SEÑOR COCONUT Y SU CONJUTO - EL BAILE ALEMÁN @ 25

 

Celebrating its 25th anniversary today is the sophomore release by Señor Coconut, El Baile Alemán, which was released on December 23rd, 1999. It's an album that, at least in my mind, both revitalized my interest in Kraftwerk and sparked my taste for Latin music.

Señor Coconut is actually an alias adopted by German electronic music producer, Uwe Schmidt, who adopted the name as a pseudonym after departing his home in Frankfurt for Santiago de Chile. While he'd started off in the arena of techno, the seduction of Latin music sparked this alter-ego to take hold, first producing an album of originals, then conceiving the idea to do an entire album of Kraftwerk covers in the Latin style.

Schmidt had developed an interest in Latin culture early in the 1990s when he took a sabbatical from his hectic production schedule to live in Costa Rica for six months. It was some time in 1993 that the idea for Señor Coconut took root, but it would be a few years before the concept would begin to take shape. Schmidt had found himself disconnected from the German techno DJ & dance scene, with the audience for that music not really taking notice of his work. By 1996, things had progressed enough that Schmidt was able to get himself organized for a move to Chile and the production of the first album with this new identity. After that album, the concept of the Kraftwerk covers album began without any real idea of the specific style, until he started to work on a set of demos that, as a bit of amusement, he created in a kind of "cha-cha" style. Entertained by the result of the first programmings, he produced a total of 4 songs which he sent to some record companies. One of those companies, Tōwa Tei's Akashic Records, immediately licensed the album, releasing El Baile Alemán upon completion of the production.

Uwe Schmidt obtained official permission by Kraftwerk themselves to release El Baile Alemán, though he had to remove his version of "Radioactivity" at the request of the band. European and North American record companies remained uninterested until triggered by the hype El Baile Alemán had caused in Japan. Soon a European, North American, Mexican, Hong Kong and a Russian release followed and the title "Showroom Dummies" was featured in the Mexican movie Y Tu Mamá También.

I discovered the album thanks to a recommendation from a friend. I had no idea who Schmidt was, nor any notion of his background & origins. All I knew was that the concept of Latin Kraftwerk covers sounded too good to pass up, and I was right! The album quickly became one of my favourite releases of that time. It was a regular and dependable party favourite. What Schmidt did with his arrangements of the songs was to highlight their versatility to being adapted to this seemingly incongruous style, demonstrating just how solid Kraftwerk's songwriting truly was. The intersection of their music with this style also brought my attention to exploring Latin music in its own right, leading me to open my ears to another vista of sounds and performing techniques. The album has remained a perennial pleasure to put on whenever I need a pick-me-up. It has not age a day in the quarter century it has been in my music library. It has a timelessness that makes it impervious to trends. It simply never fails to satisfy.

THE TOWERING INFERNO @ 50

 

Theatrically released on December 16th, 1974, The Towering Inferno turns 50 years old today. Representing the "height" of the disaster movie craze of the 1970s, it was both a box-office smash and, mostly praised by critics.

With the advancements in cinema technology in the 1970s, the phenomenon of the "blockbuster" began to drive production of movies that could take advantage of the larger screens and better sound systems. The "disaster" movie became a particularly appealing genre because it could showcase big visual effects and explosive sound, literally shaking the foundations of the theatre with massive bass bins pushing the limit of subsonic immersion. The master of the genre at that time was Irwin Allen, who worked for 20th Century Fox. He'd had a successful career in the 1960s with a string of fantastical science fiction TV series, including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.

Allen had recently scored big with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), a big-budget, loaded-cast smash that set the stage for so many of the films that would follow. The film's tale of an ill-fated cruise ship, capsized by a tsunami, provided the template for viewers to enjoy the destruction of something massive alongside a cast stacked with some of the biggest stars of the day. It was an expensive proposition, but the box office for a hit could go through the roof, and these were movies that were definitely best seen on a BIG screen!

