Here We Are Again

Dinosaur L, "Kiss Me Again" (original version) - I like to think of "Kiss Me Again" as a gatekeeper of sorts - it's the disco song that only makes itself available to people who actually enjoy what disco's all about. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's been mp3-blog-fodder for years now; I remember seeing it pop up in places like 20jfg or such last year as people found themselves swept away by the tide of Optimo's Psyche Out mix, and I doubt I'll be surprised when I inevitably start seeing it crop up again in the future - I don't care how shamelessly the DFA adopts it as a template, I don't care how aggressively !!! tries to update it for the hip young wrist-slitters, I don't care, I don't care I don't care; "Kiss Me Again" will forever sound like no other disco song on earth. It'll just do it by virtue of sounding exactly like every other disco song on earth.

I know I've turned the phrase "great idea for a song/band/album/etc" into something of a daytime hooker around these parts, but I still say it holds water; there are just some bits of music that stand out in your mind for the sheer volume of other stuff that they clear up with ease instead of how easy they are to enjoy. I want to state categorically that that's not the case with "Kiss Me Again"; God only knows how much I love my thirteen-minute disco epics, but I've never enjoyed one quite as ferociously as "Kiss Me Again" - it is simply a tornado of Shit Going On, the kind of song where you notice new things filling up the background months after you're sure you've heard everything in it. Of course, the catch is that you're probably going to think you've heard everything in the song by about the three minute mark, because "Kiss Me Again" is to, say, most Salsoul records what the Stooges are to the Byrds - in other words, it's aggressively not music for people who need to be coaxed into listening to music. I doubt I'd even have a comeback for anyone who called it "boring"; it's definitely a record whose main pleasures come from the way it keeps doubling back over itself, and just to drive that point home it's not afraid to make use of some melodies and loops that wouldn't even be audible in a Tom Moulton mix. Again, this is probably why the song is now basically the eminent domain of the internet disco enthusiast; normal people have a hard enough time making it through "Disco Inferno" without losing interest. This is yet another reason why I really, really hate normal people.

But this is misleading, because anyone who can remain stock-still while listening to "Kiss Me Again" probably doesn't deserve to own more than the twelve CDs they've got anyway. "Kiss Me Again" is a monster of a good time, mostly because it's probably the most fun one can have while appreciating the playing of musical instruments that one can have without chemical alteration (not that it ever hurts, of course). I mean, you'd have to be deaf to miss out on all the elbow grease lubricating every howled note and wailed plea, every
digression into unchecked drum-rattling, every get-behind-me-Satan pound on a piano key, and of course, what with this being an Arthur Russell joint and all, every stroke of That Cello. It's tempting to devote perhaps a little more attention to the presence and the use of the cello than it might actually deserve, what with it being the easiest angle of attack for people to treat "Kiss Me Again" as a manifestation of Russell's profoundly opaque genius, but I think that's selling the whole song a little short - whatever the case with Russell's auterist chops may have been, it's close to impossible to imagine someone sounding like they're having more fun or playing the shit more fully out of a cello. I mean, it's a cello - unless I missed a memo, it's still a pretty profoundly non-rocking instrument.

See, but now I'm making it sound like a novelty record, the left fist of oversimplification to the right's outright dismissal as boring. Again: it's not. "Kiss Me Again" is a quintessential disco song, by which I mean it only exists to get you Up And At Them; David Mancuso described it in Last Night A DJ Saved My Life as being engineered from the ground up to take advantage of the specifications of his famous Loft soundsystem, and it's not hard to hear that carried out - elements just sort of waft in and out of the mix, slyly beckoning one part of yr body to shimmy, then the next, and then suddenly it's twelve minutes later and the world's coming to an end. In other words, it's got all the drama and kinetic potential of any of the billion cuts with MFSB backing the "talent" up, only stripped bare of all the (ahem) musical theatrics - to roll out another blindingly current critical trope, it's the kind of disco song you'd expect to get out of the laziest-slash-smartest kid in class. And yes, to answer your next question, Arthur Russell was a New Yorker.

I dunno. "Kiss Me Again" tends to be one of those songs with me where I'm right and the world can go fuck itself; the world is free to not like it, of course, but chances are pretty good that I don't have too much to discuss with anyone completely blind to the artistry taking place on wax being as that I don't listen to Nelly or Maroon 5. Fortunately, as mentioned up top, the world seems to be slowly catching up to it (either that, or I'm focusing on an increasingly narrow segment of the world); I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a large percentage of the people reading this post didn't need me to post it (in which case please don't download it - it's twenty fucking megs, after all, and Green Pea-ness is a still a burgeoning media empire with bandwidth costs to [theoretically] keep in mind). But really, it's just a great song and a Great song, and it's certainly good enough to warrant looking uncool to keep it around. (Click here to buy a used copy of the "Kiss Me Again" single from Gemm, or click here to buy a copy of Optimo's Psyche Out mix featuring the song to great effect from Amazon.co.uk)

Gonzales, "Dot" - I realize that I spend an inordinate amount of time making ruthless fun of jazz douchebags on this blog (and if you disagree, I take that to mean that I don't spend nearly enough time making fun of jazz douchebags on this blog as I should), but I have to own up to a lifetime weakness for this kind of piano-jazz-bar-contemporary-classical-law-talking-guy-thing from Gonzales, the guy behind last year's monstrously fun reimagination of Jamie Lidell's "Multiply" (as opposed to Jose Gonzalez, the guy behind That Cover of the Knife's "Heartbeats", not that I knew the difference three months ago). Mostly this is just because I'm a sucker for the piano in general, but Solo Piano still feels like it's a cut above the rest of that wide swath of albums seemingly built to ensure the most pleasant biscotti-buying experience possible - it's just almost tangibly gentle, the kind of album you can listen to at any time of the day, provided that you can listen to this kind of stuff in the first place. The funny thing is, usually I can't listen to this kind of stuff - if it weren't for my friend David hipping me to Solo Piano, I'd have probably filed it away amid the chatter of the billion different albums I have to choose from every day and kept on plugging away with Sateenkaarisuudelma. Thank god for that, then. (Click here to buy Solo Piano from Amazon.co.uk)