As an admission that should shock absolutely no one who regularly reads this blog, I am not really a fan of house music.
I mean, I don’t really have anything against it, per se, I just don’t personally enjoy it. I have a few friends whose tastes and opinions I genuinely respect that absolutely love the stuff, and talk about arcane house records with the same rapturous fervor with which I foam at the mouth about out-of-print albums by Venom and Cop Shoot Cop, but y’know — whatever. To each their own.
I honestly don’t know enough about house music to credibly knock it. I just don’t really get it. It doesn’t speak to me. It just seems like purely functional music. You dance to it, I guess. There just doesn’t seem to be any on-ramp into it for emotional investment. Unless, of course, you’re whacked out of your gourd on drugs.
But, really, what do I know? I'm an old poop. I mean, I do love a lot of electronic music, like The Orb, Underworld, Orbital and, of course, those lovable Teutons in Kraftwerk, but in those instances, there’s still a bit of stubbornly conventional song structure at work. They may all be groundbreaking envelope-pushers, but they still adhere — however tenuously — to the pop format. Their songs have beginnings, middles and ends. They have definable melodies and, sometimes, vocals. You can even sing along.
Believe it or not, this post isn’t really about music. The only reason I bring all this crap up (having now incurred the ire of a nation of glowstick-wavey ravers) is because of a Swiss duo called In Flagranti.
I know precious *FUCK ALL* about them, but a colorfully named guy named Johnny Cola posted one of their videos (one of seemingly hundreds — these dudes are crazy prolific) on the NYC 1950 to Present group on Facebook, and it caught my attention.
Despite being from Switzerland, In Flagranti have a thing for old New York City. Maybe one of them spent some time here as foreign exchange student? Who knows. Most of their music seems to come sheathed in covers with naked women on them, but they also use old timey NYC shots like this...
In any event, here are the three videos I found that struck a chord with me. Check’em out.
This first one is for a long, hypnotic and — frankly — kinda boring track called “Thee Piece Suit.” The video, however, is essentially a nine plus minute film of an unhurried drive — complete with pauses at stop lights — up 10th Avenue at some point in the mid-70’s.
That one’s cool, but also kinda frustrating. I kept hoping the driver would hang a right, drive out of this somewhat boring patch of Hell’s Kitchen towards points east. ADDENDUM: Eagle-eyed reader and fellow blogger Bryan Kuntz of This Ain't the Summer of Love correctly identified this footage as having been lifted from Chantal Ackerman's "News from Home" from 1976. Well spotted, Bryan!
My curiosity piqued from that one, I searched out others. The next one I came across was for a cut called “Latter-Day Methods.” Once again, it’s another retrophillic dance-floor workout, but this time scoring an homage to longtime cable access smut pioneer, Ugly George (who I spoke about way back here).This clip finds George practicing his disreputable shtick; essentially petitioning women on the streets of mid-to-late-70’s Manhattan to come with into an enclosed space somewhere and take their tops off for the camera. Stranger than fiction, he actually managed to coerce a few to comply (and some went above and beyond, surprisingly enough). It ain’t pretty, but here it is….
Next up came a a clip for a track called “The Beast.” Once again, the music — to me — is relatively incidental. That said, the video cleverly appropriates footage from Walter Hill’s retro-dystopian gang war epic, “The Warriors” (which I’ve waxed rhapsodic about here and here). It’s fairly entertaining, if you’re a fan of the film.
Lastly, here’s “The End of the Road,” another meandering track that scores the Staten Island Ferry’s slow journey across the river, looking back at mid-70’s Manhattan.
Now, does any of this make me more receptive to house music?
Not really. But hey,.... to each their own.
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