ZE & Cristina

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Hello dear ZE and Cristina fans
what a joy to experience all these people who know ZE records and Cristina ! I thought I was her only fan and no one ever heard of her! Recently I have been contemplating writing a book on ZE records and Cristina mainly. Anyone who wants to help or give me tidbits of information please email me! Thanks!

robbert, Wednesday, 11 September 2002 08:28 (twenty-one years ago) link

Blimey! I have been talking about Ze Records with both Nath and Paul Lester over the last week. We all agree that a proper Ze reissue programme is urgent and key (I know they've just reissued the Kid Creole albums but we need Chance 'n' the Contortions, first Was (Not Was) album, Cristina etc.! And if Mr Zilkha is still out there, perhaps he could try and persuade Leiber and Stoller to lift the blockade on Cristina's phenomenal reading of "Is That All There Is?" Fortunately I still have the original 12" but would love to have all her stuff on CD.

Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 11 September 2002 09:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

Rollins released (at least a good old chunk of) the James White / Black / whatever Ze stuff on Zero Infinity a few years back.

That aside, I agree completely. Except to say there's a good chunk of stuff on Ze which (ahem) hasn't necessarily stood the test of time, like some of the Davitt Sigerson stuff. Not sure how Last Man In Europe would sound now either, but it's been a long time.

Perhaps worth noting that "Busting Out" represents Bill Laswell's best work to date in my view.

Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 09:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yeah it is urgent and key that the Mutant Disco compilation (with Penman sleevenotes and maybe some extra tracks?) comes out again.

Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 11 September 2002 10:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yeah.

A brief web search seems to suggest that the Zero Infinity stuff is hard to come by. So a re-reissue programme U&K.

Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 10:04 (twenty-one years ago) link

Sometime ILM poster Stirmonster has started a Ze Records history site.

You can get Buy the Contortions on CD through Rollins' site.

Vic Funk, Wednesday, 11 September 2002 12:10 (twenty-one years ago) link

Fully agree with sentiments above, especially re Cristina, She should be banging on the doors of Miss Kittin/Adult/Ladytron etc's record companies demanding royalties or at least a decent reissue programme.

In addition to above a reissue of the Ze Christmas record, the other great Christmas record, is urgent and key, (well before Christmas anyway.

Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Wednesday, 11 September 2002 13:10 (twenty-one years ago) link

thanks vic for the heads up - i've gathered loads more info which should be up soon. also i have been approached by sony to do a mix cd. i think they're hoping for an electroc(l)a$h comp but screw that, i'm going to see what the possibility is of licensing some ZE stuff - james white, aural exciters and THAT cristina song - 'is that all there is'. the kids need to hear this stuff. let's hope sony take the bait.

and robert, i'll be in touch. i take it you know that cristina is married to michael zihlka who is no a billionaire!

stirmonster, Thursday, 12 September 2002 10:40 (twenty-one years ago) link

now a billionaire

stirmonster, Thursday, 12 September 2002 10:55 (twenty-one years ago) link

Crikey Stirmonster that's really exciting! Have you managed to put together a discogrpahy as part of the stuff which will go up on your page?

Tim (Tim), Thursday, 12 September 2002 12:40 (twenty-one years ago) link

someone very kindly sent me a ze discography. however, there are sizeable gaps as it doesn't include all the ze releases that were in association with buddha / arista / island. i'm slowly filling in the blanks but i don't know if it'll ever be possible to w3ork out everything that was ever released.

stirmonster, Thursday, 12 September 2002 15:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

one year passes...

The Guardian
September 22, 1984

Week-end People: How Cristina lives down Ze label of marrying the boss

By STUART WAVELL

Down to Blake's Hotel to catch up with the new fast music. Singer Cristina was lying on a bed, smoking. Some of it was coming from her cigarette. 'I want you sexually, you want me sexually,' she was saying. 'That's nice, but if you have a secret interest in my brother there's a story there.'

I didn't know she had a brother. She certainly has a husband, the Mothercare heir Michael Zilkha, who obligingly puts out her records on his Ze label in New York. She also has an eight-month-old baby girl who isn't short of the latest clobber. So she must have been talking about her lyrics. Difficult to tell: her education at Harvard and London's Central School of Drama seems to have produced an unintelligible babble.

'It's mostly New Wave working class,' she said. 'Otherwise it would be camp affluence nostalgic--Thirties film scores--undercut by ironic dissonance.'

