else. And then they recorded it.”

Another point for Dina: “Is she saying ‘Maybe it’s a bigot’?”

Is the whole point of the song to be constantly singing so you never feel sad? That seems like a poor plan, seeing as how no one will want to be your friend if you’re dinging dongs all day. I mean, she’s there singing this song on a microphone and no one in the audience looks remotely happy. WHERE DID SINGING GET YOU, LADY FROM TEACH-IN?

At 2:03, she attempts to make contact with one of the robots in the audience and my heart just aches for her, this lonely ding-dong woman from West Germany.

This is all. Go forth and ding all the dongs.

OMG, you have to hear this, but not because it’s good, previously:

• “Happy Song,” by Boney M, as well as other disco-based school invasions
• “I’m on Fire,” by Maggie Mae
• “You Bring Out the Savage in Me,” by Frances Day
• “Banana,” by Jane Chiquita
• “At the Same Time, You Are Crazy Mind, Crazy Mind,” by Daydream
• “The Swim,” by Little Nell
• “Les sucettes (The Lollipops),” by France Gall
• “Neon City 1978,” by Mistral

Me Gusta la Banana

I think we have a new contender for worst song ever: the 1984 recording “Banana” by someone calling herself Jane Chiquita.

If the pairing of name and subject matter seem a little on the nose, then you too may be questioning whether this could be a joke. Or maybe it’s just some poor woman’s realization of her banana-centric destiny, at which point she, having completed the task for which she was sent to Earth, simply stopped existing. What I’d like to think — what I’m hoping, really — is that the song is about dicks and the suits in the studio said, “No, Jane, you can’t record a song just about dicks, even though this is Italy,” and so she was all, “Fine. Let’s make it about flesh-colored swords. No, wait — bananas! That’s easier to rhyme.” Because I can’t wrap my head around anyone thinking it would be a good idea just to make a song about how much they like bananas, though it wouldn’t be the first time someone had been tricked into singing about dicks.

Me being shortsighted, I took Latin as my foreign language, and so I can’t be sure what she’s actually singing about? Is this song in Spanish or Italian? Can someone smarter tell me if the lyrics are filthy? Or is it just a celebration of potassium?

At the Same Time, You Are Crazy Mind, Crazy Mind

I have a confession to make: I like Italo disco. I once appreciated this genre of music from the safe perspective of “Ha ha — it’s funny because it’s so bad,” but at some point I crossed over and began to genuinely, unironically enjoy the synth-heavy dance tracks produced in Italy and other European nations in the mid-80s. I really can’t explain it, because most of it doesn’t line up with what I would deem good music, though I have theories. It’s possible that I simply got tired of listening to the stable of songs that we post-80s children have come to associate with the era. (I can happily proceed with the rest of my life without hearing “Maniac” or “Tainted Love” again, but I feel like the world isn’t listening to me on this one.) And occasionally, I can squint and imagine some throughlines between these songs and current bands. (Clio’s “Faces,” a.k.a. the song that sounds like the inside of Lisa Turtle’s brain, reminds me a bit of CSS or Yelle, and Mistral’s “Jamie” sounds like early Goldfrapp.) Whatever the case, my intro to this strange genre of ESL dancepop was “Happy Song,” and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need to click this link because you may have not asked “what the fuck?” enough today.

You may be surprised to learn that most Italo disco and Euro disco songs feature English lyrics. This is a wonderful thing, because the neither the songwriters nor the singers necessarily have a firm grasp on English, and the songs therefore end up as nonsense garbled out over a dance beat. This is probably most true with the 1987 song “Crazy” by the band Daydream. It so adroitly challenges comprehension that it may qualify as a form of surrealism. After listening to “Crazy” in my car more times than I care to admit, I decided to find lyrics. None appear to exist online, so now I’m cornering the market on weirdos who think too much about the song by posting what I think the lyrics are, plus some commentary that I hope demonstrates why this song is a strange, awful, wonderful sin against logic and sentence construction.

If you want, follow along:

So this song begins by laying down some synth, and the first few seconds could really belong to any track produced in the 80s — American or European. But then there’s what I call the Horror Movie Voice, a deep, creepy voice that pipes in throughout the song. It simply says “Crazy. C-c-c-c-c-crazy,” and repeats itself several times. And that is weird. Then there’s a secondary, more danceable intro that kind of reminds me of Miami Sound Machine. And then 42 seconds in, the actual lyrics start. Here is my best guess at what the hell the lady is trying to sing:

She had enough inspiration to it
It’s maybe too late to change it
Somebody looks at me
I feel something’s at fault
This is the picture
I don’t want to be in the dark
I don’t want to take your love
This is the daydream of the human being
This is the spirit in my living room

I’m not confident about most of those lyrics, and you may have better guesses, but the ones I’m most sure of are the last two, and that’s weird because I would really rather “This is the spirit in my living room” wasn’t an actual lyric.

