All through New York City straight to The Hague

When I'm not listening to you-know-what, I'm listening to other music, some of which is from the prior millennium.

For example, one of my favorite songs is an Eiffel 65 song. No, I'm not talking about Doobie Doobie Do or whatever it is, but the title song from that album, "Europop."



Within that song, Eiffel 65 endeavored to establish themselves as Italian dance music stars, in the same way that Falco had endeavored to establish himself as an Austrian music star in the prior decade. In an effort to link themselves to the dance music scene, "Europop" contains the lyric

All through Amsterdam straight to Italy

(Ironically, one of the most notable dance music figures is the Italian Giorgio Moroder, but I always think of him as a German because he was in Berlin when he was working with Donna Summer. But I digress.)

Recently I've been listening to another song - not from Eiffel 65's 1990s, nor from Falco's 1980s, but from the 1970s. I was younger then, and during that decade I purchased a compilation record from K-Tel ("Fantastic") and another one from Ronco ("Far Out"). One of those had the amazing song "Get Dancin'" from the greatest band of the 20th century (more or less), Disco Tex and his Sex-O-Lettes.

No, the leader of the band was not called Disco Tex. The leader was called Sir Monti Rock III. (Of course.)



If you've never heard the song before, be warned:

1975 was a strange time.

Strange indeed. While the Sex-O-Lettes sang some standard disco choruses, Disco Tex - I mean Sir Monti Rock III - would then interrupt with an early incarnation of rap. But the good Sir would not rap about chicken that tasted like wood, or about gritty urban life, or about mom throwing away your best porno mag. The good Sir would rap about - well, just about everything.

AllMusic:

Whether hairdresser, failed actor, or more or less or all combined, his screaming queen MC rants never fail to raise a smile -- the question is whether he realized the humor was unintentional or not. The title track provides some of his most memorable moments, screaming things during the instrumental breaks like "America needs you! We need you to go dance! We need you to get together, and boogie woogie woogie woogie! RADAR LOVE IS HERE!..."

Hold it. Stop right there.

Did he just say...Radar Love?



In the 1970s, "Radar Love" was the name of the international monster hit from Dutch band Golden Earring. Basically, nothing like the Disco Tex and his Sex-O-Lettes show. Golden Earring ROCKED.

Then again, Disco Tex did have the word "Rock" in his name.

(By the way, his birth name was Joseph Montanez, Jr..)

Why I should have called my album "Gonna Win a Grammy"

I was just researching for another post when I ran across the story of what happened to Dr. Hook.

For those of you who don't know, back in the early 1970s the magazine Rolling Stone actually devoted itself to music. (Kinda like how MTV actually used to show music videos.) At that time, a musical act could get some serious sales traction from being featured in the magazine. (Today, of course, the magazine talks about everything.)

Rule Forty Two:

In 1972, cartoonist and songwriter Shel Silverstein visited Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show in the studio with a question: would they like to be on the cover of Rolling Stone? Since they were struggling for a hit, they said absolutely, although they couldn’t imagine how he would manage the trick. Silverstein then proceeded to play them “The Cover of Rolling Stone,” a complaint of jaded rock stars who haven’t yet achieved their dream of appearing on the front page of this publication...

So they recorded it.

The song became popular as kids like me listened to it. And guess what happened next?

By Rolling Stone; web source:http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/5392215/1973_rolling_stone_covers/photo/7/large, Link
Yes, that cover says "What's-Their-Names."

But wait - it gets better.

You'll recall that the original song includes a line that says, "Gonna buy five copies for my mother." Well, Rolling Stone was based in San Francisco at that time, so three members of the band went to Rolling Stone's offices to get those five copies. As Rule Forty Two notes, the band encountered a receptionist who apparently wasn't clued in to the music world.

“We were in full hippie regalia, with about thirty pounds of hair between the three of us,” Elswit said. “The receptionist didn’t know who we were or why we were there, and furthermore, didn’t much care. We were frostily informed that we could buy some from the dispenser machines downstairs."

At that point, someone with a clue showed up and gave the band members exactly five copies.

Dreams do come true.

P.S. If you haven't heard about MY album, go here.

Or listen to this. Not quite the rollicking fun of Dr. Hook, though.

Ontario Emperor Releases First Full-Length Album in Over 17 Years

Ontario Emperor releases digital album "Salad" on Bandcamp

Empoprises announces that musical artist Ontario Emperor has released his first full-length album in over 17 years. The ten-song album, "Salad," is available electronically on the "ontarioemperor" page at Bandcamp (ontarioemperor.bandcamp.com).

Ontario Emperor's music was originally released on mp3.com in 1999 and 2000, including the full-length album "Digital Judge" that was released in November 1999. After mp3.com ceased operations, Ontario Emperor released a free track on GeoCities. After GeoCities ceased operations, Ontario Emperor released a free collection of songs on last.fm. After last.fm ceased hosting music files, it was on to Bandcamp, where the song "Bare Plate" was released last month.

"It's been a while since I've released a full-length album," said the marketing flack who is pretending to speak for Ontario Emperor. "I'm happy that 'Salad' is finally available, and those who love melodic synthetica will enjoy the songs on this album."

The marketing flack also put words in the mouth of John E. Bredehoft of Empoprises. "Empoprises has been primarily known for textual content, but we are happy to be associated with musical content also."

The ten songs can be previewed on Bandcamp. Purchase of the album, or of selected individual songs, allows unlimited streaming as well as download of the song files.

No, this isn't a new Pepsi ad, but it may have been a better one

I'm writing this after the fallout from the recent Pepsi ad in which Kendall Jenner saves civilization by sharing a Pepsi with a cop. By the time I got around to seeing the video itself, Pepsi had already pulled it.

After some thought, I decided that Pepsi should instead focus on the negative side of things - what crises would befall the world if people DIDN'T share Pepsi with others?

Well, as us older folk already know, that story was already told many years ago.

"Underground Rocket" by Bruce Wyman is now available on CD Baby and Spotify

So anyway, a few months ago my wife and I visited some friends at their home. At one point during the evening, I wandered out to the garage and admired the husband's music setup (which is, to put it mildly, much more extensive than my own). That visit was one of the things that prodded me to finally restart my Ontario Emperor project.

I chose to release the Ontario Emperor music on Bandcamp.

My friend Bruce Wyman chose CD Baby.

As I write this, only the song "Underground Rocket" is available, but Wyman has plans to release a full album later this year.

And one advantage of being on CD Baby is that Wyman's music is (unlike my own) also available on Spotify.