I think I'm traumatized... and what a thing to see shortly before trying to go to sleep. Worse yet, there's this horrible car crash desire to share this with other people...

Does the keyboard guy think he's playing a pump organ? His feet won't stay still!

Driven to find out who these nutjobs were/are, I went looking. From the ever trusty Wikipedia

In 1977 a disco-styled music video of Apache featured The Tommy Seebach Band. Set on a rocky hillside, it featured scantily-clad dancers adoring a grinning keyboard player. This version was recognized for its kitsch value and made the rounds of the Internet in early 2005. Watch the video online.

The juxtaposition of this post and Haifa Street below led to a very odd mental image when first I read the title.

More to the point, x86_64 Linux has no Flash player. Therefore, no Youtube. (There is one for 32 bit Linux; that's the really annoying thing.)

If there was anything that would make me dual boot regularly, that would be it.

I want to make my Second Life avatar look just like that keyboard player. Cuz virtual chicks dig the handlebar 'stache.

I use http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php to download the file in a *.flv format, then use MPlayer to watch them in Linux.

Pretty simple, really - and all I need is the link to the video to paste into the download site.

Basically, my only interest is the video, and I could care less about anything else, especially since I use Mozilla with everything turned off - including referrer.

What's really fascinating to me is how much of a history the song has, and how much it is still being used today. I mean, this version makes the Sugarhill Gang sound like smooth pop.

Soul-Sides has a comprehensive history of it, complete with .mp3 samples (and Soul-Sides, incidentally, is one of the best blogs for music out there).

What's also amazing is that the handlebar mustache guy is from the Netherlands (no surprise there, what with permissive drug culture and everything) and won the Eurovision song contest multiple times. Mind you, this is the same contest where Celine Dion and Abba got their start, and often features heartbreaking Groban-like boys with their guitars singing in Finnish or Greek or what-have-you.

Except this year a monster-metal foam-rubber-wearing band from Finland won, with more pyrotechnics than all the other groups combined. And they beat out a German Country band named Texas Lightning, too. Naturally, since their actual music video features zombie cheerleaders. What more could you ask for?

Seriously. Eurovision has some amazing material sometimes. The real world is so much stranger than fiction.

YouTube is a very frightening place.

Nuala, A. Nakama, Making Light has previously taken notice of Hurra Torpedo and Lordi, and had a lengthy discussion of the Bonnie Tyler version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Just reassure me that you're already familiar with "Vindaloo," and I won't have to make your world any scarier.

Teresa, I live in the UK, so I'm familiar with Vindaloo, in all its glory. I live within earshot of a football ground, a Scottish one which means the songs are different, though just as special.

Oh...my...god.

I'm too young to have experienced most of disco, actually--and this only serves to make me more grateful.

Too young to have experienced most of disco, MacAllister? Thank the Universe for small favors. The pits for me was when they disco-ized La Paloma.

I particularly like the fact that, when Mustache Guys steps away from the keyboard to dance lamely with the cheerleaders, has always has his back to the camera, as if they had to bring in a body double for the oh-so-intricate dance routine...

Wow. Just... wow.

Of course, the really striking thing about it is how much it resembles things that are being made now and put on YouTube. These guys weren't uniquely deficient in musical ability and taste, they were just ahead of their time in having access to video equipment to immortalize their deficiencies in musical ability and taste...

When I was in 7th grade or thereabouts, the senior girls at my ballet school did something very similar, to "Funkytown" IIRC. The main difference, of course, was that they could actually dance. And their costumes were better: harem pants, sequined tube tops, and matching sequined berets, all in various shades of silver and purple. All the little girls were so jealous.

Words fail me. What a thing to see early on a Sunday morning. Love the 'pornstaches though.

I never liked disco and never paid it much attention..or so I thought. Our temple is rehearsing now for it's Purim Spiel and this year it's a disco version. I am frightened by how many of the songs I actually managed to somehow learn despite paying no attention. I will be humiliating myself with a solo during our pastiche of 'Macho Man' (Menchy Man, I kid you not.) And yet, for all the cheeseiness our production will have, I still think it will be head and tails over this bizarre find.

My eyes!

Teresa writes: the cheesiest music video in the history of humankind

I didn't need to read any more to know which video it had to be.

(Slight correction to A. Nakama's otherwise excellent summary: It's Danish, not Dutch.)

If you have forgotten how to disco dance, here's a Finnish instructional video from the era.

Note: I was born in 1974 and take no responsibility for these atrocities against taste.

Just when you think it's as bad as it can possibly be, they start the voiceover.

My god, people. It's Sunday morning! We're supposed to be preparing for reverent worship of the deity of our choice, and you undermine all that with this hellish proof that god does not exist.

Although, I must say that the participants in that video all look like they're having a good time. I wonder if they'll be as cheerful when they're shimmying IN HELL.

The keyboard player looks like Doug Henning. I kept saying "It's Ma-a-a-agic" while watching it. Sarah came in and climbed up on my lap halfway through, then just before the end she declared that it was longer than she thought and left. Between times, she was making strange noises in her throat. Clearing it, she said.

Made the rounds in 2005? I think I saw it later than that. I'm guessing it was on "Bedazzled," but it might have been via WFMU's "Beware of the Blog," which provides my jaded palate with many thrills. (Song-poets, anybody? Industrial puff music? Japanese surf-classical? Jesus Christ Superstar covers? Safety PSAs?)

Eh. I honestly don't find this that amazingly horrific.

After that buildup I was expecting something truly horribly awful like, say, this tidbit from the little YouTube war salvo atrios fired off just before Christmas. "Apache" is nothing.

Oh, the humanity! Oh, the cheese (must get my cholesterol checked).

Anyone who ever complains about filk is going to be sat down and made to watch that video.

I gotta say, I like disco. Emphatically not the kind of disco in that video, but I like disco. Giorgio Moroder's pretty much a genius, say, and following the progression of Motown through the 70s is pretty fun.

