#068

Y2K

I was dreamin’ when I wrote this

Forgive me if it goes astray

But when I woke up this mornin’

Could have sworn it was judgment day

The sky was all purple

There were people runnin’ everywhere

Tryin’ to run from the destruction

You know I didn’t even care

They say two thousand zero, zero, party over,

Oops, out of time!

So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999!

Prince – 1999

Lembram-se da passagem de ano de 1999? Recordando a malaise com que se chegou ao ultimo dia desse ano em que o século também dobrava a esquina do milénio não consigo deixar de esboçar um certo sorriso (em retrospectiva vemos tudo sempre através de lentes rose-tinted) porque não muito parece ter mudado desde então…

Na altura o “vírus” era também um arauto do fim do mundo, para o Y2K de então hoje temos o Log4Shell, aos aviões que iam todos cair dos céus à meia noite (de que fuso horário perguntava-me eu) temos agora as madrugadas amarguradas dos avós e pais que passam um Natal sem os netos ou filhos. Diz-se que o circo Mariano estava mesmo a chegar ao fim mas pelo menos a tenda vinha abaixo com estrondo: o algodão doce era já tão sugar-free que os palhaços foram mesmo com o Pai Natal no comboio ao circo, step right up, o domador acaba de meter a cabeça na boca do leão e se algo der para o torto escusam de chamar o Tonecas, está lá fora na barraca das bugigangas a dar tirinhos nos patos. Step right f**king up.

1999, não foi esse o ano em que a Lua se libertou da gravidade terrestre levando a Moon Base Alpha do comandante Koenig e companhia em deambulação eterna pelo cosmos? Não, Space: 1999 era ficção (pouco cientifica, uma espécie de versão space-opera da Jangada de Pedra). Porque a realidade aqui em baixo era um tudo ou nada mais estranha, Ricky Martin vivia “la vida loca” enquanto o resto da malta há já um ano que não conseguia ter descanso da Cher a cantar I Believe. Deus meu, o DJ completa e definitivamente influenciado pelas profecias de Nostradamus.

Mas não era propriamente um caso de doom & gloom. Ao longo dos anos 80 tínhamos tido prep time para esta “variante” da narrativa, primeiro com Prince, com quem tinha mesmo de começar com 1999. Dava nome ao disco que o senhor Rogers Nelson editou em 1982 e aquele que o catapultou finalmente para o estrelato com singles absolutamente transcendentes, Lady Cab Driver, Little Red Corvette, Delirious / Let’s Pretend We’re Married, etc. Mas os sinais continuavam a aparecer, os R.E.M. em 1987 editariam Its The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), amplo indício de que não estava tudo bem em Athens, Georgia.

Há mais duas escolhas que também não são desse ano de final milenar. Nas décadas anteriores já os sinais faziam anúncio dessa data. Juntamente com a banda sonora feita por Barry Gray para ambientar a série de Gerry Anderson produzida pela ITC e estreada a 21 de Setembro de 1975 no Reino Unido escolhi também a cantora sueca Siw Malmkvist com a orquestra de Rudi Bauer e o tema 1999, gravado em 1963 na Alemanha com letra de Carl Ulrich Blecher e música de Marino Marini.

1999 foi o ano em que os Handsome Boy Modeling School fizeram So… How’s Your Girl? onde Metaphysical (que continha samples de Sweet Bitter Love de Aretha Franklin, It’s a Good Day de Peggy Lee e Dap Walk por Ernie and the Top Notes) muito bem poderia ter estado na banda sonora da longa metragem estreia do amiguinho Spike Jonze. John Malkovich era ele próprio no filme onde Charlie Kaufman também se estreava na argumentação. Numa outra parte da mix escolhi Praise You de Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook que tinha o video realizado por Jonze e Roman Copolla com a Torrance Community Dance Group a dançar no multiplex. 1999, o ano em que um DJ nascido com o nome de Quentin Leo munido de uns breakbeats e um piano honky-tonk contribuiu uma canção que corroeu a pop mainstream pelo lado de dentro numa receita de positividade populista e uma soupçon de tensão pré-milenar. 1999, ufa.

Transitando uma vez mais do pequeno ecrã para o escurinho do cinema a dupla de Trey Parker e Matt Stone estreavam nesse ano South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut onde se pode encontrar a minha escolha de It’s Easy, M’Kay, um “You don’t have to spend your life addicted to smack! Homeless on the streets, giving handjobs for crack!”, orientações pertinentes que só podiam mesmo ser ensinadas na South Park Elementary School. Ao mesmo tempo tenho de fazer uma outra chamada de atenção para as Le Tigre, super trio de punk electrónico composto por Kathleen Hanna, que vinha das Bikini Kill, ziner Johanna Fateman e a realizadora indie Sadie Benning. Mesmo com 99 a dar os últimos cartuchos e Hot Topic a fazer parte do LP cartão de visita que melhor definia o que de melhor havia na “espingardaria” da década que findava e que adiantava a agenda riot grrrl da qual tinham sido pioneiras.