I turn to me, I escape to me
To whom I think “He got it!”
Me (echoes)
I don’t want to be in the dark
I don’t want to take your love
Everybody more or less are gaily cyber
Everybody more or less are gaily cyber
Everybody more or less are gaily cyber
He must be crazy

No, I don’t know what it means to be gaily cyber, but I could make a few guesses.

At the same time, you are crazy mind, crazy mind
Get off my back; you are the spirit in my hat house
At the same time, you are crazy mind, crazy mind
Get off my back; you are the spirit in my hat house

If I may, I’d like to point out the oddness of a song using the phrase “as the same time,” which is a transitional phrase that a person would use in a logical argument, and then going on to accuse the addressee of being “the spirit in my hat house,” which would be something done by someone making a rather illogical argument. So then there’s a dance breakdown, then a second, different kind of dance breakdown, and then more of the Horror Movie Voice. And then it all repeats, giving you a second chance to mishear whatever she’s trying to say. Then there’s yet another dance breakdown. And then at 4:55 comes the absolute best part: when she raps. Some people may say that what she’s doing maybe isn’t technically rapping, but I’d argue that you could call this “rapping” as much as you could call the rest of the song “singing in English.” In this section, the non-italicized parts are the Horror Movie Voice speaking to the singer.

Who are you [unintelligible — sound like “Bee Bee Gas-a-meaty”]
Want to give this version to me?
The polarizer; I know the frank
I do crazy; I do drunk with that that
Who you think I’m crazy?
I don’t know but get in my butt
Hey you, butt — get in my butt
I don’t know but get in my butt

Okay, I know, but it really does sound like she’s repeatedly saying “get in my butt.” I’m straining to her anything else. I got nothing.

Don’t be afraid
Who is that?

It’s taken her to the 5:11 mark to ask “Who is that?” and I feel like if she doesn’t know who’s been talking to her this whole time, then we’re really fucked, narratively speaking. Like, you should know who’s in the recording booth with you.

I have given you something like your dream
I have found the inspiration
Come. You can beat it.
Don’t be silly.

Just to summarize, she went from “Who is that?” to “Don’t be silly” in the space of a few lyrics.

I have given you something like your dream
I have found the inspiration — the inspiration!

And then the song returns to the “At the same time, you are crazy mind, crazy mind” part and basically does that for a full minute before fading out. I realize that the people who made this thing exist probably didn’t get together and code a hidden meaning into these lyrics, but for the same dumb impulse that prompted ancient man to look up into the stars and see shapes, I hear this jibbertygooble and want to think that someone thought it meant something, or at least that they really did think they were talking to a ghost who was haunting the living room. (Does that happen?) And if anyone who’s made it this far in the post has any guesses — what the hell this song is supposed to be, what the hell these lyrics are supposed to be — do tell.

In closing, I want to dance to this song at my wedding. You probably guessed that.

Sex Mechanics From Planet Xanadu

A blog I’ve recently started following, TYWKIWDBI (“Things You Wouldn’t Know If We Didn’t Blog Intermittently” ) put up a post on “Tall Paul,” a 1959 Annette Funicello song that was the first rock and roll single by a solo female singer to make it on the top ten charts. It’s… bizarre. It hardly seems to qualify at rock and roll, by the standards of today or even the standards of pop culture just a few years after the song was released. The blogger makes a valid point about this strangeness: “It’s axiomatic that tastes in music and art change with time, but sometimes the degree of change within the span of one lifetime is so extreme that the mind reels.” I was rolling that thought around in my head when I watched the following video.

It’s the Dutch band Mistral, performing its 1978 song “Neon City” on German TV. Having thought about it quite a bit, I honestly can’t decide if this is a “Tall Paul” or not. Does it, in fact, demonstrate how far music has come from what at least what a few Europeans thought would sound hot so many years ago? Or is it even stranger yet because it’s not all that far off from what certain pop genres are doing today, if not in terms of sound then at least presentation? Would I bat an eye at all if someone like Jessie J or Ke$ha wore these exact outfits on stage, maybe to dress up a more modern but equally vapid, equally terrible song? No. I might wince, but I would nothing about my facial reaction would indicate that this was strange.