Sounds a bit discordant, I ventured. An all-brown meal would be bloody horrible without green vegetables, she riposted. Quite, but wasn't this lyrics thing like yesterday's cold potatoes? Maybe that's why she had such a small following, she mused. Is one barking up the wrong art form?

Lets clear this up. Critina Monet is a New Yorker whose first fling was a send-up called Disco Clone. Next came an adulterated version of Is That All There Is? That was withdrawn after composers Lieber and Stoller sent round their legal frighteners. Then there was her Christmas album Things Fall Apart.

This time she thinks she's cracked it. Her new album, Sleep It Off, features a track entitled Don't Mutilate My Mink, whose ironic dissonance may escape Greenpeace: 'Don't tell me that I'm frigid/Don't try to make me think/I'll do just fine without you/Don't mutilate my mink.'

She appeared anxious to allay speculation about marrying the boss. 'He was not famous at the time. He was just a kid like me. We were both apprentice theatre critics on the Village Voice. He said Harold Robbins was an eighth-grade Balzac in an eighth-grade age. He probably said that to all the girls.

Marriage followed the discovery that they knew their Balzacs from their Bartoks. 'When people go into a nepotism thing about the rich boyfriend gives the girl a record there's an element of truth, because I never paid my dues. But it's not that you see a girl with a great figure and you spend your money on a record.

Great opening line.

Alba (Alba), Thursday, 29 July 2004 23:38 (nineteen years ago) link

I just downloaded 'Is That All There Is?'. Before I did so I was thinking "I'm sure I've heard a crazy reworking of this song before, which now I think about it might be Cristina's" but I couldn't think where. Then I remembered it was at Optimo.

She sounds greater and greater the more I read about her. I wonder where she is now.

"Elegant, intelligent, beautiful and the wittiest girl I have ever met. In a sassier, zestier, brighter, funnier world, Cristina would have been Madonna." - (Richard Strange)

Alba (Alba), Friday, 30 July 2004 00:33 (nineteen years ago) link

Good grief - I've just discovered that the drooling male narrator of 'Disco Clone' is Kevin Kline! Can this be true?

Alba (Alba), Friday, 30 July 2004 00:47 (nineteen years ago) link

Was he famous at the time?

Mike Ouderkirk (Mike Ouderkirk), Friday, 30 July 2004 02:25 (nineteen years ago) link

the last i heard she had some (pretty serious) brain disease. i hope she's better!

a friend of her daughter's emailed me last year trying to find out where she could buy cristina's music. apparently cristina never kept any of her records - shame!

stirmonster, Friday, 30 July 2004 06:31 (nineteen years ago) link

Ladytron said (in some blurb they published at the time of the release of Softcore Jukebox) that they were hoping to do a collaboration with Cristina in the near future. That would be great.

zebedee (zebedee), Friday, 30 July 2004 09:38 (nineteen years ago) link

I've just discovered that the drooling male narrator of 'Disco Clone' is Kevin Kline! Can this be true?

That's what it says in the credits to Mutant Disco. As for the matter of if he was well-known at the time, I'm assuming he was a struggling actor at the time, as it pre-dates Sophie's Choice, etc.

Now if somebody could explain the "Special thanks to Martin Scorcese" in N.Y. Noise.

Vic Funk, Friday, 30 July 2004 09:57 (nineteen years ago) link

does the Cristina album cover pre or post-date the cover to "Slave to the Rhythm"?

jed_ (jed), Friday, 30 July 2004 11:01 (nineteen years ago) link

Pre-date - Sleep It Off was '84, Slave To The Rhythm '85. Good point...

Alba (Alba), Friday, 30 July 2004 11:07 (nineteen years ago) link

My copy of "Disco Clone" bore no other attribution than a big sticker stating "produced by JOHN CALE." Unlikely as it sounds, I used to wonder if the vocals were just sped-up Cale.

briania (briania), Friday, 30 July 2004 11:18 (nineteen years ago) link

Now if somebody could explain the "Special thanks to Martin Scorcese" in N.Y. Noise.

maybe scorcese is a massive no wave fan?

stirmonster, Friday, 30 July 2004 11:38 (nineteen years ago) link

so anyway, what is coming next in the ZE reissue programme?

zebedee (zebedee), Friday, 30 July 2004 11:50 (nineteen years ago) link

4 James Chance/Black/Contortions records are next : Buy The Contortions, Off White, The Live album from Paris, and Flaming Demonics

Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Friday, 30 July 2004 13:14 (nineteen years ago) link

Why doesn't anyone ever mention "Irresistible Impulse", the Tiger Style reissue of the three Chance Ze albums? People jump from Infite Zero to Ze. I have the set, it's put together very well, and to my ears, sounds fine.

paul c (paul c), Friday, 30 July 2004 13:23 (nineteen years ago) link

three weeks pass...
so anyway, what is coming next in the ZE reissue programme?