Securing the rights to make The Towering Inferno instigated something of a bidding war between the studios as they attempted to purchase the rights to the book, The Tower, written by Richard Martin Stern. Warner Bros. initially announced they'd purchased the book for $350,000.00, beating out 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. Columbia bailed on the project at this point, but Fox bought the rights to a similar novel published a year later, The Glass Inferno, by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson. It was a very similar story, and they approached Allen to direct, but he had heard about the WB plans for a similar film and warned Fox against producing a second competing movie about a burning skyscraper. This sort of thing had happened numerous times before, where similar movies were released to compete with each other, and both suffered as they cannibalized their audiences. Allen's efforts convinced Fox to negotiate with WB, and the two studios came to an agreement to co-produce a single film, with Allen at the helm, shot at the Fox studios. Fox would distribute the film in Canada and the US, while WB would have worldwide distribution, and a share structure was created for the profits.

With the corporate wrangling out of the way, the film could go into production and deal with casting, landing Steve McQueen and Paul Newman as the principal leads, who shared top billing for the film. William Holden was also in the cast and had lobbied for top billing, but was refused since his long-term standing as a box-office draw had been eclipsed by both McQueen and Newman. To provide dual top billing, the credits were arranged diagonally, with McQueen lower left and Newman upper right. Thus, each appeared to have "first" billing, depending on whether the credit was read left-to-right or top-to-bottom. Other stars included Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain, O.J. Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, and Jennifer Jones.

As mentioned, the film was a major box-office blockbuster upon its release. I have distinct memories of going to see it in the theatre and being blown away by the scope and scale of it all. Of course, I was only 11 at the time, so I didn't notice a lot of the clichés that would become common in the disaster genre in its wake. While many critics were impressed with the film, some were less than generous. Pauline Kael, writing for The New Yorker, panned the writing and characters as retreads from The Poseidon Adventure. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "a stunt and not a story. It's a technical achievement more concerned with special effects than with people. That's why our attitude toward the film's cardboard characters is: let 'em burn!"

Regardless of the critical response, the film has a kind of iconic status for that generation of moviegoers. SCTV famously parodied the film, dedicating an entire 1982 season episode to their recreation of the film, as the fictional TV station moves into a too-tall and too-thin skyscraper plagued by shoddy workmanship and inferior materials, mocking the genre's overworked clichés.

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee today is the monster masterpiece masterminded by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, Young Frankenstein, which had its theatrical premiere on December 15, 1974. A triumph with critics and audiences alike, it has become one of the pair’s most iconic and beloved films.

Young Frankenstein was principally the brainchild of Gene Wilder, who had been cooking up the idea for some time before bringing it to Mel Brooks. Initially, Brooks balked at the concept, claiming there were already enough Frankenstein movies. Brooks recalls:

“I was in the middle of shooting the last few weeks of Blazing Saddles somewhere in the Antelope Valley, and Gene Wilder and I were having a cup of coffee. He said, ‘I have this idea that there could be another Frankenstein.’ I said, ‘Not another! We’ve had The Son of, The Cousin of, The Brother-in-Law of. We don’t need another Frankenstein.’ His idea was very simple: What if the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein wanted nothing to do with the family whatsoever? He was ashamed of those wackos. I said, ‘That’s funny.’”

With Brooks onboard, Wilder set some conditions, namely that Mel couldn’t be a major character in the movie. Wilder argued that Mel had a knack for breaking the fourth wall—even unintentionally—and he wanted to preserve that wall for this film, which was intended as a sincere homage to the 1930s horror classics. There would be no “winking at the camera.” As a compromise, Mel contributed some voice-over elements and played a villager in a minor role. His principal contributions, however, were as director and co-writer alongside Wilder. In a 2016 interview, Brooks elaborated on their writing process:

“Little by little, every night, Gene and I met at his bungalow at the Bel-Air Hotel. We ordered a pot of Earl Grey tea with cream, a small kettle of brown sugar cubes, and a pack of British digestive biscuits. Step by step, ever so cautiously, we proceeded on a dark, narrow, twisting path to the eventual screenplay—in which good sense and caution are thrown out the window, and madness ensues.”

When pitching the film to studios, two major hurdles arose: the budget and the decision to shoot in black and white. Columbia Pictures initially agreed to back the film but refused to allocate the requested budget or support a black-and-white production. Brooks, unwilling to compromise, walked away and brought the project to 20th Century Fox. For the production, they secured original props from the 1930s Frankenstein films and mimicked the era’s film-making techniques, including period-accurate title cards and circular wipe transitions.

