Pack Your Bags

I don't know about you guys, but I definitely wouldn't be packing my bags to go anywhere with Gregory. Let alone to the outer reaches of space. Despite his skill with cheery cosmic disco-cheese, I just can't trust him. I mean, he won't even tell me his last name. And that barely there lip hair... its like a suggestion of a moustache. Yuck.

Gregory- Space Trip (Pt 1)

Darladi Ladada

Darladi Ladada. What does it mean? It could be Hindi for foot-stomping Bollywood flavored Italo disco. But I really doubt it.

Tanya- Darladi Ladada

Tanya is also known as Thanya, who released the Italo classic, Freedom in 1982 (available from my friend Halli here) but I think Tanya has one more AKA, Tanya Jackson, being that they share the same producer and first name. You be the judge, here's the Tanya Jackson version of a Sylvia classic...

Tanya Jackson- Pillow Talk

Doin' That Crazy Thing

Back in March I found myself a bit tipsy and surrounded by sleeping people so I did what anyone would have done, posted a crapload of ELO related stuff. I made a comment about how four ELO posts was probably enough and frequent commenter and ELO freak Koop vehemently disagreed. So here's a little leftover that I couldn't post that night, being that it's really hard to rip vinyl without waking people up.

This is ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne's first solo record, Doin' That Crazy Thing. Released in 1977, both sides are midtempo disco jams featuring Lynne in fine voice and his production sharp as ever. The weirdest thing about the record is that is was a stab at having a "dance", you know... like the Hustle. The front cover features two dancers (the dude sporting a sweet stache by the way) doing twenty steps with little captions on how to execute them. For example box six says, "Right leg side straight, left knee bent, right arm locked, left side 90". If you had any doubts about Jeff Lynne as a control freak before, I'm sure that settles it right? If not the back has a note thats says, "Arm movements swing in natural opposition for everything but sequences 2 & 5, these should be clean and sharp to form visual contrast". whoa, way to take the fun out of dancing. I embedded the artwork for the front and back cover so I'm expecting everyone to learn the steps okay? First one to upload their dance on youtube gets a mental high five from yours truly.

Jeff Lynne- Doin' That Crazy Thing
Jeff Lynne- Goin' Down to Rio

Just A Little Love

Just a little love for your lazy Sunday afternoon.

Bay City Rollers- Just a Little Love

Man, listen to those girls screaming! They're just crazy for the Rollers!

Hot Wax

Here's the sweet electro-funk b-side to Van Twist's (Dan Lacksman and Marc Moulin of Telex) super limp cover of Shaft. I practice my air cowbell to this every morning. In case you were wondering.

Van Twist- Hot Wax

Escape From New York

If you're going to name yourself or band after something really awesome, you've got to be prepared to be awesome right? Case in point, Escape From New York. They only released two singles in the early '80s, but oh, the singles. Huge basslines, catchy hooks, lush synths, man, they were good. The four members kinda fell (escaped?) off the face of this earth after the early '90s but I like to think they may have fell into another world, one more suited to their futuristic sound.

Escape From New York- Fire In My Heart

Escape From New York- Slow Beat
(Thanks to the excellent Gold Code for this gigantic vocoder jam!)

Clio, Now More Than Ever.

Clio returns! Unfortunately my dream about her songs all being about body parts (check out Eyes and Faces) didn't pan out, but I'll get over it. In '86, Clio and Roberto Ferrante (Pineapples!) teamed up once again for another synthtastic piece of perky italo this time under the guise of Glam. Strangely the a side entitled More Than Ever (Club Mix) is a completely different song, vocals by a man, maybe Ferrante himself, with a different tune and lyrics and its not even very good. But who cares about these mysteries when the b side is where its at anyway? Clio on vocals and Ferrante on keys and production... it doesn't get much better than that in my book.

Glam- More Than Ever (Fashion Mix)

By the way check out that thing to the right there that says Interconnectedness and has the cube and all the spaceships. Its a feed of my tumblr page where you can see a hodgepodge of what I might be digging around the old interweb. Ees fun.

Deja Vu

Bobsy asked for a re-up, and being that I posted the requested song a year ago when nobody read ARAWA, I'll just re-post the whole thing! It's a song so good, it deserves at least two posts...

This song makes me wanna dance like Molly Ringwald. Or with her. Whatever. I can't find any info on this band whatsoever but I can tell you that:

1. Its probably from around '81.
2. It sounds like a lot of early Depeche Mode before they got all sad. Speak & Spell in particular.
3. Echo & The Bunnymen have a song called Turquoise Days.
4. My girlfriend loves turquoise.
5. I love this song.

Turquoise Days- Grey Skies

Edit: Since posting this, a discogs page has showed up and apparently, the two members went on from here to make... psychedelic trance! Bummer.