Am I not old enough, am I too young

You think I don’t know how to eat dim sum

The Donnas – You Don’t Wanna Call

Em contraponto exponho uns fan favourites incontornáveis na listagem desta semana, La Femme gravado pela banda finlandesa Pepe Deluxé no album Super Sound; Windowlicker, absoluto mind freak fuck que chegou ao numero 16 das tabelas inglesas colocando para sempre Richard D. James no pedestal da weirdness britânica e umas quantas libras nos cofres da Warp Records ou ainda os Beastie Boys que com Miho Hatori gravaram Start!, uma canção escrita por Paul Weller.

Mas afinal o que era o buzz sobre o bug? Pelos vistos na altura havia ainda muitos computadores no mundo com legado dos tempos do Cobol e do Fortran, jurássicas maquinas de computação que faziam fosse o que fosse para poupar Ram. Uma técnica era tratar a data (temporal: aniversário, casamento, cadastro, etc) com dois dígitos. O que levou algum nerd a lembrar-se que em 2000 os computadores iam pensar que era 1900. Especula-se um gasto na altura de mais de 300 biliões de dólares para resolver o problema. Para mim ficaram para sempre na memória as imagens de aviões comerciais americanos “parqueados” no deserto, já que só nessa altura se concluiu que não havia espaço em aeroporto para todos os aviões estarem parados ao mesmo tempo.

Observada do nosso ponto de vista actual a tecnologia da altura parece-nos altamente rudimentar, daí que escolher Rabies dos Position Normal era assim mais que óbvio. O nome é referencia directa às fitas Ferric (Type I) que Chris Bailiff e John Cushway usavam para gravar e tocar ao vivo, armados só com um 4-pistas Marantz emprestado mais um sampler para computador Amiga. Esta dupla londrina no início dos anos 90 costumava fazer gigs em Shoreditch, Holborn, The Garage em Islington, Angel, I mean, nos mesmos digs por onde eu andava com a banda.

O som da pop deste fim de milénio no entanto não era diferente de toda a pop que conhecemos. Músicas bem dispostas são bem vindas mas o que fica são as dores-de-corno, o que nos lembramos é do breakup, o que vende é o amor incompleto, trágico e copioso em lágrimas. Daí umas quantas escolhas de rachar-corações: os Casiotone for the Painfully Alone com Rice Dream Girl; o velhinho Ibrahim Ferrer muito bem recuperado pelo projecto Buena Vista Social Club em Herido de Sombras; Me Cago En El Amor do cantor de Pamplona Tonino Carotone e ainda You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk gravado pelos The Pet Shop Boys no album Nightlife.

Ou o mais que lindo Superman Vs. Lloyd da banda Kissing Book liderada por Andrew Kaffer, cuja voz se encaixa tão bem no tema quando suspira sobre já se ter sentido um Super Homem na época em que sua ex ainda gostava dele: “Now I feel more like Lloyd Dobler, driving around at night, trying to figure out where everything went wrong”.

Squeeze Please era o single do album Motion Picture que os suiços Yello gravaram nesse ano mas decidi escolher algo um pouco mais “victorespadinhado”, neste caso a faixa Croissant Bleu. E ainda mais umas quantas tecno-janotices japonesas: Susumu Yokota em I Am Ra Ra Ra e logo a seguir Takako Minekawa, em vésperas de casar com Cornelius, e o 7” Plash retirado do album Fun9, um pun de aroma nipónico já que o número 9 escreve-se 九 e diz-se Kyū, ou seja Funk you.  Pelo caminho vou continuando com mais umas belas preciosidades desse ano mas tinha mesmo de acabar fechando o circulo com It’s About That Walk, editado por Prince em 1999 no disco The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale, um disco publicado com canções diversas do extenso catálogo do músico de Minneapolis, só para poder acabar com o contrato que tinha com a Warner. Comparando-o com Graffiti Bridge, Stephen Thomas Erlewine da AllMusic escreveu na altura que o disco era ”an unassuming, jazzy little record that’s damn near irresistible”. Sou capaz de concordar.

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”

G.K Chesterton

#staysafe #musicfortheweekend

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I was dreamin’ when I wrote this

Forgive me if it goes astray

But when I woke up this mornin’

Could have sworn it was judgment day

The sky was all purple

There were people runnin’ everywhere

Tryin’ to run from the destruction

You know I didn’t even care

They say two thousand zero, zero, party over,

Oops, out of time!

