Thursday, June 01, 2006

Mannequin Piss and the Golden Showers

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More Belgian bands to keep Minny Pops (below) company. The Names are another belgian band that, like Minny Pops, ended up recording a single with Martin Hannett at Factory and that, also like Minny Pops, were pigeonholed as Joy Division apes by all the monkeys and sheep. "Spectators of Life", their first single, was pressed straight from demo. Sounds pretty good. "Nightshift" (Fac 29), all dark and spacious-like, is the Hannett-produced track, and is included on the most recent Hannett retropsective, Zero: A Martin Hannett Story 1977-1991.

The Names - Spectators of Life
The Names - Nightshift

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Vocoder masters Telex, part of the robotic brotherhood of electronic music pioneers that includes kraftwerk and YMO, share with Devo an aesthetic sense/sense of humor that plays up the prefab plastic pop disposability of modern music. Really they are all just the various organs of one big bleep blooping man-machine. "Moskow Diskow" is a classic, one of those songs that you've heard a bunch but may not have ever known who it was. "Twist a St. Tropez" is a cover of an old Guy Laffite song, and "Euro-Vision" is the song Telex wrote, tongues firmly in cheek, to represent Belgium in the annual Eurovision song contest, which is dissertated upon quite entertainingly over at Pogoagogo. They got 17th place.

Telex - Moskow Diskow
Telex - Twist a St. Tropez
Telex - Euro-Vision

3 comments:

shepherdofsharks said...

found this blog by way of Are You Familiar? and it is choice indeed. good good stuff man

FiL said...

Cher Oncle, these are indeed choice pickings. Much like I first discovered the Mannequin Piss, I found your blog wandering the backstreets and will certainly be returning to see the periodic costume changes!

FiL

Anonymous said...

It seems like a lifetime ago I taped bits and pieces of music listening to the radio. I wanted to throw away all my tapes, and made the mistake to look at the labels one more time. Big mistake. Now I'm trying to recover them all!!! I'm having a hard time finding a working link to "Spectators of life". This one didn't work either. But I don't care for the time being. I found Way of the West "Don't Say That's Just For White Boys" instead. Never in a million years I thought I would listen to that song again. I didn't even have it on tape. It has been in the back of my mind for all those years and now it's on my computer. Thanks a lot!