They aren't exactly disco, if only by virtue of being from the early 90s, but if you're looking for cheesy music videos, look no further than Army of Lovers. There's Crucified, which features a bunch of the gayest boob-shots ever. There's the complicated treatment of anti-semitism and Zionism in Israelism, which, come to think of it, also features boobs, but in a much stranger way. There's many, many, many more, if you're interested. I secretly love them.

Everything (almost) that was wrong with disco in one neat package.

I don't know Teresa...my heart belongs to Super Greg. Numba 1!

Aww, comeon that was a great video of a great version of a great song.

You bunch of rockists you.

"Disco is NOT dead. Disco is GOD!!!"

(Dr. Casanova Frankenstein's henchman in Mystery Men)

#7 ::: A. Nakama wrote:
What's really fascinating to me is how much of a history the song has, and how much it is still being used today. I mean, this version makes the Sugarhill Gang sound like smooth pop.

Soul-Sides has a comprehensive history of it, complete with .mp3 samples (and Soul-Sides, incidentally, is one of the best blogs for music out there).

I'm absolutely fascinated now - and amazed at how many places I recognize the most sampled 6 seconds of drumbeat from. Yow!

Er - to follow up with the link I missed: The world's most important 6 second drum beat

Oh, so THAT'S what that song is! Thank you so much! I knew it primarily from 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.' I shall have Carlton dancing in my head all day.

Daniel Martin @21: De gustibus non disputandem, but I don't honestly see any part of that video as being even close to Apache. Not only is the music orders of magnitude better (though, to be fair, not even in the top 50 percentiles of its genre), but the distressing visuals couldn't be inflicted on a more deserving fictional character. (I detest that queen, in all her incarnations; I have not yet seen even one rendering of the story in which she's not at least 51% personally responsible for the personal hurts and destruction of the kingdom.) Unless you mean Mr. W shaking his hair, which was de rigueur for musicians then (and now), and looking spacy (which, well, he was :-)

Daniel Martin (21): Heck, that's just Rick Wakeman. I've been exposed to his music in live performance. (If you play his instrumental tracks at half speed, you get twice as much!)

Teresa: "Vindaloo?" I thought I'd heard of every horror on the internet. You must enlighten me.

Roy. G: My sincerest apologies there. I hope I can show my earnest repentance by showing that equally amazing video to all the other dancers I know. There is one with a special penchant for hip-thrusting in the Hustle. I think he'll find this video especially eye-opening.

Xeger: The Amen break. I think there was a bit on that on Soul Sides, also... But I might just be making that up.

Superb timing: Kottke linked Friday to this piece of cheese by Falco and this related bit from the Simpsons. I loves me my cheese!

All of this only stands to convince me that, in heydey of magical electronic music, some things shouldn't have been done. And they were done first.

This is the sort of thing those of us who came of age in the '70s need to look at every now and then just to keep us from idealizing the era.

'Cause I can remember when my friends and I would have thought that was the epitome of groovy. And would have spent hours prancing around in front of mirrors trying to learn those moves.

Here you go: Vindaloo, with commentary.

Good grief. One does wonder what Victorio or Geronimo might make of this. Somehow I doubt that the average woman of the time ran around in bikini tops at the San Carlos reservation.

Foo.

The geriatric iMac cannot digest video links, so y'all are forcing me to move my chair and rejigger the workstation at the G-5 (which will incur later bitchifying from Mr. Space so it'd better be worth it) so I can have a proper wallow in this thread.

Geezer note to Patrick: We Older Generation Americans only knew "Apache" in Jorgen Ingmann's version--the Shadows weren't on our Top 40 radar back then. Also on YouTube are an ancient and very fuzzy (and apparently mimed) video of the Shadows doing "Apache" in the studio and a reasonably strange '60s proto-music-video-surreal/beach-blanket version at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRYkWwMeCoE. When we were young and clueless.

Inexcusable, even back then. What do you suppose he meant by the evil laugh?

Maximum Disco Fromage from Finland. You have to watch the whole thing, because every time you think it can't get more ridiculous, you're wrong.

My eyes...my eyes.

Good God. Setting the course of music, Native American history, and facial hair back decades, if not centuries. Still shuddering.

Well, it's cheesy, but there is one thing I like about it.

The women.

No, wait, bear with me here.

Not one of those women would make it into a modern pop video as a dancer, particularly not so scantily clad. One of the three might be toned enough. But the blonde actually has a tummy. And none of them has breasts enough to qualify as sexy in these surgically enhanced days.

They look too...hang on, let me think of the word...human. Yes, that's the term.

You know, Abi, there's nothing like watching an old movie musical and realizing that most of the women would be considered fat by modern standards. Even Cyd Charisse might.

Meeeeple. I'm scared of their disco fringe. I think it's going to eat somebody.

My favourite weird, WTF video at the moment is ABC's Look of Love, although one gets the feeling they were deliberately invoking all the weird shit in their video: men in lederhosen, flying nuns, a sort of F. Scott Fitzgerald kind of carnival, carnivorous puppets. For non-ironic 80s cheese, try Tarzan Boy. Oh, I heart it so.

since we're sharing, how 'bout a little Barry White... gollum.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/401148/barry_white_v_gollum/

it says it is a blue version, I watched it all and it's just blue-tinted.

Thanks to seantaclaus.

Danish, eh? At least Seebach is too dead to be embarassed by his immortality. He seemed very happy during the video, if you know what I mean.

Over on Crooked Timber they're talking about the bebop classic "Cherokee", and the lyrics to that song (by a British composer who wrote lots of Injun-themed songs) were incredibly, incredibly cheesy. Good thing Charlie Parker didn't have a vocalist.

Serge: That reminds me of the furor when Elizabeth Hurley called Marilyn Monroe fat.

I love this parenthesis in the article that A. Nakuma linked to:

"Apache" sounds equally good fast or slow.

Keir #4, after following linux #6's sourcing, here's the link to the direct download of the file you can play in mplayer (at least under Ubuntu 64 on an AMD64 box). You'll need to change the extension to .flv.

This is a bit painful to watch, especially if you first learned to play the song from The Ventures album way back when...

Thanks, Linux #6; that's a darned useful tool!

