Friday, September 25, 2009

ABC (Oh! Those Disco Eighties!)

It's funny to see how so many bands and artists who where once pretty famous and succesful have not only stopped playing, but have also disappeared from the public eye. Even the fans of 'the olden days' never play their records anymore; often the listener's musical taste has changed over the years or the listener has grown up and does not listen to music much at all anymore. It is after all not easy to enjoy music while three kids are screaming in the background. Well, not unless you are listening to noisy old stuff by let's say Magma of Gamma or Einsturzende Neubauten.

Also very often the members of the band have gone on to raise some kids and find 'a real job' and reappear years later as mystery guest on some stupid quiz show, in the cause destroying whatever little credibility they still had. I remember a feeling of shock when I saw Mike Lindup as a mystery guest on 'Never Mind The Bollocks'. This was the main writer and keyboard player of Level 42! How on Earth could he be persuaded to annihilate his artistic stature by becoming one of the many people trying to make a quick buck?
Of course those thoughts only meant that I valued his 'image' more than the man himself. It meant that he was living in the present more than I was. It also meant that I was a complete idiot and that I should readjust before I grew really really old. Yet still, the feeling that such an artist could demean himself and his legacy remained, albeit completely unjustified.

Some band have weathered the times quite well; I heard Depeche Mode the other day and they are still pretty damned good. But most of the band from the 80ies and 90ies have disappeared into the abyss of obscurity.

I came across one of those bands again the other day. They were called ABC and they came from England. These guys specialized in writing and playing songs about love. Actually, most of the time, well... as good as always, this love would be unrequited.
The band played a British disco-kind of music that was very much En Vogue in the 80ies yet they had a twist in the music and the lyrics. One the one hand, the music was produced and directed by a very young Trevor Horn of The Buggles who had just scored an immense hit with 'Video Killed The Radio Stars'. Horne had set up a team of three people(An Dudley, J.J. Jeczalic and Trevor Horn) with whom he would work together through the 80ies and score massive hits. The team was behind acts like Frankie Goes To Hollywood. So the next time you hear 'Relax', 'Two Tribes' or anything from 'Welcome to the Pleasure Dome' listen carefully. The similarities in production technique between ABC's 'Lexicon Of Love' and 'Welcome to the Pleasure Dome' are obvious.

What I personally particularly liked in ABC were their lyrics. Not because they were outstanding, poetic, meaningful or in any other way made for Eternity because they were not. What ABC did on 'The Lexicon Of Love' however, was to write a whole album of lyrics solely about unrequited love, affairs going badly, and people leaving each other in bad ways. I remember the inner sleeve of the record(this was the vinyl-era people!); both sides of the sleeve contained some credits and all the lyrics but these lyrics had a twist. Because the band had basically written a concept-album(without attaching too much significance to it) they were able to throw all the lines from all the song in a hat, rummage around a bit, and by probably pulling pieces of paper(i.e. songlines) out again they created a completely new and very long lyric that covered the whole album. It became somewhat of a puzzle that you could solve while listening to the tracks.

The songs themselves were dominated by the use of loads of keyboards, heavy electronic Simmons drums and a very funky brass section. Oh and Lots and Lots and Lots of samplers... Mr. Horne had recently acquired a Fairlight CMI sampler and anyone who knows that instrument also knows that the possibilities were endless. It was basically a mainframe computer with a piano-keyboard attached. Your mind was the limit to what you could do with it. It also cost over 100.000 euros so there weren't so many around and that made the sound quite uniquely recognizable.