September 30 sees the reissue of Cristina's Doll in the Box (with "Is That All There Is?"!) and Sleep It Off (with a cover of "When U Were Mine"?!?!!!!!!!1)

Vic Funk, Thursday, 26 August 2004 12:00 (nineteen years ago) link

Oh, how WONDERFUL that "Is That All There Is" is finally getting a release! (If for no other reason that people might stop e-mailing me for the MP3 I ripped from my 12" vinyl copy.)

But wot, neither of the 12" mixes of "Disco Clone"? Dommage!

mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Thursday, 26 August 2004 12:29 (nineteen years ago) link

I hope they are good! Anyone hear them the first time around?

Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Thursday, 26 August 2004 12:29 (nineteen years ago) link

But wot, neither of the 12" mixes of "Disco Clone"? Dommage!

Is this not one of them?:

"Ballad of immoral manufacture* • (Ronald Melrose - *Formely Disco Clone (p) 1980 - Produced by Cristina, Michael Zilha & Bob Blank - Arranged by Ben Lanzaroni - String & Horn Arrangements by Carlos Franzetti - Vocal Direction & additional lyrics by Cristina)" It's a little more than 8 minutes long.

Vic Funk, Thursday, 26 August 2004 13:12 (nineteen years ago) link

Fucking Ze records and their penchant for cardboard digipack sleeves but RAAAAAAY! times a million re. this nevertheless.

Alex in Doncaster (Alex in Doncaster), Thursday, 26 August 2004 14:57 (nineteen years ago) link

one of my initial ideas was to play out 'Blame It On Disco' tonight but it's bloody long and roams all round the house...Scream's 'Stuka' would mix well into it (but then so would a lot of off-kilter dub i guess)

the neurotic awakening of s (blueski), Thursday, 26 August 2004 15:48 (nineteen years ago) link

three months pass...
As promised in the bit of this thread which got deleted during the recent hiatus, I've just posted the RUDE 12" version of "Disco Clone" on me blog. It's best enjoyed if you're familiar with the proper song-based 12" version, which is still available here, along with THE BEST CHRISTMAS SONG EVER, "Things Fall Apart".

mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 24 December 2004 11:16 (nineteen years ago) link

I got "Is that" as one of my first Napster downloads, many years ago. Is the 7" version the same as the 12" version?

mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 24 December 2004 11:34 (nineteen years ago) link

Well (checks iPod), my 12" version is 5:47, so I'm guessing that it's longer than the 7". How long is the version on the CD, I wonder...

mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 24 December 2004 12:09 (nineteen years ago) link

I don't think my version is that long...

mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 24 December 2004 12:16 (nineteen years ago) link

thanks so much mike!

jed_ (jed), Friday, 24 December 2004 13:41 (nineteen years ago) link

the 12" version is substantially longer than the 7".

stirmonster, Friday, 24 December 2004 13:46 (nineteen years ago) link

"Ticket To The Tropics" currently my fave rave rockisst bubblegum evah. Co-written by The Knack dude! Anybody know of anything else he's done like this?

don, Friday, 24 December 2004 20:01 (nineteen years ago) link

He sings "Betrayal" and "Smile" on 'Born to Laugh at Tornadoes.'

Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Friday, 24 December 2004 22:13 (nineteen years ago) link

Thanks Mike for that orgasmic 12" version Disco Clone!

It's a shame Cristina didn't do more in the "Ticket to the Tropics" vein.

Talking of ZE stuff, some of my faves are Marie et Les Garcons/Garcons, the Last Men and Casino Music. I wonder if "Do the Proton" by Casino Music was recorded before Blondie's "Atomic".
Anyone know Chris Stein???

DR SCott, Friday, 24 December 2004 22:15 (nineteen years ago) link

one month passes...
Just picked up the reissue of "Sleep It Off" from the used bin on my lunch break and from the first two tracks ("What's A Girl To Do" and "Ticket To The Tropics"), I'm a very happy buyer.

alex in montreal, Thursday, 3 February 2005 19:21 (nineteen years ago) link

"whats a girl to do" pwns

peter smith (plsmith), Thursday, 3 February 2005 19:43 (nineteen years ago) link

Alex, those two are the most immediate, but make sure you give some time to "The Lie Of Love" and "Quicksand Lovers," which rule just as much.