Brooks and Wilder were mostly in sync during filming, though they clashed over the “Puttin’ On the Ritz” musical number. Brooks initially refused to include it, believing it would be too absurd to have the monster perform as Wilder envisioned. Wilder, however, persisted and ultimately browbeat Brooks into relenting. In hindsight, Brooks admitted Wilder was right to insist on its inclusion.

The film features Gene Wilder in the starring role alongside a stellar cast, including the recently deceased Teri Garr, who was just beginning to make a name for herself, Peter Boyle as the Monster, Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn, and Marty Feldman. Wilder wrote the role of Igor specifically for Feldman, who improvised several gags, such as moving his hump from side to side and quipping “What hump?” when it was mentioned.

As a whole, Young Frankenstein offers a remarkably consistent and focused cinematic vision. It adheres with razor-sharp precision to the moods, imagery, and styles of the original Frankenstein films while effectively amalgamating elements from Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). The result is a lovingly crafted parody that simultaneously honours its source material.

Critics at the time were near-unanimous in their praise. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film “Mel Brooks’ funniest, most cohesive comedy to date,” adding, “It would be misleading to describe Young Frankenstein, written by Mr. Wilder and Mr. Brooks, as astoundingly witty, but it’s a great deal of low fun of the sort that Mr. Brooks specializes in.” Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars, calling it Brooks’ “most disciplined and visually inventive film (it also happens to be very funny).” Gene Siskel gave it three stars out of four, writing, “Part homage and part send-up, Young Frankenstein is very funny in its best moments, but they’re all too infrequent.” Variety declared, “The screen needs one outrageously funny Mel Brooks film each year, and Young Frankenstein is an excellent follow-up for the enormous audiences that howled for much of 1974 at Blazing Saddles.” Riding the momentum of Blazing Saddles’ success, Young Frankenstein became a smash at the box office, cementing Brooks and Wilder as comedy titans of the 1970s.

Half a century later, the film has lost none of its charm. Its timeless tribute to classic film-making ensures it remains impervious to the ravages of time and trends. Young Frankenstein refuses to fade—a true classic.

THE CLASH - LONDON CALLING @ 45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary today is the third album by The Clash, London Calling, which was released in the UK on December 14th, 1979. Though the initial steps towards creating the record were fraught with struggles, their efforts would produce the band's most popular and enduring album.

Prior to beginning work on the album, principal songwriters Mick Jones and Joe Strummer were both suffering from writer's block, not having come up with anything new for nearly a year. The group had struggled with their sound and musical direction on their sophomore album, Give 'em Enough Rope, resulting in an uneven record that garnered mixed responses from fans and critics. They had also recently split from manager Bernie Rhodes, resulting in the group losing their rehearsal space. Things began to turn around once they got settled into new digs and could begin to focus on breaking through the writer's block that had stifled their output. This was accomplished primarily due to a greater discipline fostered during the rehearsal stages for the album. The band developed a daily routine of afternoon rehearsals, broken up by a late-afternoon social football game, which encouraged a friendly bond between the band members. The football was followed by drinks at a local pub, and a second rehearsal in the evening.

While the group had been touring the US, the Americana influences helped to broaden their interest in pursuing more varied musical styles. They'd already begun to break out of the "punk" shackles on their second album, dabbling in Jamaican-inspired reggae and ska, as well as hard rock, but now they were adding rockabilly, New Orleans R&B, lounge jazz, and new wave-tinged pop to their repertoire. The band gradually rebuilt their confidence, with the styles of the session's early cover songs setting the template for the diverse material that would be written for London Calling. They were also encouraged by a growing recognition of drummer Topper Headon's skills, which they realized could be used to perform music in a wide array of genres beyond simple punk rock.

Once all of these influences took flight in the studio, the group managed to whip up enough for a double LP's worth of solid songs, each with its own infectious hooks. Though most double LPs tend to suffer from filler tunes, the flood of creativity that burst the damn during the production of this album helped ensure that the quality of the material remained consistent from start to finish. Everything from the album's opening title track to the rousing Train in Vain, a radio hit that helped crack the North American market, ensured the album was a major success with both critics and record buyers on both sides of the pond, who snapped up the release in droves.