Their first album went by quite unnoticed but their second album 'The Lexicon Of Love' contained the hitsongs '(Shoot That) Poison Arrow' and 'The Look Of Love'. Other songs worth noting were '4Ever 2Gether'(with an extremely sub low bass vocoder) and 'Show Me' :

When I'm shaking a hand
I am clenching a fist
If you gave me a pound
for the moments I missed
And I got dancing lessons
for all the lips I should have kissed
I'd be a millionaire
I'd be Fred Astaire
I saw these guys around the time of this album in 1981 and they were absolutely brilliant at what they did on stage. More so because no one believed(including me) that a 'plastic pop band' like ABC would be able to perform all the complex arrangements live. The band(that basically consisted of only four member and did not even have a fixed bass player!) solved their problems by taking to the road with a 12 persons band, including five ladies on violin, a guy on the cello and two keyboard players! All dressed in Tuxedo they took the phrase 'incorrect' to a new level. While the New Wave bands and the post-punk bands were playing around the corner, here were some people in evening dresses playing sophisticated disco-pop while the stage lights went from baby blue to baby pink halfway through the concert. It was so kitch that it sort of pained the eyes. Which in turn of course made it fun to watch.




New Wave it wasn't...

By the time they recorded their third album 'Beauty Stab' ABC had changed their style somewhat. Much more emphasis was put on the guitar parts which really made the album sound a lot more like rock. Even so, the album was absolutely 'ABC', one could hear the style from a mile away. Perhaps this also had something to do with the fact that the guitarist was also the keyboard player...

Love's just the gimmick
a mime or a mimic
That makes sex seem respectable
Make you feel more than a dream holding me
Holding me, holding me, holding me

Lips that seem so kissable
Unpermissible unzippable Unzip!
Why take pleasure in censorship
Unzip! Unzip! Unzip!

I must admit that I lost track of them(as so many people did) after their fourth and most successful album 'Alphabet City'. It's probably because the albums after that one did not contain any real hits so the airplay went down. Also; this was around about the time that bands like U2 and Nirvana stormed the charts and R&B became really big, so it may have a been musical generations thing. Still, 'Alphabet City' was an extremely succesful album that spun the hits 'When Smokey Sings', 'The Night You Murdered Love' and 'King Without A Crown' :

Welcome to the Great Republic
I guess I should show you 'round
Where once I was a King
but now I am a clown

The love that we once had
made a King of me
But now you're gone
and all I face is poverty

ABC still plays live concerts off and on. I have no need or any urge to go and see them because I know I would be disappointed if I did. Some things should be left alone in the dark. But once upon a time they were a great band.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Found somewhere on The Web...


The problem is something 'bout your clothes, she said to me
The red shirt and the stripeless sleeves yell, "I'm Security!"
And when you get down planet-side with Kirk, you'll get to see
There must be fifty ways to kill an ensign

He takes a landing party down to find what's going on
A couple of the bridge crew, and some extras come along
And then before you know it - the `expendables' are gone
There must be fifty ways to kill an ensign
Fifty ways to kill an ensign

Just step on a rock, Jock
Get thorns from some plants, Lance
A Horta can spray, Ray
Just listen to me
Clouds drink up your blood, Bud
Computers can kill, Bill
You could lose all your salt, Walt
Kirk gets away free...

She said it grieves me so to see you with such nerves
Not ev'ryone who goes with Kirk will suffer from this curse
But then of course, you must recall - they sometimes suffer WORSE
There must be fifty ways...

Just tell him, "I'm not stupid and I'm not expendable
I'm not going!" Tell him that he's a Denebian slime devil
And he's overbearing, swaggering, and dictatorial
He'll find a new way to kill an ensign
Fifty-one ways to kill an ensign

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Railroad Barons of the 19th century

I found this article via via via etcetera. Interesting read re. the 14th Amendment and the way it has been/is being abused. The article is from 2002 but this kind of information does not really expire...

...the railroad barons represented the most powerful corporations in America, and they were incredibly tenacious. They mounted challenge after challenge before the Court, claiming the 14th Amendment should grant them human rights under the Bill of Rights (but not grant such rights to unions, churches, small companies, or governments). Finally, in 1886, the Court's reporter defied his own Chief Justice and improperly wrote a headnote that moved corporations out of the privileges category and gave them rights - an equal status with humans.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Link of the week(so far).

