From Here To Eternity, 1977, Casablanca Records. This is Side A, which was of course segued for maximum danceability. The songs:
1. From Here To Eternity
2. Faster Than The Speed Of Love
3. Lost Angeles
4. Utopia
5. From Here To Eternity Reprise
I would say jump to the six minute mark for peak funkiness, but that would require passing over the sleek verses and bubbling, romantic chorus of From Here To Eternity. It's a fantastic song. You can totally skip Utopia, though. It's hews a little too closely to I Feel Love, replacing that song's self-contained energy with soaring disco cheese. The Eternity Reprise is brief but totally wicked. Overall, another superbly crafted gem from Giorgio that defined disco. The run of Faster Than The Speed Of Love and Lost Angeles (6:00 - 10:40), is particularly great. It delivers the funk, along with a heavy dose of freaky; it almost sounds otherwordly. It's rather brilliant in how it deconstructs the vocal and throws it against the skittering beat and squelching synth to create almost abstract musical shapes. Eternity's influence is undeniable; we're still hearing elements of the sounds Moroder created way back then in music today. This album is at once completely of it's time, and yet sounds almost modern. Great job, Giorgio!
Now THAT'S a moustache! Don't f*ck with this guy, he clearly means business.
Hope you're all having a great Saturday night! Til next time!
Ah, I love Saturdays. Or at least, I love the Saturdays I have off from work. And today is one of those days! Originally I was going to write Part 2 of the 2013 Doll Primer for the main blog, but then I got sucked into marathoning Futurama on Netflix, and blogging kind of fell by the wayside. At the moment I'm taking a break from the marathon to eat and thought I'd check on the blogs while I was at it. I had actually considered doing the Primer Part 2 post today anyway, then saw that my Cleo poll on the main site has gotten a shameful 27 votes so far, a tiny fraction of the total number of visitors to the blog each day. So, tapping into my terrible, mean, petulant side, I've decided there will be no Primer Part 2 today! If people can't take literally 10 seconds to click a button right there on the main page of Voicething, I can't take three hours to write up and edit the Primer Part 2 post! Mwa-ha-ha! I know, I'm awful. Oh well!
But hey, Cleo would approve of my behavior!
Oh, one last thing! Last night my friend and I saw Oz the Great and Powerful again, and I loved it even more the second time! It's such a great movie! Magical, epic, a bit dark in places, and visually stunning (I particularly love the scenes where dandelions float all around you -- it's so atmospheric.) I have officially decided I will be buying the Tollytots Theodora doll, in addition to the Disney Store Wicked Witch, Glinda, and Evanora dolls. They're beautiful dolls, especially the Disney Store ones. And of course China Girl is still kicking it around the house with me. Love her!
Anyway, back to Futurama for me! Go vote in the Cleo poll if you haven't! It's no fun if nobody votes!
This is too cool. Some enterprising tech-head calling himself SnowBro has taken Madonna's Candy Shop -- one of my favorites of M's more recent stuff -- and remade it in the style of the original Nintendo music. It takes two things I love -- Madonna and Nintendo -- and mashes them up into a wondrous marriage of music and nostalgia, while still feeling completely modern. M has performed Candy Shop on every tour since the song came out so she clearly likes it a lot. Each tour she reinvents it a little, so to M I offer a suggestion: perform this version on your next tour! Please! It would be f*cking cool! It's not outside the realm of possibility: a fanmade mash-up is how we got the brilliance that was Music Inferno (Music mashed up with The Trammps Disco Inferno), on the 2006 Confessions Tour. Anyway, check it out. It will appeal to fans of M, fans of old-school Nintendo, and anyone who likes to dance!
I have a small handful of films I'm just itching to discuss here at The Sequel, and one of those was going to be covered today (a hint on what the film was: it involves a "hanging rock".). Alas, work has gotten in the way and instead I've to go to Plan B for today's blog: posting some result shots of the dolls I gave boil washes to last week. To make it a bit more interesting, I shot the ladies in front of some pieces by Alex Gross, one of my favorite Pop Surrealists.