Actually, PixelFish, I was thinking of Hurley's comment about Monroe too when I wrote that, As for Abi's comment that boosted busts are a must for femake sexiness... I think Keira Knightley is very beautiful. Hmm... I said 'beautiful', which I guess IS different from 'sexy'. Then again, what about Mimi Rogers? Or Ellen Burstyn?

Abi, I did notice that about the women. There's this one moment when the blonde does a move with her back and left side to the camera, and you can briefly see a set of fat-enhanced creases form at and just above her waist. Hardbody workout fiends came along later.

All three women are flat-chested by modern standards, but they're sufficiently self-confident to appear in the video wearing next to nothing; so even if you weren't around at the time, you'd know they couldn't have considered themselves defective. The fact that they look a bit startling to us now tells you how ubiquitous breast enhancement has become for women working in entertainment.

Oops, I meant female sexiness in #52, not femake.

Teresa @53: They didn't look weird to me, but then that's about the size of my own breasts. (There was a brief period where I was pleased to see the smaller models, because hey, it meant women didn't have to have ginormous boobs to be sexy. But now they've twigged too much, and in the meantime, I finally gained 30 pounds.)

In the 1950s/1960s, my mother 'failed the pencil test' because her breasts would hold up a pencil; and in my generation I 'failed the pencil test' because my breasts wouldn't. Standards sure change.

I'm don't know how much the penalty for not meeting the current standards has changed; there's more pressure for me to meet them through surgery, but less need for me to meet them at all without risking life in a bedsit, since the job market is rather more open.

clew @56
So we're richer (not having to be secretaries and schoolteachers) and glummer (because beauty is now impossible).

This puts us right in synch with society as a whole.

Yippee.

(Sorry...winter is not my optimistic season.)

Master, it buuuuuurns! I had to live through that era. As a "serious musician."

On the other hand, sometimes disco can inspire socially relevant commentary.

I was in my late teens and early 20s during the disco fad. Only my involvement in an evangelical Baptist church kept me out of it - I don't really remember if dancing was frowned upon, but I was kept too busy with church activities to go out clubbing anyway. I did have to sing some Debbie Boone songs as part of a Young Adults ensemble. All in all, I think it was a fair trade-off after viewing those videos. Especially the one Tim at #42 posted. That dance team sure could have used some extra rehearsals.

serge,

I think Keira Knightley is very beautiful. Hmm... I said 'beautiful', which I guess IS different from 'sexy'.

i liked keira knightley a lot in bend it like beckam where she just looked athletic & naturally thin.

but she's lost even more weight since then, & i think, has admitted to having an eating disorder. although i try not to follow these things.

So, miriam, Knightley in King Arthur was in the anorexic phase? That's a shame. I look at Lindsey Lohan in Parent Trap and thought this cute kid would turn into a beautiful woman - who instead made herself into a skeletton.

Another thing about changing standards of beauty... Take a look at Frazetta's paintings.

#44 ::: abi mused:
Not one of those women would make it into a modern pop video as a dancer, particularly not so scantily clad. One of the three might be toned enough. But the blonde actually has a tummy. And none of them has breasts enough to qualify as sexy in these surgically enhanced days.

Colour me jaded and cynical, but the thought passing through my mind was more along the lines of "Is it heroin, ecstacy or speed that's got them that shape...".

Did somebody say Frazetta?

http://img-fan.theonering.net/rolozo/images/frazzetta/nazgul.jpg

http://img-fan.theonering.net/rolozo/images/frazzetta/pelennor.jpg

LOTR fans, please not to be drinking anything before clicky the linkie.

Jenny... I wonder if Eowyn found that the scalemail bikini chafed a lot.

Tim Walters @ #42: I watched your link of cheesiness and it seemed oddly familiar. I think TV Land spoofed that very video last year, advertising for a series of 70's summer movies. Sadly my youtube-fu is weak, and I was unable to find a clip.

I wonder where she was getting her Brazilian waxes. Methinks Rohan is not the place to get that done.

My kind of music!!!

I wasn't able to watch this all the way through the first time it was doing the rounds. I still can't.

---L.

So, I'm watching the Apache video and hear a voiceover in my head:

"After providing tank support for Kelly's "bank job" and returning to America with enough Nazi gold to be able to retire, Oddball remained out of the public eye until he decided to become a keyboard player for a Disco band in the 1950's, many years before Disco caught on in America."

All these negative waves, man.

Apache is a classic eye-melter. If you want to completely o.d. on some cheese, you should also youtube David Hasselhoff's music videos for his covers of Hooked on a Feeling, Secret Agent Man, and his pimping of KITT, Get in My Car. Apparently, he's huge in Germany.

Man, Thomas "I gots me a 'stache and the chicks all dig it, see?" flipping Magnum looks at that keyboardist, and goes "You know, you think you might be taking the whole 'Righteous Stache' thing a little too far?"

(Actually, Thomas would just look at the dude, and either sigh that sigh of his, or his laugh his "What the hell?" laugh... but I digress).

I cannot get that laugh out of my head, hours after having watched the video. I can't get the dancing girls worshipping the keyboardist out of my head either. This is not good.

Since you're speaking both of cheesy videos and of vindaloo, I think you're ready for Bollywood's take on Michael Jackson (courtesy of coyotegoth.livejournal.com):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbvP7dT3Dx0

That second Hasslehoff video is Get in My Car.

No, I'm not tracking down the first one. One was too much.

Pablo - your links didn't come through. Luckily, I have a link to a page that has the Hass 3.

C.E. Petit, who IAL:

My cat was in my lap when I watched the Apache video. In your expert opinion, who should receive the bill for our mutual therapy sessions, which will be necessary to restore us to a semblance of mental health?

I'd probably look at YouTube more often if there were a way to hide user comments. Is there a video on there that is not commented, "ur so f@#$ing gay!!1!!"?

owwww, my eyes!!!! (and ears--I don't know which is worse, the mustache, the laugh, or the dance style....)

Is it just me, or did the bongo player look way too much like Chewbacca?

Daniel, Tania-
Thanks for the help, and sorry for the dead links (and extra cheese!)

abi, the other thing about those women -- they actually look as if they enjoy dancing (though not with that clown of a keyboardist). I'd enjoy a chance to do freestyle rock dance play with any of them.