Matthew "Flux" Perpetua, Thursday, 3 February 2005 20:09 (nineteen years ago) link

four years pass...

Hmmn, has the 12" of "Disco Clone" that Mike posted five years ago or so ever been released on CD? Still haven't stumbled across many Ze 12"s in New Zealand, heh.

etc, Sunday, 6 September 2009 04:36 (fourteen years ago) link

er, wait. is it a different version?

jaxon, Sunday, 6 September 2009 05:09 (fourteen years ago) link

Different version, yeah.

etc, Monday, 7 September 2009 21:29 (fourteen years ago) link

nine months pass...

Should I go track down "Sleep It Off" or something? I have never rly listened to Cristina

It's like 10,000 spoons from New York and New Jersey (Stevie D), Monday, 5 July 2010 03:16 (thirteen years ago) link

i just listened to that record yesterday thanks to ilxor 69, who gave me his copy. 'sleep it off' is pretty great, but i think i like 'doll in the box' better. SIO is a new wave/rock record produced by Don Was, while DITB is a weirdy disco album produced by August Darnell. both are pretty great tbh

jaxon, Tuesday, 6 July 2010 01:28 (thirteen years ago) link

Sleep It Off is imho a stronger album overall, even though Doll in the Box features her best song, "Disco Clone". some of the tracks on DITB "Jungle Love" and "Blame It On Disco" strike me as somewhat generic takes on Kid Creole's style, and I think they'd actually be more entertaining if Darnell had performed them himself.

I heard the original John Cale-produced 7" version of "Disco Clone" a while back, and it's horrendous, with some punchable, nasal-voiced art student doing the spoken-word bits that Kevin Kline re-recorded for the more well-known release.

I'm intrigued by the "rude" version of "Disco Clone" that mike t-diva mentions upthread? his (6-year-old) blog entry doesn't link to it anymore, and I can't find it elsewhere online. 100000 thanks to anyone who'd be willing to share.

if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Tuesday, 6 July 2010 02:16 (thirteen years ago) link

(oops, should say "some of the tracks on DITB such as 'Jungle Love' and 'Blame It On Disco'")

if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Tuesday, 6 July 2010 02:17 (thirteen years ago) link

unregistered, here's the version of "disco clone" from mike's blog.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/sb01zi

jed_, Tuesday, 6 July 2010 14:22 (thirteen years ago) link

thank you kindly, jed!

if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Wednesday, 7 July 2010 18:04 (thirteen years ago) link

yeah, this is pretty demented

if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Wednesday, 7 July 2010 18:21 (thirteen years ago) link

I'm much more a fan of new wave/rock than disco so I think I will start w/ SIO. Also, I already love two tracks on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uSTXn4H5jY (Stevie D), Wednesday, 7 July 2010 18:22 (thirteen years ago) link

make sure you get ahold of "Things Fall Apart," a bonus track on the CD version Sleep It Off. it's one of her best songs, and in a way it's a response to the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping". I wish she did more spoken word parts, because she has a knack for capturing deadpan hipster loopiness in her narrations, as in "Is That All There Is" and "Things Fall Apart".

if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Wednesday, 7 July 2010 18:31 (thirteen years ago) link

yeah, this is pretty demented

― if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Wednesday, July 7, 2010 2:21 PM (10 minutes ago)

...'specially the last 30 seconds or so, when the guy and girl start talking dirty to each other in such a way that the overdubbing is really really blatant.

"does this please you?"
"oh yes."
"uhhhh, I have 50 more."
"why, come on...and now cum on it."
"uhhhh"
"I'm so glad we met."

if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Wednesday, 7 July 2010 18:36 (thirteen years ago) link

xp that's one of the two songs I was talking about! I made a Christmas mixtape last year and it was like my favorite song on the whole damn thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uSTXn4H5jY (Stevie D), Wednesday, 7 July 2010 18:48 (thirteen years ago) link

no problem, glad you enjoyed it!

jed_, Thursday, 8 July 2010 11:32 (thirteen years ago) link

nine years pass...

I thought I would have to make a thread for Cristina, but here one is.

I don't know if it was on ilxor or another forum but MASSIVE THANKYOU to whoever posted a youtube link to "Things Fall Apart", one of the most rocking things I've heard in quite some time and a rare youtube link that had me really excited and led to something so good. It's one of these things I probably could have only discovered through chance because it doesnt fall into any of my favored genres.

