ZE & Cristina

That aside, I agree completely. Except to say there's a good chunk of stuff on Ze which (ahem) hasn't necessarily stood the test of time, like some of the Davitt Sigerson stuff. Not sure how Last Man In Europe would sound now either, but it's been a long time.

Perhaps worth noting that "Busting Out" represents Bill Laswell's best work to date in my view.

A brief web search seems to suggest that the Zero Infinity stuff is hard to come by. So a re-reissue programme U&K.

You can get Buy the Contortions on CD through Rollins' site.

In addition to above a reissue of the Ze Christmas record, the other great Christmas record, is urgent and key, (well before Christmas anyway.

and robert, i'll be in touch. i take it you know that cristina is married to michael zihlka who is no a billionaire!

The Guardian
September 22, 1984

Week-end People: How Cristina lives down Ze label of marrying the boss

By STUART WAVELL

Down to Blake's Hotel to catch up with the new fast music. Singer Cristina was lying on a bed, smoking. Some of it was coming from her cigarette. 'I want you sexually, you want me sexually,' she was saying. 'That's nice, but if you have a secret interest in my brother there's a story there.'

I didn't know she had a brother. She certainly has a husband, the Mothercare heir Michael Zilkha, who obligingly puts out her records on his Ze label in New York. She also has an eight-month-old baby girl who isn't short of the latest clobber. So she must have been talking about her lyrics. Difficult to tell: her education at Harvard and London's Central School of Drama seems to have produced an unintelligible babble.

'It's mostly New Wave working class,' she said. 'Otherwise it would be camp affluence nostalgic--Thirties film scores--undercut by ironic dissonance.'

Sounds a bit discordant, I ventured. An all-brown meal would be bloody horrible without green vegetables, she riposted. Quite, but wasn't this lyrics thing like yesterday's cold potatoes? Maybe that's why she had such a small following, she mused. Is one barking up the wrong art form?

Lets clear this up. Critina Monet is a New Yorker whose first fling was a send-up called Disco Clone. Next came an adulterated version of Is That All There Is? That was withdrawn after composers Lieber and Stoller sent round their legal frighteners. Then there was her Christmas album Things Fall Apart.

This time she thinks she's cracked it. Her new album, Sleep It Off, features a track entitled Don't Mutilate My Mink, whose ironic dissonance may escape Greenpeace: 'Don't tell me that I'm frigid/Don't try to make me think/I'll do just fine without you/Don't mutilate my mink.'

She appeared anxious to allay speculation about marrying the boss. 'He was not famous at the time. He was just a kid like me. We were both apprentice theatre critics on the Village Voice. He said Harold Robbins was an eighth-grade Balzac in an eighth-grade age. He probably said that to all the girls.

Marriage followed the discovery that they knew their Balzacs from their Bartoks. 'When people go into a nepotism thing about the rich boyfriend gives the girl a record there's an element of truth, because I never paid my dues. But it's not that you see a girl with a great figure and you spend your money on a record.

Great opening line.

She sounds greater and greater the more I read about her. I wonder where she is now.

"Elegant, intelligent, beautiful and the wittiest girl I have ever met. In a sassier, zestier, brighter, funnier world, Cristina would have been Madonna." - (Richard Strange)

a friend of her daughter's emailed me last year trying to find out where she could buy cristina's music. apparently cristina never kept any of her records - shame!

That's what it says in the credits to Mutant Disco. As for the matter of if he was well-known at the time, I'm assuming he was a struggling actor at the time, as it pre-dates Sophie's Choice, etc.

Now if somebody could explain the "Special thanks to Martin Scorcese" in N.Y. Noise.

maybe scorcese is a massive no wave fan?

September 30 sees the reissue of Cristina's Doll in the Box (with "Is That All There Is?"!) and Sleep It Off (with a cover of "When U Were Mine"?!?!!!!!!!1)

But wot, neither of the 12" mixes of "Disco Clone"? Dommage!

Is this not one of them?:

"Ballad of immoral manufacture* • (Ronald Melrose - *Formely Disco Clone (p) 1980 - Produced by Cristina, Michael Zilha & Bob Blank - Arranged by Ben Lanzaroni - String & Horn Arrangements by Carlos Franzetti - Vocal Direction & additional lyrics by Cristina)" It's a little more than 8 minutes long.

It's a shame Cristina didn't do more in the "Ticket to the Tropics" vein.

Talking of ZE stuff, some of my faves are Marie et Les Garcons/Garcons, the Last Men and Casino Music. I wonder if "Do the Proton" by Casino Music was recorded before Blondie's "Atomic".
Anyone know Chris Stein???

Hmmn, has the 12" of "Disco Clone" that Mike posted five years ago or so ever been released on CD? Still haven't stumbled across many Ze 12"s in New Zealand, heh.

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Mutant-Disco-A-Subtle-Discolation-Of-The-Norm/release/161758

http://www.discogs.com/Cristina-Doll-In-The-Box/release/499446

er, wait. is it a different version?

Different version, yeah.