Since its release, the album has secured itself a place as one of the most lauded releases, not only for the band, but in all the annals of rock 'n' roll. It regularly finds itself riding high on lists of all-time best rock albums ever released. It certainly set the high water mark for The Clash. While they would have other hits after this, nothing would match the sheer consistency & quality achieved on London Calling.

THROBBING GRISTLE - 20 JAZZ FUNK GREATS @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is the third LP from Throbbing Gristle, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, which was released by the band's own Industrial Records imprint on December 10th 1979. While it was the group's most accessible record to date, it has also become recognized as one of the most insidiously subversive albums to ever come from the genre that Industrial Records gave a name.

Up until the release of 20 Jazz Funk Greats, TG had made a name for themselves through a series of brain crushing live performances and a couple of unclassifiable LPs, which combined segments of recordings from their live performances along with studio concoctions created using the primitive facilities of their Death Factory studio, located in the basement level at 10 Martello St, in Hackney. Their debut LP, Second Annual Report, was a dirge of electronic lo-fi noise that oozed and sputtered with a queasy murk of fuzz, bass throb and incidental jabs of seemingly random chaos. With their follow up single, United, they dabbled in a bit of techno-pop, and their next album had a range of styles, from creepy to ambient to churning to flat out noise. Little of it was particularly accessible, challenging the patience and the auditory senses of listeners. So when it came time to do their next album, the group were eager to confound the expectations of their audience and critics, because TG were nothing if not consummate contrarians.

The initial inspiration for the album came about because of a visit by Genesis with his mum, who asked him why he didn't do a "nice" record for a change. The comment stuck and the idea was brought back to the band to do something more ordered and structured, less noisy and more like a "pop" record. Of course this idea didn't merely sit at that level, as the band then began to turn the concept over and explore ways to subvert the format. They took every aspect of every song into consideration, as well as ideas for packaging and design.

For recording, this would be the first fully studio produced LP by the band, since both the previous LPs and single had incorporated live performance recordings. Peter Christopherson, who was working as a partner in the Hipgnosis design firm, had been involved in a cover design for Paul McCartney prior to TG beginning work on their new LP. Through this connection Peter managed to secure the loan of a 16 track recording system from McCartney. This allowed the group to achieve a recording quality they'd never had before, giving the new album production values far beyond the primitive results of their earlier works. They'd also managed to acquire a lot of new gear from Roland and its subsidiary brand BOSS, including drum machines, synthesizers, effects units and amplifiers. With all this new kit in tow, they were assured a sound on the new album miles ahead of where they'd got to before.

Musically, the construction of the album was carefully discussed and debated in terms of what kinds of tracks to have in which position on the album. For example, they knew they needed something a bit light and rhythmic to kick off each side of the record, choosing pieces like the title track and Hot On the Heels of Love. From there, they ran the gamut of styles from the pastoral beauty of Beachy Head and Walkabout to the perverse pulse of Persuasion to the grinding churn of Convincing People and What A Day. Yet even with the intensity cranked up, the clarity was never sacrificed.

Of course the massive cherry for this album was the impeccably deceptive cover graphics. The front photo depicts the band, smartly dressed in summer casuals, smiling vacantly in a grassy green field peppered with wild flowers, next to a barely perceptible cliff. Because of the cloud cover on the day of the photo shoot, it's not entirely obvious that they're next to a cliff, let alone that it's Beachy Head, a location notorious as a suicide hot spot. In fact, Sleazy commented that it was incredibly difficult to get the shot to look like a nice day and not gloomy because of the weather. He had to do a lot of careful processing of the photo to lighten it up. The group also rented a Range Rover vehicle to get out to the shoot, and made sure to include it in the photo as a status symbol, being as they were all the rage for the wealthy at the time, giving the group a false appearance of affluence. The album's title was an ironic joke as there was virtually nothing jazzy or funky about the record, and there were only 11 tracks, not 20. The idea was that the record should look like some innocuous discount bin pop LP you'd find you your local department store, something someone's gran might pick up out of curiosity, only to put it on the phonograph at home and find something unexpected instead.

With the album's release, critics and fans were confused as to where TG were going and what they were aiming to achieve, though after the initial shock, both groups began to appreciate the subtleties of the record. As time passed, people noticed its prescience in terms of anticipating music like acid house techno with tracks like Hot On the Heels of Love, which was created as a song Cosey might strip to when she was doing her striptease gigs. As Industrial music has evolved and grown, 20 Jazz Funk Greats remains a regular touch stone release for the genre, nearly always included in any "best of" lists as a nod to the group who effectively invented the genre.