Doll In A Box and Sleep It Off are both fantastic brilliant stuff, the bonus tracks to the latter are especially fine. "Deb Behind Bars (Alternate)" is about as good as "Things Fall Apart".

I particularly liked "Ballad Of Immoral Earnings" (Brecht/Weil cover), just weirdly gorgeous.

Some of it reminds of Bongwater, anyone else getting that?

Wish she done a load more albums. From the sleeve notes interview it seems like imposter syndrome stopped her. What a shame!

Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 21 March 2020 14:01 (four years ago) link

Now reading about Ann Magnuson (later of Bongwarter, which started in '86, '87, I think) along with Cristina and Michael and other ZE people in Tim Lawrence's doorstop paperback Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980 -1983. Cale left to form Spy, which I mainly remember for Lester Bangs's excellent 7", "Let It Blurt." Hopefully more about that later in here, which goes "crab-wise," as the author says, tracking inter-and intra-related activities across the calendar, year-to-year, so
lots of recurring appearances, as in Ken Burns docs.
Author seems to agree with one of Cristina's colleagues, who says she was "very, very, very clever," but not the most effective singer.
I mostly know her from comps released in the great ZR reissue wave of 00s, seems effective to me.
Covered this in '06, blogged archived clip w 2016 update:
Liquor For The Soul

Lizzy Mercier Descloux: Best Off (ZE)
In 1979, NYC's ultrahip ZE Records issued Press Color, the debut album of
Parisienne expat painter et post-punkette Lizzy Mercier Descloux. It was pretty good
punky funky no (-ish) wave. But the most striking thing about the early songs
invited to ZE's new Lizzy fair, Best Off, is the way their parsing paisley parsley
and bodyhair telegraphy grow through the French, South American, Caribbean and
African elements of LDM's Eiffel of a peak. For instance, Best Off offers a
juicy slice of 1984's Soweto-collaborative, bollocks-to-apartheid Zulu Rock, which ZE
has also reissued, with several bonus tracks. Wherever
she goes, Descloux sounds far too at home to be satisfied, but there's a
nervous delight in her flight, though it's never unsteady. She often suggests the
artist as discreetly caffeinated spectator, responding to the multiplying
dimensions in her pulsating frames. Descloux (who moved to the West Indies in the
90s, and kept painting, right up until her 2004 death from cancer) even molds
bullets from samples of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker's narcotic blue satori,
which remains undisturbed, of course. Opposites attract, eternally.(ZE site still
"under construction" last time I checked, so for instance see
http://www.forcedexposure.com)

(update: in 2016, Pitchfork published Laura Snapes' informative,, insightful, incisive profile of LMD: http://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9828-lizzy-mercier-descloux-behind-the-muse/)

dow, Saturday, 21 March 2020 17:17 (four years ago) link

great *ZE* reissue wave of 00s, that is.

dow, Saturday, 21 March 2020 17:23 (four years ago) link

Don't Mutilate My Mink is one of the best songs of all time and I wish I could find my audio cable so I could play it really loud instead of through shitty laptop speakers

Colonel Poo, Saturday, 21 March 2020 17:25 (four years ago) link

Geniunely pissed off to this day that we had a Cristina in the music world and lost her bcz she convinced herself her only real talent was being married to a label head.

"You Rented A Space" is another bizarre gem.

Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 21 March 2020 19:55 (four years ago) link

The 2CD Mutant Disco expansion from 2003 (later split into two volumes) remains one of my favorite releases of anything, ever. No one else on it has quite Cristina's specific attitude, but it is wall-to-wall great.

Fans of the label/scene may enjoy the Michael Zilkha-produced Basquiat shaggy dog story that is Downtown '81 (available here in low quality), which has performances/bits from Kid Creole, Coati Mundi, DNA, The Plastics, James Chance, Debbie Harry... but no Cristina IIRC, sadly.

eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Saturday, 21 March 2020 20:23 (four years ago) link

@ZEBooks_USA
"He exuded cool, sangfroid, and—unusually for the time and place—quiet competence."
@luxante
+
@nybooks
on ZE's first title by
@lordrochester
. Article at: https://nybooks.com/articles/2020/04/09/glenn-obrien-sweet-smell-hipness/

#intelligencefordummies #glennobrien #zebooks #nyrb #lucsante #withprojects #nectarliterary
https://twitter.com/ZEBooks_USA/status/1240684458392485890/photo/1

dow, Saturday, 21 March 2020 22:00 (four years ago) link

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETfIHSuUwAAa3GJ?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

dow, Saturday, 21 March 2020 22:02 (four years ago) link

was bored a few months ago and decided to look Cristina up, surprised to find out she's on Instagram! And still as brilliantly droll and fashionable as ever: https://www.instagram.com/rupertandedith/?hl=en

thanks for bumping this thread, been meaning to post about this but kept forgetting.