And I'd missed the "Vindaloo" thread. I haven't laughed like that in a while, just watching the Final Fantasy video. You're right, T, it's much more the song than the visuals: and the two, together, are more than the sum of their particles.

Am I the only one who saw the Apache dancers' outfits and muttered, "Ummm...Erte?"
Hm. Guess I was.
-Barbara

BigHank53 - the other drummer looks like my Uncle Larry.

Barbara - now that you mention it...yes! Good eye.

What shocked me was to listen to the Incredible Bongo Band version from 1973 and realize that that rhythm line I subconsciously thought of as ingrained into our DNA since the beginning of the human species is actually a sample from a particular record.

Hmmm....

I stopped watching "Apache" about 1 minute in, because my brain threatened to walk out on me. The FFAC version of "Vindaloo" becomes a lot better now I've watched the film itself, because I now know which bits of the story the sequences have been nicked from, and can giggle myself silly. As for "Tarzan Boy", I've always thought the chorus is the best "yell along to while ratted" tune yet, because it has no discernable consonants, and that's always the trickiest part for the drunks to manage.

However, the "Apache" video has at least answered the question of "What did Graeme Garden (of "The Goodies" fame) do with himself on his evenings off?" I hadn't been aware he could play drums.

Jenny Islander @63 - wasn't the poor girl cold? I mean, I only have my memory to go on (the omnibus edition of LOTR is still somewhere in boxes) but I seem to recall the Battle of the Pelennor Fields took place in what would have translated to mid-January, in a Northern Hemisphere climate, which means they were fighting and travelling in the middle of ruddy *winter*. In that kind of weather, I wouldn't be wearing a scale mail thong (which is what Eowyn appears to be wearing in those images) and nothing on my legs. I'd have layer on layer, and I would certainly be wearing some sort of trousery arrangement around the nethers.

Re: Eowen. I believe her father charged her with rousing their people to victory. She made do in a pinch. It's all in the Silmarillion, somewhere.

Re: Apache. Cheesy, yes, but so much more real than the garbage today's kids listen to. And they won't get out of my yard! Also, if I grew out my porn stache and my white man's fro, I'd resemble the grinning fool. So I judge not.

Amazing. I had innocence left to lose.

No more, alas.

Re: Eowen. I believe her father charged her with rousing their people to victory. She made do in a pinch. It's all in the Silmarillion, somewhere.

Actually it's in The Return of the King. She was supposed to stay behind and watch over the civilians while the Riders went to war, but for assorted reasons, she wouldn't. She rode with her uncle's army for days and nobody suspected that she was a woman. She ended up facing the Witch-King of Angmar purely by chance, which in Tolkienese means anything but. See, there was this prophecy that no man could kill the Witch-King. He was gloating about that, so just before she killed him, she took off her pants . . .

At least, that's the edition Frazetta read.

Jenny Islander... At least, that's the edition Frazetta read.

Which Frazetta then passed on to Ralph Bakshi before he started work on Wizards?

Barbara Gordon @ 82... Do you think Erte was also channeled by Barbra Streisand when her Regency wardrobe was designed for On A Clear Day You Can See Forever ?

The timeline in the Appendices lists the Battle of the Pelennor Fields as taking place on March 15.

Touching the thread topic, I have to say this:

Ayeeeiii! IT BURNS

Ahem. Sorry. What I meant to say was: I never thought I'd see a video that I thought was even worse than "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins".

Re Eowen:
Actually it's in The Return of the King. She was supposed to stay behind and watch over the civilians while the Riders went to war, but for assorted reasons, she wouldn't. She rode with her uncle's army for days and nobody suspected that she was a woman. She ended up facing the Witch-King of Angmar purely by chance, which in Tolkienese means anything but. See, there was this prophecy that no man could kill the Witch-King. He was gloating about that, so just before she killed him, she took off her pants . . .

One does wonder how she was passing as male in Theoden's host, dressed like that. Even if she did have her pants on before fighting the Witch King... or were breastplate falsies part of the standard Rohan warrior's armor?

I also like the fact that the Witch King is wearing a belt with a skull on it, just in case you haven't figure out he's Eeeevil.

(Tolkien nitpick: Eowen ended up facing the Witch King because he'd just struck down Theoden; she stepped in to prevent the WK from finishing Theoden off.)

(Aside from all that, I rather like the drawing from a technical standpoint -- lovely linework and shading...)

I think Hollywood has a habit of going for the obvious with women.

Consider Halle Berry in Catwoman: I reckon she looked better in the "improvised" outfit she wears during the jewel robbery scene than in the purpose made costume she uses in the rest of the film.

And, yes, I know the second looks like a wardrobe accident waiting to happen, but neither hides her shape or the way she moves.

That film was a waste of talent.

Wow. Sometimes I'm glad I was born when I was born. The handlebar looks like it could seriously injure someone at 20 paces.

Slightly off topic, but I need to say something to Pablo @70:

No he's not. Please believe me. I'm so tired of being asked "Is it true that the Hoff is big in Germany?" as soon as someone finds out I'm German. So I will say it here, for posterity to read and remember:

He's NOT. He was as big (or not) as anywhere else when he did Knight Rider, he did get to No. 1 with "I've been looking for freedome" (BLERK. BLECH. *washes out mouth*) because and ONLY because he released it at the same time the the wall came down and we liked having an anthem*, and then we got embarrassed about having made him some sort of pop star and have been trying to forget him ever since, only to be reminded by the world in general at every corner that it's our fault he ever had a singing career, and incidentally, "The Hoff - he's huge in Germany, right?"

No he ain't. Please please spread the word. Thankies :)

* Not me. I swear, not me. I was only 14 when the wall came down and I didn't know that 'freedom' had just been redefined. So nobody come looking for his music in my house, please.

Er, it's Eowyn not Eowen.

Those of you old enough to remember Disco... do you recall the brief fad for "sci-fi themed" disco in the wake of Star Wars?