Should I go track down "Sleep It Off" or something? I have never rly listened to Cristina

i just listened to that record yesterday thanks to ilxor 69, who gave me his copy. 'sleep it off' is pretty great, but i think i like 'doll in the box' better. SIO is a new wave/rock record produced by Don Was, while DITB is a weirdy disco album produced by August Darnell. both are pretty great tbh

Sleep It Off is imho a stronger album overall, even though Doll in the Box features her best song, "Disco Clone". some of the tracks on DITB "Jungle Love" and "Blame It On Disco" strike me as somewhat generic takes on Kid Creole's style, and I think they'd actually be more entertaining if Darnell had performed them himself.

I heard the original John Cale-produced 7" version of "Disco Clone" a while back, and it's horrendous, with some punchable, nasal-voiced art student doing the spoken-word bits that Kevin Kline re-recorded for the more well-known release.

I'm intrigued by the "rude" version of "Disco Clone" that mike t-diva mentions upthread? his (6-year-old) blog entry doesn't link to it anymore, and I can't find it elsewhere online. 100000 thanks to anyone who'd be willing to share.

Oh fuck no :(

Hell of a final post: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-ZdBpGgRcW/?igshid=hbwcqdw1988e

Going to jam her version of “Is that all there is?” in tribute. Godspeed you badass legend.

Oh no!!

Shit, I just started following her Instagram after it was mentioned above (one of three accounts I now follow). Having briefly "met" her again this way, I had thought I might catch up. Now, all of the sudden, it seems she is gone. RIP.

Godammit - RIP Cristina

This is so sad. Rest In Peace to a force of nature! x

this interview with her that my friend Kurt wrote is worth re-reading.

http://festivefanzine.blogspot.com/2010/12/from-vaults-merry-cristina-mas.html

also - http://www.zerecords.com/booklets/32.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0ZZ05CwjY_4bMCBXrC9u_aI5LeKK-LKl-lf530rXFBckLMGzUASTszBWA

well shit!

thanks for those links, Stirmonster, I know how much those records meant to you x

mean, not meant.

thanks jed. so sad. she had been hoping for over a decade to record another album but it never came to be as she had majorly struggled for the last 15 years with a serious auto immune condition. X

such a shame.

💔

Feels weird because I just fell in love with those albums in the last 6 months but I'm glad she has more fans than I imagined. I hope people will be writing lots of articles about her soon.

So, I heard she talked about having Covid on her Instagram. I don't use Instagram but had a look and can't see where that might be. Any ideas?

Guardian piece - https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/01/pop-singer-cristina-coronavirus-us

Dark Entries on twitter had said something, I think.

or maybe just alluded to and you already knew that.

Josh from Dark Entries saw my post. I heard about it from John Caples then looked at Instagram and saw some comments on her last post and then a post from a friend of hers about it.

Ah, ok. Thanks.

She may have posted about it on FB, she has an account there too but it’s private.

She posted a bunch of images/artwork of death on IG last week though - in her usual way of commenting on what’s going on in the news. Seems like grim foreshadowing in hindsight. :(

i ran a new wave / post disco night for a couple of years here in Bristol and we'd often play her explicit version of 'Is That All There Is' as the closer. Feels extremely apposite, especially when the original is apparently Trump's favourite song

Oh, snap: Cristina's "Is That All There Is" was a favourite set-closer of mine around 1988/89, and more generally, one of those tracks which I used to delight in introducing people to. "Things Fall Apart" and both 12" mixes of "Disco Clone" are also perennial, un-witherable lifetime favourites.

Sad. Persoanl fave was always "Don't Mutilate my Mink". End of an era as they say. Fuck this virus

remember hearing 'is that all there is' listening to peel in my room in the second year of college (and peel telling a disobliging story abt leiber and stoller)

:( :( :(

wiki sez: A version with altered lyrics, by No wave singer Cristina, was available briefly in 1980. However, it offended songwriters Leiber and Stoller, who sued and were able to get it suppressed for some time. Produced by August Darnell (Kid Creole), this version was eventually re-issued in 2004, with the songwriters' blessing, as a bonus track on a Cristina compilation album Not seeing a Cristina comp on Discogs, but they do show it on Kid Creole collection Going Places.
In the Lieber & Stoller dual autobio, Lieber says that he was complaining to his WWII refugee wife, despite being at a sustained peak of success and pleasure, so she suggested that he read Thomas Mann's "Disillusionment." (wiki claims that lyrics were lifted from the story, which I haven't read). Leiber describes some record co. apprehension about its being taken as a downer in the go-go 60s, but apparently a lot of people could relate.
As for it being Trump's theme song, this interview tape was quoted by Michael Barbaro in the NYTimes:
MR. TRUMP: It’s a great song because I’ve had these tremendous successes and then I’m off to the next one. Because, it’s like, “Oh, is that all there is?” That’s a great song actually, that’s a very interesting song, especially sung by her, because she had such a troubled life.
But he quickly retreats from the moment, declining Mr. D’Antonio’s invitation to further explain how the song makes him feel about himself, saying he might not like what he discovers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/us/politics/donald-trump-interviews.html
(Only time I've ever seen him claim any interest in/awareness of the life experience of a woman.)