Roz, Sunday, 22 March 2020 06:02 (four years ago) link

Oh wow that’s an immediate follow for me, thanks

Almost made me sign up for Instagram.

stirmonster, Sunday, 22 March 2020 15:09 (four years ago) link

completely obsessed with this multilingual-rap/AOR anthem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrU8Ghbx7BU

rí an techno (seandalai), Wednesday, 25 March 2020 01:15 (four years ago) link

word is going around that she's passed, due to complications of coronavirus.

dan selzer, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:07 (four years ago) link

What?! No...

Album Moods: Rambunctious; Snide (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:08 (four years ago) link

yeah, I just poked around. No official announcement yet but a few clear messages from friends of hers on social media and such.

dan selzer, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:30 (four years ago) link

Oh fuck no :(

Roz, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:44 (four years ago) link

Hell of a final post: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-ZdBpGgRcW/?igshid=hbwcqdw1988e

Going to jam her version of “Is that all there is?” in tribute. Godspeed you badass legend.

Roz, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:54 (four years ago) link

Oh no!!

stirmonster, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:55 (four years ago) link

Shit, I just started following her Instagram after it was mentioned above (one of three accounts I now follow). Having briefly "met" her again this way, I had thought I might catch up. Now, all of the sudden, it seems she is gone. RIP.

eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 19:18 (four years ago) link

Godammit - RIP Cristina

Jeff W, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 19:30 (four years ago) link

This is so sad. Rest In Peace to a force of nature! x

current (jed_), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 22:55 (four years ago) link

this interview with her that my friend Kurt wrote is worth re-reading.

http://festivefanzine.blogspot.com/2010/12/from-vaults-merry-cristina-mas.html

stirmonster, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:09 (four years ago) link

well shit!

brimstead, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:13 (four years ago) link

thanks for those links, Stirmonster, I know how much those records meant to you x

current (jed_), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:17 (four years ago) link

mean, not meant.

current (jed_), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:19 (four years ago) link

thanks jed. so sad. she had been hoping for over a decade to record another album but it never came to be as she had majorly struggled for the last 15 years with a serious auto immune condition. X

stirmonster, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:28 (four years ago) link

such a shame.

current (jed_), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:46 (four years ago) link

💔

maura, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:48 (four years ago) link

Feels weird because I just fell in love with those albums in the last 6 months but I'm glad she has more fans than I imagined. I hope people will be writing lots of articles about her soon.

Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:56 (four years ago) link

So, I heard she talked about having Covid on her Instagram. I don't use Instagram but had a look and can't see where that might be. Any ideas?

Guardian piece - https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/01/pop-singer-cristina-coronavirus-us

stirmonster, Thursday, 2 April 2020 00:54 (four years ago) link

Dark Entries on twitter had said something, I think.

current (jed_), Thursday, 2 April 2020 01:00 (four years ago) link

or maybe just alluded to and you already knew that.

current (jed_), Thursday, 2 April 2020 01:00 (four years ago) link

Josh from Dark Entries saw my post. I heard about it from John Caples then looked at Instagram and saw some comments on her last post and then a post from a friend of hers about it.

dan selzer, Thursday, 2 April 2020 01:11 (four years ago) link

Ah, ok. Thanks.

stirmonster, Thursday, 2 April 2020 01:22 (four years ago) link

She may have posted about it on FB, she has an account there too but it’s private.

She posted a bunch of images/artwork of death on IG last week though - in her usual way of commenting on what’s going on in the news. Seems like grim foreshadowing in hindsight. :(

Roz, Thursday, 2 April 2020 01:27 (four years ago) link

i ran a new wave / post disco night for a couple of years here in Bristol and we'd often play her explicit version of 'Is That All There Is' as the closer. Feels extremely apposite, especially when the original is apparently Trump's favourite song

doorstep jetski (dog latin), Thursday, 2 April 2020 07:09 (four years ago) link

Oh, snap: Cristina's "Is That All There Is" was a favourite set-closer of mine around 1988/89, and more generally, one of those tracks which I used to delight in introducing people to. "Things Fall Apart" and both 12" mixes of "Disco Clone" are also perennial, un-witherable lifetime favourites.