First up is SRM Lagoona. Her hair came out straight, just as I'd hoped, and looks pretty good! I may need to apply a product of some kind to fix the split ends. But I think she looks pretty fab overall! Check her out...
The other girl who went under the boil was DT Abbey. Really, she got more of a simmer perm than a boil one, because I wasn't sure how her tinsel would handle the heat. Again, I'm happy with these results. Her actual hair is so much better now -- smooth, silky, and manageable. The tinsel still isn't perfect, but much better than it was like before. Here she is in her icey glory...
Music today has been Goldfrapp...
Over through a dark and gentle sea Open into portal seventeen I wanna laugh and tape it down
In 1967 The Moody Blues recorded and released a song called Nights in White Satin. Maybe you've heard of it. Justin Hayward sings in soulful agony of a love unrequited. The sound is lush and atmospheric, all symphonic gloom and doom. I absolutely love it, and can see the influence it had on many of my favorite modern groups, especially Air.
But, great as it is, I'm not here to talk about that version. In 1976 (oh, the 70's, how I love you), Italian disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder did a cover of it. This would've been a total disaster if not for the fact that Moroder is a supremely talented musician. He pretty much created modern dance music, as echoes of his work in the 70's and 80's are still felt repeatedly today. Over the years he has won three Grammy's, four Golden Globes, and perhaps most impressively, three Academy Awards. He got those last three for his film score work. Chances are, even if you somehow haven't heard iconic songs like I Feel Love, Flashdance... What A Feeling, or Hot Stuff, you've heard his film score work. And he's still working today. He scored the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and worked with Daft Punk on their upcoming album. Anyway, Moroder released a full album based around his cover of the song. Side A contained three tracks all built around the song: the straight up cover, a middle portion called In the Middle of the Knight (this part composed with Pete Bellotte), and a final reprise of sorts also called Knights in White Satin. Although the tracks could be played separately, they were segued so if you played the record without stopping you got a full 14 minutes and 45 seconds of Satiny goodness. Side B contained three additional tracks composed alongside Pete Bellotte.
This being the 70's, the album cover was sufficiently batshit insane.
Although the back cover does give it a run for it's money.
Moroder took on singing duties himself. His interpretation of the vocal removes the agony in the original, replacing it with a husky seediness. Not surprising, really -- this was the 70's, after all. Towards the end of the first track, however, he goes into a whisper as he says, "I want you... I need you... I love you..." repeatedly. Accompanied only by a syncopating chime, he's gone into a sort of desperate plea. Still sexy, but a bit dark as well.
His production work is ace. For a disco tune the pace is rather slow. It's all funk snares and clomping beats. This being disco, an orchestra was in order. Here it soars with smooth, glacial stabs, hitting it's peak after the second chorus, where a cross faded echo effect emphasizes the previous crescendo of Moroder's excited shouts of, "I love you, love you, love you, love you!" Amazing stuff.
Beyond the standard cover, my favorite portion comes in at the six minute mark, and lasts exactly two minutes. Here the beat gets chunky, the atmosphere (even more) funky, and the synths dreamy and ethereal. It's very "Pass me a Pina Colada, I'm heading for the Lucite!" Love it! It's followed by a trademark Moroder synth-cheese portion -- these moments would increase in his music through the 80's. At 9:15 things toughen up again, and we go into the reprise. The chorus is protracted to emphasize it's epicness, the funk comes storming back in, drums cascade around the vocal as lush freestyle piano darts in and out, and the orchestra gets increasingly frenetic. The track eventually fades on Moroder's vocal ad libs.
Here's the standard version, aka track one...
But I highly recommend the full 14:45 suite. It will give you so much more in every way...
All in all, a big, lush, romantic (in that seedy disco way), gift to those who love the dance floor. Break this one out when a friend tells you disco sucks. Chances are they didn't even realize disco could be this, well, artistic. Too many people go straight to the Funky Towns and Le Freaks for disco -- great songs to many, but also a very small representation of what disco really was. Knights in White Satin is a true gem of a song, just as good when chilling with a glass of wine as when you're dancing your cares away out on the floor.
