Archive for the 1979 tag

Mi-Sex: Computer Games

Someone came up to the booth and asked for this band one night but I hadn't heard of them. I keep a running list of these requests and yes, I really do try to find all of them. I can't know everything; the people on the dance floor are one of my greatest resources.

Naming themselves after the Ultravox song "My Sex", Mi-Sex is what happens when a bunch of hippies start a new wave band. You can read a much more comprehensive history of Mi-Sex on sergent.com.au. They didn't have much of a career outside of New Zealand and Australia, and even that only lasted until 1984.

This song is so so early '80s that it hurts; you can kind of hear a bit of their prog rock roots in the guitars, but it's all about the fear of computers taking control, with that trapped-inside-an-Atari vocal style fighting to be heard over all the synths. Coincidentally, due to their name, this landed in my "atomic blog" folder right before Ministry's "Same Old Madness" and they go great together.

Available on the Mi-Sex retrospective The Essential from Amazon.com

Yello: Bostich

Last night started off really slow--after all, a good portion of our crowd was at The Queen Is Dead early in the night--but by the time Arturo went on and The Handsome Devilz arrived, it was a juggernaut. While Kamar was rallying the dancers over to Neo, I got to do a long early set. One of the things I love about doing early sets at Atomic is that I get to experiment a bit and gauge reactions before I play a song to a packed floor. Will they dance if I play this? Will the regulars run up to the booth screaming about how they love it or how they'll strangle me if I ever play it again? Sometimes, I realize that I should've been playing it at 1am all along.

Such is the case with the Yello classic "Bostitch". It blows my mind that this single was released in 1979. Typical of Yello's style, it's sophisticated, dark, and avant-garde. It's very new wave, it's really tech-house, it's vaguely industrial…and no, that is not Douglas McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb singing. Actually it's Dieter Meier [himself a very interesting person], the conceptualist half of Yello, whose ideas are executed by self-claimed perfectionist Boris Blank, who reportedly has a library of over 100,000 samples he made from scratch.

Now in their 60s, Meier and Blank are still making music as Yello, and it's still just as good. Most of their current work is in soundtracks these days. Recently, they've worked with Audi and been the subject of a documentary. I hope I'm half as cool as they are when I'm their age.

"Bostich" is on their debut album Solid Pleasure.

Solid Pleasure on Amazon
Yello Official Website