I'm thinking of such classics as:

- "I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper"

- "Automatic Lover"

I've been trying to find one-hit wonder Zazu's "Captain Starlight", but no luck... ;-P

A.R.... The disco version of the 'Star Wars' theme was painful enough without my trying to dredge up memories of a similar nature.

A R Yngve - On Saturday night I saw the pilot episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which includes a dance scene. Buck interrupts a formal dance where everyone has a glitterball on their hands to get the musician to play "rock", which is clearly disco. So forgive me if I don't go and look at those, as I'm all sci-fi-disoced out.

For true, unmusical awfulness almost nothing can come close to European disco (definition, a talent free zone) but once you start including Dutch sensibilities... well, you've seen where that sort of thing leads.

Mind you, if you want buttock clenching feebleness, go find the stuff Ricky Gervais is trying to hide (a cross between Marc Almond, Ultravox and other influences too dreary to mention.)

As for Apache, I suppose there is only one thing to say. All together now... 'Young man!'

I'm not sure which is worse:

1. The video
2. On attempting to dissipate the woe inspired by (1) by sharing the misery with my partner, she pointed to the keyboard player and said, "That looks like you."
3. On attempting to garner sympathy with regard to (2) by sharing (1) with my work colleagues, one turned round and said, "You're right to be upset. You clearly look more like the bongo player."

Apparently I need a haircut.

Having watched, no...studied the video over many viewings in a state of masochistic glee, I would also like to call one more aspect of the female dancers to everyone's attention.

The dancing, while never actually graceful nor skillful, is intricately choreographed in a very long video that appears to have been shot in one long take! The jiggling, the assinine shimmying, the steps, all of them are anything but impromptu. There is no randomness in their movements! They are all dancing, in time, for the entire song, in tandem. It's the synchronized swimming of the disco video world!

PS. For those who knew me as Sean Bosker, I am now Sean Sakamoto having taken my wife's name after 8 short years of marriage. I find out today if the judge signed the order.

Sarah Brightman?!?

(boggles)

Sean, 101: Hey, that's cool! (No, not the dancing, which is merely many repetitions of the same few easy moves.)

Sean @ 101... Congratulations.

Having read this far, I think I'm glad I just have dial-up and rarely attempt to download either music or videos!

As to female body type, it's odd how many standards can co-exist: "enhanced" with "anorexic model", and a more buff but still diverse group in sports. In the Aussie Open women's final [you knew I'd take this back to tennis somehow, didn't you?], Large Butt and Bosom (slightly out of shape) demolished Taller, Stick-Thin yet Glamorous, then had to ruefully acknowledge her natural endowments in the post-game interview.

Tending toward Short and Stocky myself, I'm more likely to identify with Ugly Betty.

Faren... When IS Ugly Betty coming back?

Frazetta then passed on

A moment's thrill, then disappointment.

Sean 101: Congratulations! I must say that 'Sean Sakamoto' is a marvelously multicultural-sounding name.

...a marvelously multicultural-sounding name

My friends and I used to have a game of making up the most multicultural-sounding names we could. I think my personal favorite was "Mariko bint Ian".

Alright, who broke out the Hasselhoff?

Carrie: You guys should live in Hawaii if you like multicultural names - no need to make them up. How about Farouk Wong, for instance? That's long been one of my favorites.

For one thing, there are a lot of multicultural marriages. But there was also a naming fad among Asian families here a generation or so back for what a friend called "Ivanhoe names" for men's first names - Earl, Baron, Ivan, Dugan, etc. - and this led to a lot of unusual combinations. One of my good friends is Baron Fujimoto.

The ancient Cornish livelihood of scavenging is alive and well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/world/europe/23britaincnd.html?ex=1327122000&en=9b20d222452e53bb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss (via BoingBoing)

Clifton Royston said (#110):
Carrie: You guys should live in Hawaii if you like multicultural names - no need to make them up. How about Farouk Wong, for instance? That's long been one of my favorites.

Well, the same applies for California (especially the urban parts), though perhaps not quite as densely...

For one thing, there are a lot of multicultural marriages. But there was also a naming fad among Asian families here a generation or so back for what a friend called "Ivanhoe names" for men's first names - Earl, Baron, Ivan, Dugan, etc. - and this led to a lot of unusual combinations. One of my good friends is Baron Fujimoto.

There was a time (between the Meiji Restoration and World War 2) when there was a class of Japanese nobility with European titles. So "Baron Fujimoto" is actually plausible as a late-19th/early-20th Century Japanese name... though I've no idea of there was any such historical person.

The fun part is when I, a caucasian, introduce myself as Sean Sakamoto and people will squint, look at my eyes, and then say, "Oh yes, I think I see it."

It's funny because I know what they mean, even though I have no Asian features at all. It really elucidates this whole concept of race as a social construct.

#113 ::: sean Sakamoto wroet:
The fun part is when I, a caucasian, introduce myself as Sean Sakamoto and people will squint, look at my eyes, and then say, "Oh yes, I think I see it."

It's still head-and-shoulders better than questions like "What are you?" ("Human?") "No, I mean really - what are you?"

Xeger, absolutely. I'm not bothered by the "Oh, I see it" one bit. But "what are you" isn't so nice. That's something my son will probably get to enjoy, as it's pretty clear that I'm a cracker, so nobody has to ask.

#96: the brief fad for "sci-fi themed" disco in the wake of Star Wars

Recently I've been helping a friend clean out her storage space onto eBay. Among the items is a disco single which... um.... Let's just say that it's unspeakably fey, anile, and rugose. From the back cover--

SPACE INVADER
(Abba-Stample-Reynald)
Ed. Sonata

Move to the left Shift to the right
Press your funky buttons and get down
Move to the left Shift to the Right
Take it easy baby and get down. [etc.]

Julie et al. - C'mon guys! I have fond childhood memories of Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk. Of course, I was under the age of 10 when it came out, so that might explain my affection.

It impresses me that we are discussing two separate meanings of the word "Apache" on two separate threads, and no one has crossed the streams.

I suppose the mention of discos and cheese on the other thread would be in bad taste, and I certainly can't see how to incorporate phrases like "The natural state of a helicopter is "falling out of the sky" into this one.

abi #118:

If it's all one thread, you can't weave.

