― briania (briania), Friday, 30 July 2004 11:18 (nineteen years ago) link
maybe scorcese is a massive no wave fan?
― stirmonster, Friday, 30 July 2004 11:38 (nineteen years ago) link
― zebedee (zebedee), Friday, 30 July 2004 11:50 (nineteen years ago) link
― Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Friday, 30 July 2004 13:14 (nineteen years ago) link
― paul c (paul c), Friday, 30 July 2004 13:23 (nineteen years ago) link
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
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
― Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Thursday, 26 August 2004 12:29 (nineteen years ago) link
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
― Alex in Doncaster (Alex in Doncaster), Thursday, 26 August 2004 14:57 (nineteen years ago) link
― the neurotic awakening of s (blueski), Thursday, 26 August 2004 15:48 (nineteen years ago) link
― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 24 December 2004 11:16 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 24 December 2004 11:34 (nineteen years ago) link
― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Friday, 24 December 2004 12:09 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 24 December 2004 12:16 (nineteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Friday, 24 December 2004 13:41 (nineteen years ago) link
― stirmonster, Friday, 24 December 2004 13:46 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Friday, 24 December 2004 20:01 (nineteen years ago) link
― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Friday, 24 December 2004 22:13 (nineteen years ago) link
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
― alex in montreal, Thursday, 3 February 2005 19:21 (nineteen years ago) link
― peter smith (plsmith), Thursday, 3 February 2005 19:43 (nineteen years ago) link
― Matthew "Flux" Perpetua, Thursday, 3 February 2005 20:09 (nineteen years ago) link
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
http://www.discogs.com/Various-Mutant-Disco-A-Subtle-Discolation-Of-The-Norm/release/161758
http://www.discogs.com/Cristina-Doll-In-The-Box/release/499446
― jaxon, Sunday, 6 September 2009 05:07 (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
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)
― 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
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 ofParisienne expat painter et post-punkette Lizzy Mercier Descloux. It was pretty goodpunky funky no (-ish) wave. But the most striking thing about the early songsinvited to ZE's new Lizzy fair, Best Off, is the way their parsing paisley parsleyand bodyhair telegraphy grow through the French, South American, Caribbean andAfrican elements of LDM's Eiffel of a peak. For instance, Best Off offers ajuicy slice of 1984's Soweto-collaborative, bollocks-to-apartheid Zulu Rock, which ZEhas also reissued, with several bonus tracks. Wherevershe goes, Descloux sounds far too at home to be satisfied, but there's anervous delight in her flight, though it's never unsteady. She often suggests theartist as discreetly caffeinated spectator, responding to the multiplyingdimensions in her pulsating frames. Descloux (who moved to the West Indies in the90s, and kept painting, right up until her 2004 death from cancer) even moldsbullets 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 seehttp://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.
― really looking forward to wearily scrolling past all your posts (Champiness), Saturday, 21 March 2020 18:12 (four years ago) link
"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 #nectarliteraryhttps://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
― really looking forward to wearily scrolling past all your posts (Champiness), Sunday, 22 March 2020 14:39 (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 onehttps://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
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
― 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 (six months ago) link
it is! you were!
― stirmonster, Sunday, 12 November 2023 06:05 (six months ago) link