So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999!

Prince – 1999

Remember New Year’s Eve 1999? Recalling the malaise of reaching the last day of that year when the century also turned the corner of the millennium, I can’t help but smirk a little (in hindsight we always see everything through rose-tinted lenses) because not much seems to have changed since then…

At the time the “virus” was also a harbinger of the end of the world, for that Y2K of yore we have today a Log4Shell, to the planes that would all fall from the skies at midnight (on which time zone I wondered then) we now have bitterness filled mornings of many grandparents who spent Christmas without their families. It is common knowledge that the fair might really come to an end with at least the entire tent crashing down in one nice swoop: the cotton candy already so sugar-free that the clowns even went with Santa Claus “on the train to the circus”, step right up, the tamer has just stuck his head in the lion’s mouth and if anything goes wrong, don’t even think on calling Tonecas, he’s outside by the kermesse shooting at the moving ducks. Step right f**king up.

1999, wasn’t that the year the Moon broke free of Earth’s gravity leading to Commander Koenig’s Moon Base Alpha go on an eternal wandering through the cosmos? No, Space: 1999 was fiction (of the unscientific kind, sort of a space-opera version of Saramago’s Stone Raft). Because reality down here was a bit stranger, Ricky Martin lived “la vida loca” while the rest of us had already a full year under our belt of listening to Cher singing I Believe. My God, whoever the DJ might have been he was completely and definitely influenced by Nostradamus’ prophecies.

But it wasn’t really a total case of doom & gloom. Throughout the 80’s we’d had prep time for this “variant” of the narrative, first with Prince, with whom I had to start with 1999. It gave its name to the record that Mr. Rogers Nelson put out in 1982 and the one that finally projected him into stardom with absolutely transcendent singles, Lady Cab Driver, Little Red Corvette, Delirious / Let’s Pretend We’re Married, etc. But the signs continued to appear, R.E.M. in 1987 would record Its The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), ample indication that all was not well in Athens, Georgia.

There are two more choices not from that year of millenary conclusion. In previous decades signs were already announcing that date. Along with the soundtrack made by Barry Gray to set Gerry Anderson’s series produced by ITC and premiered on September 21, 1975 in the UK, I also chose Swedish singer Siw Malmkvist with Rudi Bauer’s orchestra and the schlager pop song 1999, recorded in 1963 in Germany with lyrics by Carl Ulrich Blecher and music by Marino Marini.

1999 was the year Handsome Boy Modeling School made So… How’s Your Girl? where Metaphysical (which featured samples of Sweet Bitter Love by Aretha Franklin, It’s a Good Day by Peggy Lee, and Dap Walk by Ernie and the Top Notes) could very well have been on the soundtrack of friend Spike Jonze’s feature debut. John Malkovich was himself in the film where Charlie Kaufman also made his debut in his career of heady arguments. In another part of the mix I chose Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook’s Praise You which had the video made by Jonze and Roman Copolla with the Torrance Community Dance Group dancing outside of a multiplex. 1999, the year a DJ born Quentin Leo armed with some breakbeats and a honky-tonk piano contributed a song that eroded mainstream pop from the inside, in a recipe of populist positivity and a soupçon of pre-millennial tension. 1999, phew.

Transiting once again from the small tv screen to the darkness of a cinema room, the duo of Trey Parker and Matt Stone premiered that year South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut where you can find my choice of It’s Easy, M’Kay, with pertinent guidelines like “You don ‘t have to spend your life addicted to smack! Homeless on the streets, giving handjobs for crack!”, the kind of stuff that could only be taught at South Park’s Elementary School. At the same time, I have to remind you with a yellow Post-it for Le Tigre, a super electronic punk trio composed by Kathleen Hanna, who came from Bikini Kill, ziner Johanna Fateman and indie director Sadie Benning. With the year blowing away the last cartridges and Hot Topic being part of the business card LP that best defined what was best in the “armoury” of the decade ending and that advanced the riot grrrl agenda of which they had been pioneers.

Am I not old enough, am I too young

You think I don’t know how to eat dim sum

The Donnas – You Don’t Wanna Call

As counterpoint I disclose some fan favorites in this week’s list, La Femme recorded by Finnish band Pepe Deluxé on the Super Sound album; Windowlicker, absolute mind freak fuck that reached number 16 of the English charts putting Richard D. James forever on the pedestal of British weirdness and quite a few pounds in Warp Records safe-deposit box or even the Beastie Boys, who with Miho Hatori recorded Start!, a song written by Paul Weller.

