ZE & Cristina

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

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

thank you kindly, jed!

yeah, this is pretty demented

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.

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".

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."

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.

no problem, glad you enjoyed it!

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!

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/)

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

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

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.

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.

@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

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

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.

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

Almost made me sign up for Instagram.

completely obsessed with this multilingual-rap/AOR anthem

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

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

What?! No...

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

Oh fuck no :(

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.

Oh no!!

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.

Godammit - RIP Cristina

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

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

also - http://www.zerecords.com/booklets/32.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0ZZ05CwjY_4bMCBXrC9u_aI5LeKK-LKl-lf530rXFBckLMGzUASTszBWA

well shit!

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

mean, not meant.

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

such a shame.

💔

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.

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

Dark Entries on twitter had said something, I think.

or maybe just alluded to and you already knew that.

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.

Ah, ok. Thanks.

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. :(

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

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.

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

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)

:( :( :(

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.)