I'm a big fan of "Don't Be Greedy" too. Contender for my favorite on the first album.

the reissue they’re talking about is this one


https://www.discogs.com/Cristina-Doll-In-The-Box/release/499446

First heard "Is That All There Is" on the first Rodney on the ROQ comp. Out of place with all the SoCal bands, but a great closer and led me to other great Ze stuff.

There's a painting on her Instagram of her sitting at the stern of a boat that echoes the photo of her reclined on the bed on the cover of ITATI.

RIP.

Seems like most modern-day attention is focused on "Is That All," or "Disco Clone," but that whole debut album is a longtime favorite of mine. Frothy, fluffy, maybe a bit cartoonish, but oddly endearing to me. And she really was stunningly beautiful.

her version of La Poupée Qui Fait Non is a regular in my disco dj nights.

Are there other oddball disco records with a similar vibe? I know a fair amount of ZE Records stuff, but much less about disco, Italo, etc. overall.

the first thing to do is take the little leap over to Y records and check out Pulsallama's Oui Oui which I used to mix in or out of the Cristina song.

then there's everything else Kid Creole touched. Cory Daye's Green Light is something else I play in that context.

I guess any of the mutant disco or disco not disco comps would get you part of the way there.

Modern Romance-Everbody Salsa?

I love italo but it's a wide-ranging thing, a lot of poppy stuff that I don't like, a lot of more electro/spacey stuff that I love that probably doesn't fit the bill, some of the earlier more eurodisco stuff like Vivien Vee - Give Me a Break or more organic sounding italo.

Or Punkin Machine's Tonight.

That's all stuff I'd mix with that context I guess? I'm sure I'll think of more later.

my favourite kid creole fact is that he lived in urmston for a while

Appreciation in the Guardian:

Cristina: no wave's daring darling captured the beautiful and damned

Despite the renewed interested, she declined to make another album (“I’m an old trout”)

terrible headline

MR. TRUMP: It’s a great song because I’ve had these tremendous successes and then I’m off to the next one. Because, it’s like, “Oh, is that all there is?” That’s a great song actually, that’s a very interesting song, especially sung by her, because she had such a troubled life.
But he quickly retreats from the moment, declining Mr. D’Antonio’s invitation to further explain how the song makes him feel about himself, saying he might not like what he discovers.

I thought for a minute that 'her' in the interview Dan posted meant Cristina and I was knocked for six.

terrible headline

I quite like it because it makes me think of a newspaper headline from the early 80s.

Sorry, Alba! I should have incl. Mr. Trump turned philosophical. He recalled a favorite song, performed by Peggy Lee,

(Wonder what he thinks of "Sympathy For The Devil"?)

(I would like to hear Cristina and/or Peggy Lee sing that one, btw.)

Yeah, I also took it that he somehow knew the Cristina version, from disco parties with Jeffrey Epstein, maybe.

Of all the people I ever played “Is That All There Is” to, the strongest reaction came from a textbook sociopath. He declared it his theme song and asked to hear it repeatedly. So the Trump quote is fascinating to me.

I've just remembered that I once put it on a mix CD for a girlfriend and she hated it. Now I'm thinking, maybe I was the sociopath in that relationship.

I didn't know Robert Palmer produced two add-ons to the 1984 album.

If you can't stand to read xgau any more, says this prev mentioned comp is more of a groovy ZE thing than Kid Creole, prefers xtina's "ITATI" to Peggy Lee's (and the song as orig written):
Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1974-1983 [Stunt, 2008]
Belatedly, all of Kid Creole and the Coconuts' albums can be purchased on CD, and through the Sire and Columbia years, 1980-1992, every damn one is worth it. This is something else. Though the four cuts with Creole's name on them set the tone, it assembles side projects August Darnell oversaw for ZE, and double-damn if most don't hold up--Aural Exciters, Don Armando's Second Avenue Rhumba Band, Machine's fashionably charitable "There But for the Grace of God Go I," and the long-lost prize, Cristina's neo-nihilist takeover of Peggy Lee's/Leiber & Stoller's merely existentialist "Is That All There Is?" Though the PR calls this postpunk music "grungy," it's just DOR, the forgotten acronym for "dance-oriented rock," with an emphasis on the "D"--stripped-down disco with the occasional rock groove or instrumental flavor. It's slick. But it's also more intelligent than most IDM--sophisticated in the most tolerant sense. For longer than his dangerous lifestyle and surface success portended, Darnell was a visionary lyricist who considered all pop music his domain. He succeeded so well that even his rarities prove it. A-
Also digs Zetrospective: Dancing in the Face of Adversity, incl. "Disco Clone."

Thinking of Zetrospective the segue from Cristina’s ‘He Dines Out On Death’ to John Cale’s ‘ I Keep a Close Watch’ is inspired.

I'm so bummed about her passing. When I was going through my "mutant disco" mini phase she was of course a standout.

Don't Mutilate My Mink is one of the best songs of all time and I wish I could find my audio cable so I could play it really loud instead of through shitty laptop speakers

― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 21 March 2020 17:25 bookmarkflaglink

just want to point out that I was OTM is this thread

it is! you were!