mike t-diva, Thursday, 2 April 2020 08:34 (four years ago) link

Sad. Persoanl fave was always "Don't Mutilate my Mink". End of an era as they say. Fuck this virus

licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Thursday, 2 April 2020 08:46 (four years ago) link

remember hearing 'is that all there is' listening to peel in my room in the second year of college (and peel telling a disobliging story abt leiber and stoller)

:( :( :(

mark s, Thursday, 2 April 2020 08:53 (four years ago) link

wiki sez: A version with altered lyrics, by No wave singer Cristina, was available briefly in 1980. However, it offended songwriters Leiber and Stoller, who sued and were able to get it suppressed for some time. Produced by August Darnell (Kid Creole), this version was eventually re-issued in 2004, with the songwriters' blessing, as a bonus track on a Cristina compilation album Not seeing a Cristina comp on Discogs, but they do show it on Kid Creole collection Going Places.
In the Lieber & Stoller dual autobio, Lieber says that he was complaining to his WWII refugee wife, despite being at a sustained peak of success and pleasure, so she suggested that he read Thomas Mann's "Disillusionment." (wiki claims that lyrics were lifted from the story, which I haven't read). Leiber describes some record co. apprehension about its being taken as a downer in the go-go 60s, but apparently a lot of people could relate.
As for it being Trump's theme song, this interview tape was quoted by Michael Barbaro in the NYTimes:
MR. TRUMP: It’s a great song because I’ve had these tremendous successes and then I’m off to the next one. Because, it’s like, “Oh, is that all there is?” That’s a great song actually, that’s a very interesting song, especially sung by her, because she had such a troubled life.
But he quickly retreats from the moment, declining Mr. D’Antonio’s invitation to further explain how the song makes him feel about himself, saying he might not like what he discovers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/us/politics/donald-trump-interviews.html
(Only time I've ever seen him claim any interest in/awareness of the life experience of a woman.)

dow, Thursday, 2 April 2020 16:30 (four years ago) link

I'm a big fan of "Don't Be Greedy" too. Contender for my favorite on the first album.

Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 2 April 2020 16:42 (four years ago) link

the reissue they’re talking about is this one


https://www.discogs.com/Cristina-Doll-In-The-Box/release/499446

maura, Thursday, 2 April 2020 16:49 (four years ago) link

First heard "Is That All There Is" on the first Rodney on the ROQ comp. Out of place with all the SoCal bands, but a great closer and led me to other great Ze stuff.

There's a painting on her Instagram of her sitting at the stern of a boat that echoes the photo of her reclined on the bed on the cover of ITATI.

RIP.

by the light of the burning Citroën, Thursday, 2 April 2020 17:20 (four years ago) link

Seems like most modern-day attention is focused on "Is That All," or "Disco Clone," but that whole debut album is a longtime favorite of mine. Frothy, fluffy, maybe a bit cartoonish, but oddly endearing to me. And she really was stunningly beautiful.

Album Moods: Rambunctious; Snide (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 2 April 2020 17:53 (four years ago) link

her version of La Poupée Qui Fait Non is a regular in my disco dj nights.

dan selzer, Thursday, 2 April 2020 18:07 (four years ago) link

Are there other oddball disco records with a similar vibe? I know a fair amount of ZE Records stuff, but much less about disco, Italo, etc. overall.

Album Moods: Rambunctious; Snide (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 2 April 2020 18:50 (four years ago) link

the first thing to do is take the little leap over to Y records and check out Pulsallama's Oui Oui which I used to mix in or out of the Cristina song.

then there's everything else Kid Creole touched. Cory Daye's Green Light is something else I play in that context.

I guess any of the mutant disco or disco not disco comps would get you part of the way there.

Modern Romance-Everbody Salsa?

I love italo but it's a wide-ranging thing, a lot of poppy stuff that I don't like, a lot of more electro/spacey stuff that I love that probably doesn't fit the bill, some of the earlier more eurodisco stuff like Vivien Vee - Give Me a Break or more organic sounding italo.

Or Punkin Machine's Tonight.