And since it did inspire such a wonderful disco tune (and because I love it a lot, too), here's the original...
I saw Oz the Great and Powerful tonight and really liked it! But I'm not here to talk about the movie, I wanna talk about the doll I got! I was already aware of the Tollytots line of Oz fashion dolls before I saw the movie. The Disney Store has also released their own line of Oz fashion dolls but I don't have one of those nearby, and don't want to buy one online. Anyway, after the movie was over I headed straight to Toys R Us and grabbed the doll of China Girl. Check her out...
Not a great pic. But it shows you the whole box front.
I liked her character's backstory and the whole idea behind her (a living China doll who has been broken and repaired). The doll itself is pretty unique -- you don't see any like her on toy shelves at the moment. None that I know of, anyway. Even within her own line she's completely different. The others are straightforward fashion dolls. She's not the type of doll I usually go for. I suppose you could say she's vaguely Blythe- or Pullip-adjacent, two lines I (used to) collect, but she's really got her own thing going on.
Her face is really gorgeous: bright blue eyes, mild blush, bright red lips, and greyish-silver eyebrows. She has just a hint of matching silver eyeshadow. Her eyes have some beautifully subtle details going on. There's a light grey crescent reflection in the pupil, and check out her irises. I love the little hint of greenish-white by the pupil. Best of all, they're gazing to her left. Combined with the faint smile she looks curious and happy.
You can see the details of her eyes fairly well here.
Her dress evokes the era she's from well. Lace collar, ribbon belt and bow in the back, and simple black Mary Janes molded to her feet. She looks really well-articulated -- neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles. Not too shabby, especially for an American doll! Little molded cracks from being broken are spread across her body. This is a great effect -- it gives her a lot of personality, and for a twenty-dollar playline doll, the effect has been manufactured well. At first I thought she didn't have any of the cracks on her face, which would make sense from a marketing standpoint. A closer look reveals she does have them, they're just much more subtle.
The blue stripes around her joints are a nice touch.
Curiously, she comes squatting in the box.
Not sure why they didn't just make the box tall enough for her stand in.
The cracks are a great touch. They hint at her backstory and give the doll a lot of personality.
I still haven't taken her out of the box. This is extremely rare for me -- I'm more of a tear right into that sucker soon as I get home kind of guy. It's not like I'm undecided about keeping her or something. I guess I'm just enjoying admiring her "from a distance" for the time being. Speaking of the box, it seems kind of anachronistic to what you'd expect. This is a doll line for a big, mega-bucks, blockbuster picture, but you'll only find the film's logo in one spot, the upper right hand corner, and it's pretty small at that. I'm surprised it's not on the back of the box at all. On the front much more space is given to the character's name and picture. On the back the focus is, again, on the character. She's surrounded by the other four dolls in the line. It says Oz at the top, but it's in a completely different font than the logo and there's no mention of the film title at all. I like this focus on the actual toys instead of the film brand; definitely refreshing. Speaking of the other dolls, TRU had all of them, but I wasn't quite as impressed by them as I was by China Girl. I'll probably pick up the Theodora doll, but a lot of that is because I just really love Mila Kunis. No really, she's totally cool -- love her!
The logo's really pretty. The castle looks a lot like the Magic Kingdom castle. Some Disney
exec got a raise for this bit of synergy.
Simple and to the point: "Oz is a really far-out place! Buy our fabulous dolls!" Seriously though,
this ain't too much of a hard sell compared to most lines.
China Girl, you know what's what!
The other dolls. Theodora's hat is pretty wicked! I'm having visions of Carmen Sandiego, a very good thing.
Anyway, that's my China Girl story. She's a cool doll -- very unique and pretty. She's not quite like any others I have. I know I've kind of aimlessly rambled here, I just wanted to talk about my neat new toy. When I de-box her I might throw some more pics up.
