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thievery corp., trip-hop, et al.
Dec. 3rd, 2002 06:24 pmby request to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
christianb:
I like to joke about how my parents, in their day, were also club kids. On trips to New York, my dad would make references to swing nights at the Rainbow Room and the Copacabana with a certain wistfulness, and I still have memories of being left alone in hotel rooms with my siblings while my parents plied the discos of Roppongi or Lan Kwai Fong and came back in the middle of the night, cheerful, tipsy and smelling of cigarettes. I have other memories as well, of watching my parents practice dance steps to Benny Goodman, and being driven home from school while dad was going through a prolonged Sade and Soul II Soul phase.
I like to joke about that because I'm bemused by the idea that whilst my father failed to mold me into an engineer, and though my mom wasn't able to preserve my faith; the one trait that they did manage to pass on was the one they spent the least amount of effort in trying to impart. Not that they ever turned me into a swing kid, of course. I greeted the Gap-inspired revival of swing jazz with some bemusement and a lot of indifference. But there is a soft spot in my heart for all forms of cheesey sophisto-pop, that spot that is typically occupied by the music one listened to while one was growing up and is therefore the musical equivalent of comfort food -- familiar, warm, uncomplicated.
This is why I won't change the radio station if I happen to hear a Pet Shop Boys tune or why, in the middle of a workday, I might find myself unconsciously typing to the rhythm of "Lady Marmalade."1 You can also blame this for my preference towards the soul-drenched aesthetic of Massive Attack's Blue Lines over the menacing neo-hiphop of Mezzanine, and for the hour that I spent last night, trying to track down mp3's from Ryuichi Sakamoto's one deleted pop album Sweet Revenge.2 It also explains why I'll almost always have Thievery Corporation's Sounds from The Thievery Hi-Fi playing while I cook in my kitchen, and why sometimes, you'll catch my siblings and I singing along to Lisa Stansfield's "All Around the World" when we're giddy and we don't think anyone's looking.
1 - Patti LaBelle's original, of course. The scene in Carlito's Way, with Pacino swaggering through a disco with that song in the background is seared more deeply in my memory than the ADD-riven dance number of Moulin Rouge.
2 - most of us know Sakamoto for his soundtrack work, but the man can do some well crafted pop tunes if he puts his mind to it. Sweet Revenge is one of those albums that I really regret selling in my poor student days.
christianb:I like to joke about how my parents, in their day, were also club kids. On trips to New York, my dad would make references to swing nights at the Rainbow Room and the Copacabana with a certain wistfulness, and I still have memories of being left alone in hotel rooms with my siblings while my parents plied the discos of Roppongi or Lan Kwai Fong and came back in the middle of the night, cheerful, tipsy and smelling of cigarettes. I have other memories as well, of watching my parents practice dance steps to Benny Goodman, and being driven home from school while dad was going through a prolonged Sade and Soul II Soul phase.
I like to joke about that because I'm bemused by the idea that whilst my father failed to mold me into an engineer, and though my mom wasn't able to preserve my faith; the one trait that they did manage to pass on was the one they spent the least amount of effort in trying to impart. Not that they ever turned me into a swing kid, of course. I greeted the Gap-inspired revival of swing jazz with some bemusement and a lot of indifference. But there is a soft spot in my heart for all forms of cheesey sophisto-pop, that spot that is typically occupied by the music one listened to while one was growing up and is therefore the musical equivalent of comfort food -- familiar, warm, uncomplicated.
This is why I won't change the radio station if I happen to hear a Pet Shop Boys tune or why, in the middle of a workday, I might find myself unconsciously typing to the rhythm of "Lady Marmalade."1 You can also blame this for my preference towards the soul-drenched aesthetic of Massive Attack's Blue Lines over the menacing neo-hiphop of Mezzanine, and for the hour that I spent last night, trying to track down mp3's from Ryuichi Sakamoto's one deleted pop album Sweet Revenge.2 It also explains why I'll almost always have Thievery Corporation's Sounds from The Thievery Hi-Fi playing while I cook in my kitchen, and why sometimes, you'll catch my siblings and I singing along to Lisa Stansfield's "All Around the World" when we're giddy and we don't think anyone's looking.
1 - Patti LaBelle's original, of course. The scene in Carlito's Way, with Pacino swaggering through a disco with that song in the background is seared more deeply in my memory than the ADD-riven dance number of Moulin Rouge.
2 - most of us know Sakamoto for his soundtrack work, but the man can do some well crafted pop tunes if he puts his mind to it. Sweet Revenge is one of those albums that I really regret selling in my poor student days.