I suppose I should also note that Mistral’s first single — “Nectar,” whose album art alone is worth a few seconds of consideration — has aged much better and in fact sounds quite a bit like early Goldfrapp.

Either way, I suppose the mind reels.

Now That’s What Europe Called Music, previously:

• “My Baby Takes the Morning Train”
• “Love Resurrection”
• “Happy Song”
• “Upside Down”
• “The Robots Are Coming”
• “(I Can See Your) Eyes”

Let’s Get Awkwardly Physical

Do you love Olivia Newton-John but feel that her greatest achievements could be improved upon? Then you might have a bit in common with Vanessa, the Dutch-born singer who recorded the song “Upside-Down” in 1982, about a year after Newton-John released “Let’s Get Physical.”

It’s not so much that the song itself draws on “Let’s Get Physical” but just that Vanessa — who looks like Vanna White as styled by Dolly Parton — decided to steal the original video’s whole workout motif. Not that Olivia should have owned for eternity, exactly, but she at least deserved to keep it for a year or so. I’d imagine that Vanessa and friends didn’t realize that the early 80s vibe and the decidedly low-budge aesthetic, when combined with the gym setting, either skews porny or specifically gay porny. (You know, in the way that happened with that awful thing that Bruce Jenner did. No, the other one. No, the other one.) Either way, if you do not feel weird about touching surfaces after watching this video, you are weird.

Overall, the result is enthusiastically baffling. Bonus points for the part at 1:49, when the ridiculousness of doing the whole situation overcomes the dude with the mustache and he starts laughing. I have to hand it to him: He lasted longer than I would have gone without laughing or barfing.

Simple Times, Stupid Music

The thing is, I like old stuff. I’m not someone who goes around only looking at the popular culture of previous generations with my mind focused on now and how all the not-now things are different and therefore bad. But there’s a certain era of music that I don’t really understand, and its the same one that gave us that “You say potato” song and that “Roly Poly” song from Pillow Talk. At this point in American culture, adults seem to have found entertainment in the kind of songs that today are sung by babies and perhaps children on bus trips who want test how close they can push their driver into taking the entire vehicle over a guardrail. I mean, what other purpose could “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” possibly serve?

Not long ago — but long enough, and you’ll shortly realize why — I was standing in a Borders and was subjected to one of these songs: Cab Calloway’s “Everybody Eats When They Come Over to My House.” I’m not saying it’s managerial decisions like this one that caused Borders to cease, but I’m willing to bet it didn’t help.

(And no, I do not know why the background image for the song is a butt. The other version I found was actually more offensive.)

Listen, if you like, or just check out the lyrics, but I’m boggled as to how this was okay for adults to enjoy. I’m actually further confused about whether ol’ Cab meant for, like, half of his food rhymes to sound sexual, though it’s hard to imagine he didn’t think about the implications of that opening pair of lines, “Have a banana, Hannah / Try the salami, Tommy.” And then the thing that seems strangest to me is Calloway’s seeming inability to find actual human people’s names that rhyme with food, which caused him to invite to his dinner party people named Mandrake, Irvy, Mendel, Fagel and Nashville. (Maybe everyone eats at your house because all the party guests suck?)

If this sort of thing gets to you to — and it should, thinking humans! — please examine below the lyrics to “Everybody Eats When They Have Come Over to My House,” which I wanted to highlighted in a matter that reflects my frustrations but I could not figure out how to do that on the new Blogger:

Have a banana, Hannah
Try the salami, Tommy
Get with the gravy, Davy
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Try a tomato, Plato
Here’s cacciatori, Dory
Taste of bologna, Tony
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

I've fixed your favorite dishes
Hopin' this good food fills ya
Work my hands to the bone in the kitchen alone
You better eat if it kills ya 

Pass me a pancake, Mandrake
Havin’ a derby, Irvy
Lookin the fendel, Mendel
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Hannah, Davy, Tommy, Dora, Mandrake
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Pasta fazoula, Tallulah
Oh, do have a bagel, Fagel
Now don't be so bashful, Nashville
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Hey, this is a party, Marty
Well, you get the cherry, Jerry
Now look, don't be so picky, Mickey
Cause everybody eats when they come to my house 

All of my friends are welcome
Don't make me coax you, moax you
Eat the tables, the chairs, the napkins — who cares?
You gotta eat if it chokes ya 

Oh, do have a knish, Nisha
Pass him the latke, Matke
Chili con carne for Barney
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Face, Buster, share, chops, fump
Everybody eats when they come to my house
Everybody eats when they come to my house

Also, moax you? Also, I feel real bad for the guy nicknamed “Taste of Bologna” Tony.

