During the weeks between our soirées I often jot down any songs that catch my ear with a view to giving them a spin at the next L'Amour Electronique. I usually end up only playing around 50% of these, some of them sound so good they end up on heavy rotation for the next few months, others get played once and will perhaps re-surface months or years later. And then there are those that never get their chance to delight the ears of our punters.
This is one of those songs: I've playlisted it two months in a row now, but just didn't find the right moment to slip it in.
Giorgio - now is your time - take us for a one-way ride to no place on your arpeggiated-disco train.
Alone again on Valentine's day? Don't fret, it's just a nasty commercialised invention dreamed up by card manufacturers and florists to make a quick buck. True love will find you in the end...
Back in the 60's before they found the internet, it was much harder to set up a liaison with a potential beau - you had to actually go up and talk to them. Imagine that?
However, changes were afoot with the advent of computer dating.
Now, there aren't many songs that cover the subject of feeding your vital statistics into a computer, which will then correlate the information, and eventually spit out a number of suitable matches...
Here's one though: It's French teeny-bop superstar France Gall, banging out a saccharine Motown-style number. In German. But there are strange things happening in this little ditty: - first there's a mass of bizarre vocal and synth sounds flying around to evoke the inner workings of the computer. - then in comes an authoritarian-sounding German voice to bridge the chorus and verses. - and then the middle-eight veers off into The Beatles' 'Eight Days A Week'. Super-fantastische!
France Gall - Der Computer Nr.3 [buy France Gall: iTunes | Amazon]
I call this number, for a data date...
Another lonely night, stare at the TV screen...
I don’t know what to do, I need a rendez-vous...
Kraftwerk – Computer Love [buy Kraftwerk: iTunes | Amazon]
Is computer love wrong if you have no-one else to share your love with? Just so long as you don't try and interface with yours.
Mister Fat Trucker loves computers. But they don't love him. Tragic.
Fat Truckers – I Love Computers [buy Fat Truckers: iTunes | Amazon]
And finally. A cautionary tale of what might happen if you give your computer a little bit too much love. The result: A boy-girl-computer love triangle, as evoked in 80's cinematic cheese-fest Electric Dreams
Phil Oakey & Giorgio Moroder - Together in Electric Dreams
Last time we geeked out to Devo’s –link- remix of Datarock’s ‘Computer Camp Love’, there’s more Datarock fun to be had by downloading their computer game.
Let’s make up for lost time with some more ZX Spectrum madness. Again, this was on a CD gifted to me by our good friend Feline1. He set his old Sinclair Spectrum up and ran it into his soundcard and recorded the in-game soundtrack as he played. This one is locked in on a gritty Moroder-style arpeggiator, and you can almost hear the 8-bit chips melting!
When we were driving across Germany it made for very effective Autobahn music, though we also had to suffer a terrible remix that was completely over-egged with 80’s hair-metal guitar licks every second bar. Nicht Gut!
David Whittaker - Theme from The Tube (ZX Spectrum 128K)
I once excitedly sent a link to Feline1 for the ‘C64: Back In Time’ series – it had tracks by Rob Hubbard (another Spectrum soundtracker) on it, so I thought he might be interested. A reply came back: “/Splutters/ Dom, that's a COMMODORE 64 album!!”
Oops, I s’pose I was always more of a Commodore kid myself, the Spectrum merely evoked memories of sitting for hours in I.T. lessons, typing up line after line of script, only to be rewarded by a tiny pixel-y spider descending the screen on a dotted-line web. Heady days...
The year is 1989, I had my first ‘proper’ computer (not counting the Atari 2600 gathering dust in the loft) – The Amiga 500 - and I was into Bomb The Bass big time. It didn’t take long for me to get addicted to the Bitmap Brothers' subterranean shoot ‘em up Xenon 2: Megablast. It had it all: You captained a heavily augmentable submarine-craft and shot giant crustaceans and sea-beasties, then collected the bubbles they left in their wake. Bubbles = money credits, which you spent at the end of each level in a shop run by an ugly crab-faced bloke called Crispin. Did I sell it to you? Here’s the intro sequence:
Xenon 2: Megablast – intro (Commodore Amiga 500)
And someone has gone to the trouble of filming themselves completing level 1 (albeit, not in a spectacularly accomplished way!) Xenon 2: Megablast – level 1 (Commodore Amiga 500)
Bomb The Bass – Megablast [buy Bomb The Bass: Amazon]
But we couldn’t go through St George’s Day without paying tribute to San Giorgio
So as you probably know he invented electro-disco and gave Donna Summer a helping hand with some dirty arpeggiator action on ‘I Feel Love’. He also produced 2 classic albums for Sparks and recorded countless film soundtracks including the ‘Electric Dreams’ OST with Mister Phillip Oakey, which spawned the cheesy synth-pop anthem ‘Together in Electric Dreams’. If you’ve not heard the ‘Electric Dreams’ soundtrack, surprise Verity and request it at L’Amour Electronique on Saturday… ;-}.
Moroder even created a Supercar, in between producing some sleek 70’s electro-disco himself...
Giorgio Moroder – Utopia–Me Giorgio
Something I just discovered on the interweb: Moroder co-wrote (with Michael Holm) a couple of German language hits for France Gall, including this bit of bubblegum from 1970:
France Gall - Mein Herz kann man nicht kaufen
And now, here’s an informative promotional film about the man
BONUS Georges Yes it’s our favourite, now defunct, Georges from Montreal. We miss you Poney, Bobo & Mingo.
First a slow-burning hammer horror post-punk rattler from their first LP ‘Deux Hot Dogs Moutarde Chou’.
Les Georges Leningrad – Georges V
And here’s a film capturing some live antics: Les Georges Leningrad – Ennio Morricone