Serge at #90, Apparently Alan Jay Lerner was dropping acid when he wrote On A Clear Day, so who knows what Cecil Beaton was up to?
I admit I've never seen the show, though I must have heard some of the songs.
-Barbara

That thread's toxic.
Thanks to everyone for all the links, it's good to now have some ammunitions in case of a future youtube war.

I have to say though, if that's the worse a "permissive drug culture" can do, let them get high.

There's something strangely endearing about that video, something a bit sad at the same time (but then I can find anything sad, so...). I saw it was compared to "Plan 9 from Outer Space" in youtube's comments, and there's something along those lines; the video is bad, but it seems like it was made in earnest, and enjoyed by most of the partipants. It has the kind of charm a real amateur competition of any kind can have for the game loving audience that'll hardly ever be found watching professionals.

Still awful, though.

Peter Erwin@512:
There was a time (between the Meiji Restoration and World War 2) when there was a class of Japanese nobility with European titles. So "Baron Fujimoto" is actually plausible as a late-19th/early-20th Century Japanese name... though I've no idea of there was any such historical person.

I've personally known a charming old francophile japanese gentleman who insisted that since only sense mattered with ideograms, they could be pronounced any way you wanted as long as the sense was right.
He always insisted on being called "Dubois" instead of Hayashi (can't remember if he had actually made any administrative change, though).

I'm know envisioning a historically perfectly fitting Japanese lord called "Baron Fujimont". Would make a nice character.

113-115:
What I hate most, though, even more than the "what are you" or the rare moments of awkward silence, are the people who just keep on insisting you're pulling their leg.

...a marvelously multicultural-sounding name

Maria de Fatima Israel. I'm not kidding you. My jaw dropped when I saw this one.

Showed this video to husband, who was a young man just starting to date in the 70s. He watched the whole (wow) thing, and then pronounced: "This is why guys who could actually dance always got laid."

Kip @ #20: Damn you, stealing my line out of my head and then posting before me...

I think the reason the keyboardist dances with his back to the camera is because he thinks his butt is the best part.

Serge, #106, last week.

I had a friend named Quasar in high school.
Well, Adam Quasar Sugihari, actually. [Hi, if you're googling yourself!]

His uncle was an astronomer, I think.

Marilee, I agree. As horrific as that video is....

amysue @15:

Forgive me if someone has already said this, I just got here. But "Macho Man" isn't disco. "Saturday Night Fever" is disco -- and remarkably non-dorky for the genre. "Fly Robin Fly" is disco, and kinda medium dorky. "Apache" is only very slightly dorkier than most, and minus the video is pretty average -- gods help me.

Dunno what you call "Macho Man", but it is disco only insofar as disco is part of its whole campy, over-the-top gay guy thing. The Village People were the 80s. Disco was the music of, like, my high school years. Man, that is like, so unfair.

One of my truly special memories is watching an entire dance floor of Fundamentalist Christians dancing to YMCA at my sister's wedding. My companion and I totally cracked up, and my aunt asked why we were laughing. As if that weren't enough to put me on the floor, Neil Rest then went on to explain to my relatively guiltless Aunt Barbara what the song was about and exactly why the spectacle was so damn funny.

this is totally special. A 70s attempt to explain how mRNA works...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww

cheesy at its best.

#118, I did notice the combination at #4, but decided it would be in, uh, bad taste, to combine the two.

Although, Apache helicopters doing synchronised flying to disco would be brilliant.

And, to drag in the Pitch Bitch thread: Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet.

This video reminds me of the music and dancing girls on "Benny Hill" right before the BBC pulled it from the air. If there's anyone who doesn't know who Benny Hill was, you should be able to find reruns in syndication if you have cable or satellite.

Oh, and for amysue @15: "Saturday Night Fever" came out in 1977, and "Macho Man" came out in 1978. They're both disco. (I was there... I lived it, to my horror.)

One recollection I have of the late '70s is an advert on the back cover of White Dwarf, for some sci-fi RPG. It had a colour photo of to young ladies, big hair and blasters, wearing crop-tops and hotpants of some silver-metallised fabric. Definitely not the Dirty Pair, but not so unlike them in their attempted style.

By modern standards they'd definitely be considered a trifle plump.

A year or two later, along cam Alien, which replaced many of the sci-fi cliches. Sigourney Weaver, incidentally, showed off rather more skin in the movie Half Moon Street, and her breasts didn't seem all that large. Galaxy Quest does show what skilled costume design can do.

Anyway, the next time I saw the skimpy silver sci-fi look was a trailer on late-night TV for a subscription porn channel, and some serial where the clothes probably didn't get worn for long enough to wear out. That would be 2003, when my leg was in plaster. From the trailer, it didn't seem worth the money, and my imagination does better visual effects anyway.

Anyway, now HD-TV is spreading, and the porn industry is fining there is too much detail on the screen.

Marilee @ 123... ugly Betty came back last week? I wonder how come I saw no ads for it in spite of the acclaim it's been getting.

TV networks really like to screw up with the schedule of shows I like. Cold Case used to be at 7pm, then, last autumn, it was moved to 8pm. Which is why they showed the first new episode in weeks at... 7pm. Yeah, I missed it.

...a marvelously multicultural-sounding name

Would the Rt. Rev Michael Nazir-Ali do?

Serge: Ugly Betty still seems to be veering between reruns and new episodes -- maddening, except that I think I've caught up with all the episodes I missed due to coming in late and can now follow the various plotlines. (SFGate's critic says there aren't any plotlines, but he just hasn't been paying attention; admittedly, there are times when I wish they'd cut the melodrama and work in more of the fun stuff!)

Faren... The last episode I saw was the Thanksgiving one, when the INS took Betty's dad away because he was an illegal alien. Is Tony Plana's character back?

Lydia 126: I think the Village People and all their songs are definitely disco. The beat, the dumb lyrics, the fact that they got played in discos all the time, all qualify them.

That's very funny about the funnydamentalists. Did you know that the Navy at one point considered using "In the Navy" as a recruiting song (with a slight lyric change to "Join the Navy")? Someone took the admiral (or whatever he was) who proposed this aside, and told him who the VP were, and what the song was actually about, and the idea was hastily dropped.