But what was the buzz about the bug anyway? Apparently at the time there were still many legacy computers in the world, remains from the times of Cobol and Fortran, jurassic computing machines that did anything to spare Ram. One technique was to treat the date (temporal: birthday, marriage, registration, etc.) with two digits. Which led some nerd to think that in 2000 computers would think it was the year 1900. It is speculated that it cost at the time more than 300 billion dollars to solve the problem. For me, the images of American commercial planes “parked” in the desert remained forever in my memory, as it was only at that time that it was concluded that there was no space in airports for all the planes to be grounded at the same time.

Seen from our current point of view, the technology of the time seems to us to be highly rudimentary, which is why the choice of Rabies by Position Normal was therefore more than obvious. The name is a direct reference to the Ferric tapes (Type I) that Chris Bailiff and John Cushway used to record and play live, armed only with a borrowed Marantz 4-track plus an Amiga computer sampler. This London duo in the early ’90s used to play gigs in Shoreditch, Holborn, The Garage in Islington, Angel, I mean, the same digs where I hung around playing with my band.

The sound of pop from this end of the millennium however was no different from all the pop we know, before and after. Happy sappy songs are welcomed but what remains is spite and jealousy, what we remember is the breakup, what sells is incomplete love, tragic and copious with tears. Hence a few heartbreaking choices: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone with Rice Dream Girl; old man Ibrahim Ferrer very well recovered by the Buena Vista Social Club project in Herido de Sombras; Me Cago En El Amor by Pamplona singer Tonino Carotone and You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk recorded by The Pet Shop Boys on the Nightlife album. Or the more than cute Superman Vs. Lloyd by Kissing Book, band led by Andrew Kaffer, whose voice fits the topic so well when he sighs about having already felt like a Superman back when his ex still liked him: “Now I feel more like Lloyd Dobler, driving around at night, trying to figure out where everything went wrong”.

Squeeze Please was the single taken out from the Motion Picture album recorded that year by Swiss duo Yello, but I decided to choose the track Croissant Bleu. And a few more Japanese techno-candies: Susumu Yokota in I Am Ra Ra Ra and soon after Takako Minekawa, on the eve of marrying Cornelius, and the 7” Plash taken from the Fun9 album, a pun filled with Japanese aroma since the number 9 is spelled 九 and is called Kyū, giving a hidden meaning to the LP of Funk You. Along the way, I’ve continued with some more precious gems from that year, but I really had to close on a full circle so I chose It’s About That Walk, put out by Prince in 1999 on The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale, an album published with several songs of the extensive Minneapolis musician’s catalogue, just so he could end his contract with Warner. Comparing it to Graffiti Bridge, AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote at the time that the record was “an unassuming, jazzy little record that’s damn near irresistible.” I might very well agree.

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”

G.K Chesterton

#staysafe #musicfortheweekend

Prince – 1999

Beastie Boys feat. Miho Hatori – Start!

Luke Vibert & B.J. Cole – Swing Lite – Alright

Tosca – Chocolate Elvis (Rockers Hifi Vocal Version)

Pepe Deluxé – La Femme

Amadou & Mariam – Be’smi Lah

Marcel – Viginti Etduo feat. Ithaka

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Rice Dream Girl

Cassius – Hey Babe

Madredeus – Os Foliões

Fatboy Slim – Praise You

Barry Gray – Theme from Space: 1999

Susumu Yokota – I Am Ra Ra Ra

Takako Minekawa – Plash

Elmer Bernstein – Staccato’s Theme (Happening At Waldo’s Mix)

Yello – Croissant Bleu

Ibrahim Ferrer – Herido De Sombras

Eurythmics – I Saved The World Today

High Fidelity – Cream Of Beats

Isabel Pantoja – A Tu Vera

Lamb – Little Things

The Donnas – You Don’t Wanna Call

Handsome Boy Modeling School – Metaphysical

Momus – Summer Holiday 1999

Natural Calamity ‎- Lust In The Dust

Indio – I Need You In The Fall

Tonino Carotone – Me Cago En El Amor

Position Normal – Rabies

Bobby Hughes Experience – Sahara 72

South Park – It’s Easy, Mmm’kay

Ursula 1000 ‎- Very Leggy

Aphex Twin – Windowlicker

Kåre and The Cavemen – 1999 Man

Kissing Book – Superman Vs. Lloyd

The Pet Shop Boys – You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk

Siw Malmkvist – 1999

Da Damn Phreak Noize Phunk – Blueberry View

Blackalicious – Searching feat. Erinn Anova

Le Tigre – Hot Topic

Prince – It’s About That Walk

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