NON - RECEIVE THE FLAME @ 25

 

Released on December 6th, 1999, NON's Receive the Flame turns 25 years old today. After a trio of albums featuring bombastic drumming and vocal sloganeering ,uncomfortably akin to fascist propaganda, enfant terrible, Boyd Rice, side-stepped the Social Darwinism for a return to purely instrumental "noise music". It's all more like a throwback to his untitled debut "black" album and, likely his most revered work, Blood and Flame. The repeated allusion to fire seems significant in this context, as the album is very much a return to form in its use of heavy repetition, intricate layering and oblique references to fragmentary pop music relics. And while it is a recalling of his pioneering approach, it is also an evolution and refinement of it, offering a surprising clarity that was beyond the primitive methodologies of those earlier "lo-fi" efforts.

Refreshingly freed from the burdens of ideological controversies, the listener can simply enjoy the perfection of the sound, without having to dwell on the sociopolitical stance of its creator. In some regards, it's almost "listenable" to those who might not be accustomed to the rigours of hard-core "noise music". Boyd Rice can be a confounding personality, to put it mildly, but when he focuses only on the sound, his creative genius is undeniable. An album like Receive the Flame is a perfect example of his best abilities being allowed to flourish in all their cacophonous glory, demonstrating why he is often touted as the "king of noise music".

THE BEATLES - BEATLES FOR SALE @ 60

Released on December 4th, 1964, the fourth LP by The Beatles, Beatles for Sale, turns 60 years old today. The album was not officially released in North America until The Beatles catalogue was standardized internationally for CD in 1987. Instead the US and Canada got Beatles '65, released concurrently with Beatles for Sale, and containing 8 of the latter album's tracks, with the remainder of the album's 11 tracks coming from a track excluded from the US release of Help, plus a UK non-LP single.

The overall mood of Beatles for Sale is markedly darker and more sombre than their previous albums, with the band shying away from the trivial love songs that were predominant on their earlier works. Part of the reason for this has to do with their trip to the US and their first meeting with Bob Dylan, who famously lauded their musical abilities while chiding them for their superficial lyrics. He encouraged them to use their influence to explore more meaningful and introspective subjects. John Lennon took his comments particularly to heart. But don't think the influence was only one way. It was shortly after Dylan's encounter with The Beatles that he made the decision to go "electric" and front a rock band, recognizing that the format The Beatles had popularized was where the future of pop music was heading. The group's trip to the US also influenced the album in its use of country and folk influenced musical styles, as the band were exposed to US country music radio and sought to incorporate that style into their sound.

The album also brought a new palette of sounds into the group, particularly in the use of more exotic percussion instruments, like tympani and African hand drums. By this point, the studio was also undergoing a transition as far as how the band perceived its use. Rather than being merely a place to document their live sound, they began to understand the artificial potential of the tools at their disposal. It was with this album that they truly began to take an interest in the process of recording and the techniques that could be used to alter their sound. With this, they began to augment their arrangements, stripping back layers and complexity and giving depth and space to their sound with the use of reverberation devices.

The other factor that influenced the end result for the album was the breakneck schedule that the group had been held to because of the unprecedented explosion of popularity that had happened in the preceding two years. They were worked to the bone by their label, and because of their naivety, didn't understand that they had any say in the process. The schedules of recording, touring and making personal appearances on radio and TV meant that the group's principal songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney were left with very little time to come up with new tunes for their latest record. With Beatles for Sale, they only had eight new original songs, plus a couple used for a non-LP single, so the remainder of the album's 14 tracks consisted of cover versions of songs they'd been playing in their live set. This was a bit of a step backwards given that the previous LP had been all originals.

Despite the lack of time allowed to work on the album, the band still managed to come up with something that demonstrated definitive progress, both as song writers and performers. There was a palpable evolution in the maturity of the music, its emotional scope and the group's willingness to push their own boundaries. They were reaching a point where they would soon develop a complete command of their abilities and the tools they used to realize their vision. Critics of the times were picking up on this as well, and the album received overall very positive reviews, and of course, it was able to continue the domination of the charts The Beatles had secured with their first three albums.