That's all stuff I'd mix with that context I guess? I'm sure I'll think of more later.

dan selzer, Thursday, 2 April 2020 20:02 (four years ago) link

my favourite kid creole fact is that he lived in urmston for a while

mark s, Thursday, 2 April 2020 20:14 (four years ago) link

Appreciation in the Guardian:

Cristina: no wave's daring darling captured the beautiful and damned

Despite the renewed interested, she declined to make another album (“I’m an old trout”)

Alba, Thursday, 2 April 2020 20:20 (four years ago) link

terrible headline

mark s, Thursday, 2 April 2020 20:22 (four years ago) link

MR. TRUMP: It’s a great song because I’ve had these tremendous successes and then I’m off to the next one. Because, it’s like, “Oh, is that all there is?” That’s a great song actually, that’s a very interesting song, especially sung by her, because she had such a troubled life.
But he quickly retreats from the moment, declining Mr. D’Antonio’s invitation to further explain how the song makes him feel about himself, saying he might not like what he discovers.

I thought for a minute that 'her' in the interview Dan posted meant Cristina and I was knocked for six.

Alba, Thursday, 2 April 2020 20:23 (four years ago) link

terrible headline

I quite like it because it makes me think of a newspaper headline from the early 80s.

Alba, Thursday, 2 April 2020 20:26 (four years ago) link

Sorry, Alba! I should have incl. Mr. Trump turned philosophical. He recalled a favorite song, performed by Peggy Lee,

dow, Thursday, 2 April 2020 21:59 (four years ago) link

(Wonder what he thinks of "Sympathy For The Devil"?)

dow, Thursday, 2 April 2020 22:00 (four years ago) link

(I would like to hear Cristina and/or Peggy Lee sing that one, btw.)

dow, Thursday, 2 April 2020 22:03 (four years ago) link

Yeah, I also took it that he somehow knew the Cristina version, from disco parties with Jeffrey Epstein, maybe.

Album Moods: Rambunctious; Snide (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 2 April 2020 22:03 (four years ago) link

Of all the people I ever played “Is That All There Is” to, the strongest reaction came from a textbook sociopath. He declared it his theme song and asked to hear it repeatedly. So the Trump quote is fascinating to me.

mike t-diva, Friday, 3 April 2020 07:10 (four years ago) link

I've just remembered that I once put it on a mix CD for a girlfriend and she hated it. Now I'm thinking, maybe I was the sociopath in that relationship.

Alba, Friday, 3 April 2020 07:24 (four years ago) link

I didn't know Robert Palmer produced two add-ons to the 1984 album.

TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 5 April 2020 14:18 (four years ago) link

If you can't stand to read xgau any more, says this prev mentioned comp is more of a groovy ZE thing than Kid Creole, prefers xtina's "ITATI" to Peggy Lee's (and the song as orig written):
Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1974-1983 [Stunt, 2008]
Belatedly, all of Kid Creole and the Coconuts' albums can be purchased on CD, and through the Sire and Columbia years, 1980-1992, every damn one is worth it. This is something else. Though the four cuts with Creole's name on them set the tone, it assembles side projects August Darnell oversaw for ZE, and double-damn if most don't hold up--Aural Exciters, Don Armando's Second Avenue Rhumba Band, Machine's fashionably charitable "There But for the Grace of God Go I," and the long-lost prize, Cristina's neo-nihilist takeover of Peggy Lee's/Leiber & Stoller's merely existentialist "Is That All There Is?" Though the PR calls this postpunk music "grungy," it's just DOR, the forgotten acronym for "dance-oriented rock," with an emphasis on the "D"--stripped-down disco with the occasional rock groove or instrumental flavor. It's slick. But it's also more intelligent than most IDM--sophisticated in the most tolerant sense. For longer than his dangerous lifestyle and surface success portended, Darnell was a visionary lyricist who considered all pop music his domain. He succeeded so well that even his rarities prove it. A-

Also digs Zetrospective: Dancing in the Face of Adversity, incl. "Disco Clone."

dow, Sunday, 5 April 2020 15:53 (four years ago) link

Thinking of Zetrospective the segue from Cristina’s ‘He Dines Out On Death’ to John Cale’s ‘ I Keep a Close Watch’ is inspired.

Dan Worsley, Sunday, 5 April 2020 16:33 (four years ago) link

I'm so bummed about her passing. When I was going through my "mutant disco" mini phase she was of course a standout.

lilsoulbrother, Thursday, 9 April 2020 04:34 (four years ago) link

three years pass...

Don't Mutilate My Mink is one of the best songs of all time and I wish I could find my audio cable so I could play it really loud instead of through shitty laptop speakers

― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 21 March 2020 17:25 bookmarkflaglink

just want to point out that I was OTM is this thread

Colonel Poo, Sunday, 12 November 2023 01:36 (five months ago) link

it is! you were!

stirmonster, Sunday, 12 November 2023 06:05 (five months ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.