Best Page In The Universe

Alaskan Politics - The Quagmire

People who know me also know that I am very interested in the circus that is American Politics. In this respect, last year was obviously a year in Heaven. Now that the US Elections have come and gone, most people are focusing on the economical crisis, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of course the new Health Insurance System that Obama wants to set up. It seems to me that - especially outside the US - interest for the major players is limited to Obama, Hillary Clinton and one or two former members of the Bush Administration. And all the while there is the enigma that is called Sarah Palin...

Sarah Palin is dividing the US as few others have done before her. It is not so much 'The Woman Palin' who is the cause of this; it is more a matter of Rightwing Christian America having found a poster-girl for bringing religion into politics. Even America's founding fathers knew that this is a recipe for disaster but apparently those wise insights are now lost on a large part of the american population.

I vividly remember the TV Evangelists of the 80ies with their unspeakably absurd 'church services'(remember Genesis spoofing them in 'Jesus He Knows Me'? "And The Lord Said Get Me Eighteen Millon Dollars By The Weekend!!!"). These people, the Jim Bakers, the Pat Robertsons, the Jimmy Falwells etcetera, used to be limited by laws that forbade the mixing of politics and religion. Any religious entity that was found to be mixing the church with politics would by law be prosecuted and their tax-exempt status would be revoked. Clearly this made the religious far right cautious when engaging in politics nevertheless.

What is happening now is - in my opinion - far worse : after 25 years of influencing politicians behind closed doors, the Religious Right is now working in the open more and more, and hardly anyone is screaming murder; Keith Olberman perhaps is, but he suffers from the stigma of being seen as a far left tv commentator and is therefore put in 'The Liberal Corner' with all the consequences that this has. He basically 'criticized' himself out of a general audience in order to win a pretty much left wing fanbase. The only name on tv that comes to mind is Jon Stewart. At the moment he is seen by the audience as the most trusted news achor on tv in the US. But wait a minute! Jon Stewart is a comedian! So the person most people trust to give them proper information is a tv comedian?


Anyway; just like I followed the idiocy around Michael Jackson for some time some years ago, I am now keeping an eye on the backwaters of American Politics. Not so much the new Obama-plan or an attempted republican filibuster, but more about the people behind the current stage, waiting - no dying - for their moment in the spotlights. And one of those people is most definitely Sarah Palin. I found below article in Vanity Fair, a magazine I am starting to appreciate more and more lately. What were they thinking in the McCain Campaign? Well, they probably weren't...


It Came From Wasilla


May Heaven and Earth help us if she ever gets to the real top of american politics. We'll need all the help we can get.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Creepy Palin and the Christian Suicide Bombers

The more I read about that woman the creepier she gets.

Inside Sarah's Church

Behind the Third Wave’s histrionics lies an aggressive brand of Dominionism focused on purging “demon influence” from entire geographic areas through prayer or more forceful means if necessary. Becky Fischer, a Third Wave youth pastor who gained fame as the anti-hero of the award-winning 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, urged pastors to indoctrinate an army of spiritual suicide bombers to seize control of the country.
“I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam,” Fischer said in the documentary during an unguarded moment. “I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places.”
and...
The Third Wave arrived in Alaska through a “spiritual warfare network” founded by an Anchorage-based Haida Indian named Mary Glazier, who claimed to have converted 60 members of her family, including her formerly alcohol-abusing parents. Seeking a “battle strategy” against the rising tide of sin that consumed her son, who committed suicide in 1990,
Glazier tried to gain access to the state’s prison system, a pit of desperation. A young female prison chaplain opposed Glazier’s evangelizing intentions. Glazier responded by branding the woman a witch and began to utter imprecatory prayers. “As we continued to pray against the spirit of witchcraft,” Glazier recalled with glee, “her incense altar caught on fire, her car engine blew up, she went blind in her left eye, and she was diagnosed with cancer.”


Really friendly people with lots of compassion and understanding for others. And people ask me why organized religion makes me sick to my stomach...

Tuesday, September 01, 2009