ZE & Cristina

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.

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???

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.

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

er, wait. is it a different version?

Different version, yeah.

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

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

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.

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

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 :(

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

the reissue they’re talking about is this one


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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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”)

terrible headline

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.

terrible headline

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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."

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

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

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

it is! you were!