Also, neither here nor there, really, but no one pronounces it “poh-tah-toh.”

She’s on Fire

This lady, this Maggie Mae, moves like she has a nerve disorder that she’s determined will not hold her back in life.

No, wait — she moves like she is being constantly bitten by tiny spiders and she’s trying to shake off the spiders.

No, wait — she moves like your mom’s friend at her thirtieth high school reunion when she mixed a white wine spritzer with her mood-stabilizer pills and ended up on the news.

No, wait — she’s actually moving like she’s literally on fire and she just never learned the stop-drop-roll procedure.

No, wait — the way she just starts herk-a-jerking out of the crowd and toward the stage makes me think she’s actually just a crazy woman in the audience who brought her own microphone, and the real Maggie Mae is standing just off stage, asking “Who’s this bitch who stole my fucking number?”

Nice glasses, though.

(Via PCL LinkDump.)

It’s Breaking Up a Happy Home

Yesterday, I posted on this blog Nancy Nova’s “Made in Japan” as an example of a bad pop song that more than borders on offensive but in fact dances over that line with costume bucked teeth in place, exclaiming “So solly! So solly!” I’m still not sure what that video was, exactly, but it happened, and we can’t go back in time and prevent it from happening, unfortunately.

Now, however, I’m wondering whether it is actually worse — in terms of quality, in terms of political correctness — than my old standby for fascinatingly bad, offensive 80s pop songs: Aneka’s “Japanese Boy.” The song, which many people seem to recognize today from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, strikes the ears like a flurry of shurikens. But it is also incredibly catchy in a way that often leaves its victims humming it days afterwards, even when they have acknowledged how bad the song is. Even worse: It, like “Made in Japan” is sung by a Caucasian woman — in this case, Scottish mezzo soprano Mary Sandeman. It represents a strange trend in 80s pop music that had singers donning Asian clothes and acting in a manner that Westerners might consider traditionally Asian. Totally offensive, right? Like, on the same level as blackface, and I’d call this trend yellowface if that too didn’t sound totally racist to me. (Geishaface? Does that work?)

Anyway, I’m curious to know if people find “Made in Japan” or “Japanese Boy” more offensive, by whatever standard you chose to gauge offensiveness. Here is the video for “Japanese Boy,” featuring backup dancers that lord almighty I hope are actually Japanese and Sandeman herself, looking sort of like a hard luck Jane Leeves forced on stage because she lost a bet.

So? Which makes you feel worse about things white people have done? Which one makes you most regret having ears? Which one seems catchier, despite everything bad about it?

Solid Potato Salad

Ignore the poor video quality and the nonsensical song lyrics. (What the hell does solid potato salad taste like, anyway?) Just give this video a chance and stick with the 40s-fantastic singers until they get to the contortion.

It takes something kitschy and gets surreal real fast — and then borders on horrifying.

(Via Holly’s Facebook.)

Dong Dong! The Dong Is Dong

I’d been tasked with finding something snappy and blogable on Tuesday night, perhaps something election-related. Low on energy and ideas, I thought about how Christine O’Donnell had been shut down and jumped to the same association that a thousand other bloggers probably made: “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead!” from Wizard of Oz. MGM’s legal team being as fierce as you might expect, no YouTube clips of the movie’s version of the number were easily found. So I figured I’d settle. Then I found the brainmelt.

Reaction to the Del Rubio Triplets’ performance of “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead”: First my eyes bugged out of my head like a boy cartoon seeing an attractive female counterpart cartoon. Then they melted down my face. Then the rest of my soft tissue melted through the nearest face-hole. Finally: “Did she just say ‘I’m such a mean old jew’?”

I should also note that the results I got for some kind of official “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” still turned up more appropriate content than my original search, “Dong Dong! The Witch Is Dead!”

I should also note that the Del Rubio Triplets once made a guest appearance on Full House as REM (Renee, Eleanor and Martha) and covered “Whip It.”

They were also on Golden Girls. They played “Neutron Dance.”

Um. They were also on Married With Children.

Not to pull another sitcom into this, but don’t they look like three Jerry Seinfeld’s moms? This all is kind of too much to deal with. But I can’t stop. Because it’s been that kind of day -- that’s why.