Xopher #136: Reminds me of how two of the biggest sports anthems, "We Are the Champions" and "Rock & Roll Part 2" are by, respectively, Queen and Gary Glitter. The military and sports are gay.

Oh god, opening those Frazetta images on a Tuesday morning at work was just too much to bear. The Apache video I could take but that the psychic damage inflicted by that Eowyn may take years to heal. So of course I copied the images and will now send them to all my Ringer friends so they too need copious amounts of eye bleach.

Xopher #136: You've seen the 2004 "Seaman Ship" ad for the Japanese Navy ("Maritime Self-Defense Force"), haven't you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjAXJaFydwM

For those who haven't seen this before: this was apparently a real ad produced by the JMSDF, and for a time it was hosted on their web site (they've since come to their senses, so it's not there any more).

Some anime fans produce music videos using clips from anime shows.

One of them has done "In The Navy", in the style of a recruiting advert. Alas, you need to be a site member to download from that page.

First: So "Apache" is the name of the theme song of the local PBS TV show Wild Chicago. Aha.

Second: The business about the "Amen Break" drum sample makes me think of the Apollo 17 photograph of the full Earth, which is almost invariably seen whenever anyone in the culture wants to show a picture of the Earth.

I see it in four of the first six images that appear when I Google for "Earth." Africa and Saudi Arabia are near the top, Madagascar is near the center, and Antarctica is surrounded by white clouds at the bottom.

There are other photos of the Earth. Please use them instead.

Serge, #132, this is probably more than you guys should know about me, but the first thing I do on Sundays after I bring the WashPost in is to go through the new TV Week, marking the shows I want to watch in bright pink.

and #135, yes, he's back, and Betty is back at Mode. You might want to find one of the fan sites and catch up.

(But to add to the confusion, last week Ugly Betty was a rerun of the Halloween episode!)

Thanks, Marilee and Faren... As for TV schedules, I really hate the new TV Guide and how it deals with different time zones. I should probably buy the Albuquerque Journal on the day it issues its own guide, in spite of their being Dubya-lovers.

Xopher @136:

I've always thought that there was too much self-parody in The Village People to really count as disco. I mean, disco sounded gay, but it was considered a sure chick-magnet in its day. (Saturday Night Fever starring the emphatically not gay-looking Johnny Travolta!)

When I think of disco, I think of things like Apache, or the song Fly Robin Fly, vacuous songs with with repetitive music and reptetive, minimal lyrics. (Are there more lyrics than "We are family, I got all my sisters with me"?) (You know the biggest problem with Google is that it makes it very hard to ask a rhetorical question. In fact, there are more lyrics. See for yourself. We Are Family

The Village People are described as disco in Wikipedia, but I think they come to the game too late to really be disco. I mean, disco has been around long enough to be parodied. YMCA is 1978, which is too late for disco.

Wikipedia says:

Music historians generally refer to July 12, 1979, as the day disco died. On that date, DJs Steve Dahl and Garry Meier along with Michael Veeck (son of the Chicago White Sox owner at the time Bill Veeck) staged a promotional event with an anti-disco theme, Disco Demolition Night, between games at a White Sox doubleheader. The event involved exploding disco records, and ended in a near-riot. The second game of the doubleheader had to be forfeited.

I really don't know quite what to make of that. You know, at the point where I start arguing about when disco did or didn't die, and by whose hand, I have to admit that I'm a truly pitiful human.

Which, amysue, you might have noticed earlier. Also, pretentious.

P.S. None of which makes Macho Man disco.

P.P.S. Yes, Xopher, I'd heard the story. The Navy bureacracy is such that I can even believe it, though I've never seen it reliably sourced.
Do you know by any chance if it's just an urban legend or if it really is true? On the other hand, I could introduce you to Neil Rest or my Aunt Barbara -- your choice. I suggest you choose carefully.

Lydia Nickerson #145: If the Village People aren't disco, I'm kind of at a loss to think of what they might be. Besides hilariously awesome. They weren't serious, and they weren't high quality disco, but they were disco.

Aaaaand, not to pick on you, but I must respond!

When I think of disco, I think of things like Apache, or the song Fly Robin Fly, vacuous songs with with repetitive music and reptetive, minimal lyrics.

What you're talking about is what I like to call honky disco. Disco grew pretty directly out of soul; one way to track its early growth is to pick up, at random, any one Motown record per year from, say, 1967 to 1974. Early, Black disco was no more vacuous than the Black soul that had preceded it.

Even when people started picking up on and exaggerating the robotic aspects of disco, there was still a lot of room for genuinely good music. I defy anyone to listen to Giorgio Moroder's best productions (Donna Summer's Love to Love You Baby and A Love Trilogy, say) and tell me they're worthless.

And trying to put an end date on disco, especially one in 1979, is pretty silly. Blondie's "Call Me" (which was actually pretty much just Giorgio Moroder with Debbie Harry on vocals) was 1980, as was Lipps, Inc.'s "Funky Town." These were nothing if not disco. Queen didn't go disco until 1981 or 82. Madonna's first album wasn't a new sound, it was a direct growth from the disco of the time.

Sorry to rant; I just feel like disco gets a bad rap. The really awful, honky disco (like the "Apache" video that started this whole discussion) stands in for all of disco in most people's minds. It was a style prone to excess, and for a time it was certainly much too big for its britches, but at core it was just as valid as any other musical style.

PS Despite all this impassioned defense of disco, if I had to pick a single favorite type of music, it would probably be disco's mortal enemy, punk rock.

PPS I'm choosing to blame any poor construction, lapses in ability to make sense, poor spelling, bad grammar, and anything else of that nature that might have happened in this post (not to mention its greaet length) on the fact that it is now 1 AM and I haven't had any coffee today.

i've heard it said that the reason disco was/is so maligned is that it was beloved by blacks & gays. & then punk struck back for the straight white boys (you know, the really oppressed ones) & that is why it's so much more respected as a movement in music.

er, that said, i like a lot more punk than i do disco, & i imagine i would have liked the scene better. but now i have liberal guilt in putting down disco.

....that said, the pet shop boys are one of my favourite bands ever. & it is thanks to a gay man.

Miriam, punk was pretty gay, believe it or not. And full of squirrely little Jewish boys, and women. Not macho, is what I'm trying to say; it's a little more complicated than the scenario you've heard.

ethan,

gays? squirrely little jewish boys? women?

little gay squirrely jewish women???

screw guilt. i am all over that sht.

that wasn't hard.....

Speaking as a squirrely little Jewish gay boy, I say guilt is overrated.

Leathermen don't cry!

On a calculus final I had the following question:

T/F - The Beatles are better than the Stones

I circled true, but then wrote a paragraph explaining that I could only say true because the Beatles had broken up before they had a chance to "go disco", like the Stones did with Emotional Rescue.

Emotional Rescue came out in 1980, so the disco influence was still around.

Just one more Ugly Betty-related note: Serge, I know you read SFGate. Today's big story about Mayor Newsom reminded me of Betty's promiscuous boss (not to mention the Italian PM, in the latest bit of headline gossip).

Another bit of news: I was amazed to see the NY Times run a front-page item about what's a local item for me: the 29-year-old sex offender posing as a 12-year-old boy. He was finally caught in Chino Valley, just down the road from Prescott (close enough that we have our no-room-in-the-house stuff in storage there). The headline made it sound like it dealt with a wider web of sex predators, but nope: just the info that's already been all over the Phoenix and local news.

Faren... I just saw that, about Newsom. One thing is weird... I see nothing obvious on the Chron's site reminding us that Herb Caen died 10 years ago today. Yes, I was one of Herb's faithful readers, and even was quoted a couple of times in his column.

Quoted in Caen? Cool! (RIP Herb)

Faren... All I did was email some things to Caen that I thought he might find amusing. My favorite was when my wife and I drove from the East Bay to Sacramento and passed big/burly/bearded bikers who had tiny teddy bears on their passenger saddles. (And that kind of sighting is one reason why I miss the Bay Area.)

This is the end scene from Week-end, I'm pretty sure. Minus the cannabalism, of course.

re: Death of Disco - I lived in L.A. from '79 to '84 and it was probably around 1980, '81 when I stopped hearing my young (we were in our 20s) work colleages talking about their weekend disco related debaucheries. Some of the older ones (in their ancient 30s) kept taking lessons and clinging to the various musical and fashion styles for a bit longer.

Speaking as a squirrely little Jewish gay boy,

I love squirrely little Jewish gay boys.

Xopher, are you hitting on me?

Re: Stones going disco, again, it makes sense for them to do it, especially on the awesome song "Miss You," which, yes, is disco. They were imitating the same people they were imitating all through their career.

Also, they're better than the Beatles. Take THAT!

ethan said (#160):
Re: Stones going disco, again, it makes sense for them to do it, especially on the awesome song "Miss You," which, yes, is disco. They were imitating the same people they were imitating all through their career.

You're telling me that one of my two or three all-time favorite songs by the Stones is disco? Are you nuts?

[switches to iTunes and plays song]

Hmm... I think you have a point. Oh, well.

ethan 160: Not if you think the Stones are better than the Beatles. Seriously...you're a married (for some values of...) man! That being the case, I wouldn't hit on you even if I weren't still in the throes of a recently-broken heart myself.

But I AM looking forward to meeting you someday.

Peter Erwin #161: Neener neener neener!

Xopher #162: Eh, I'm boring in person.

ethan 163: then I will delight in teasing you until you blush.

Re ethan @146: I totally agree. In my mispent teens in the late '70s, I was hanging out with Communists and so ended up at several fund-raising/outreach parties in the Chicago South-side ghetto. (A bunch of the VVAW who'd gone Maoist had a house down there - nobody was going to mess with a house full of Vietnam vets.) The disco I heard there was a totally different story from the crap that hit the mainstream - great stuff, very different. I too eventually found punk/post-punk was "my music", but I've got a soft spots for the real disco.

Re ethan @146: I totally agree. In my misspent teens in the late '70s, I was hanging out with Communists and so ended up at several fund-raising/outreach parties in the Chicago South-side ghetto. (A bunch of the VVAW who'd gone Maoist had a house down there - nobody was going to mess with a house full of Vietnam vets.) The disco I heard there was a totally different story from the crap that hit the mainstream - great stuff, very different. I too eventually found punk/post-punk was "my music", but I've got a soft spots for the real disco.

Serge, #154, I've had letters to the editor in the WashPost, but the only time I've been quoted in an article was by Rob Pegoraro in his Technology column.

I liked disco in it's time, but overall, I like folk best. Right now, I can't get enough of Roseanne Cash's "Black Cadillac" which is mostly rock.

Ooh, I like it when people agree with me so strongly they have to say it twice!

#167: Rosanne Cash's Black Cadillac is one of the best records of 2006. I keep meaning to write about it, but I never seem to find the right brain with which to write about music.

I like punk and don't like disco. I have to agree with the girl Lester Bangs quoted at the Clash concert:
"I like to jump up and down."

I jump up and down to disco AND punk!!

Since I have limited mobility, I mostly dance from the waist up while sitting down. No jumping.

Patrick,#169, I was surprised to have three of the top ten albums from the WashPost list: Black Cadillac, Johnny Cash's A Hundred Highways, and T-Bone Burnett's The True False Identity. I rarely recognize the performers from the top ten list.

Tania @ #152:

Given the subject of the exam, I would have assumed that the question-setter was inviting a statement about the superiority of the Stones.

Paul - I have often wondered myself what dear John Gimbel was looking for. He was an interesting instructor, to say the least. One of the other T/F questions was "Calculus is a window into the mind of God."

The hard part for me was/is that I am a bigger fan of the Stones than the Beatles. I think I worried over that answer more than any other part of the exam.

Okay, so it's been nearly 7 months since I watched this. I'd never heard "Apache" before or since.

This afternoon I was in a cafe buying a muffin and Apache came on--different version, of course, but I had to stifle the insta-giggles. Had a smile on my face all the way home.

*That* is the power of this video.