“I’m your DJ and I’m going to take you on a tour of a 12 inch. Yes, a 12 inch.”
Here’s another treat from Sneadles in LAser. This monster four disc dance, trance, grab-a-man-wherever-you-want-electronic album might go down as the most unapologetic ass-shaking club vinyl collection for the ages. Imagine yourself in a huge, dark club surrounded by pulsing strobes, dripping bodz, and the smell of lovejuice. This is what’s playing in that club–now and forever. Don’t fight the feeling cuz it’s already done.
It’s one of those albums that, yet again, can’t be quantified with nouns and verbs. And yes it is best enjoyed while drinking heavily and imbibing any number of rainbow colored pills but it can also be enjoyed stone sober if you’re in the right mood. It’s a dance album that, once you get into the groove, makes time slow down and things seem simpler and more complex at the same time. Of course that doesn’t make sense now but it will. It will also make you feel silly for wasting all of your time on Paul Van Dyk. My personal favorite from the album is track number two, Elements.
Oh, what creamy dreams 80s electronicos conjured within their oily brainfolds with this Sass-terpiece. In 1980 the nation was still starstruck with NASA, disco was mysteriously topping the charts, and ex-peanut farmer Jimmy Carter fought the Cold War by boycotting the Summer Olympics in Moscow. What a glorious time to be alive and fear atomic annihilation. They weren’t even worried about the terrible 42nd law of binary nothingness!
This album gives a glimpse of what monster-truck-sized-synthesizer operators envisioned 20 years in the future. Jesus, were they wrong. So dreadfully wrong.
Moog Synthesizer
Telephone Switchboard
The tracks on this record are very “Star Trek” (post Kirk and pre-Jean-Luc, you dig) with songs like “On The Throne of Saturn” and “Inside The Black Hole”. It also features the song “Karavan”, which debuted the previously undiscovered letter K in its title. As a whole the album perfectly captures the decade’s hope of men living on the moon and women cooking for men on the moon.
Little did they know that electronica would some day devolve into this:
God damn now my whole body hurts. Luckily I have a little medicine stowed away here. Ingest before it’s too late.
The back cover of this album perfectly conveys what Snoopy is all about:
I think if one has followed the Peanuts’ comic strip and particularly those segments that deal with Snoopy, one quickly becomes aware that one is reading installments of a fascinating allegory. Snoopy is a very individual dog and has a special meaning to all of us. Like all allegories, the significance of Snoopy really depends upon our own experience. For example–to a child, Snoopy represents everything that a child wants to bein in his or her fantasy world…Snoopy is a pilot, Snoopy is a secret agent. He can sit on a limb of a tree and hunch himself over and look like a vulture. He can stalk his prey like a saber-toothed tiger. He flies his doghouse and calls it his Sopwith Camel. He plays baseball and, of course, battles the Red Baron.
It is the battle with the Red Baron that I think expresses the primary adult philosophy. This battle is the battle between good and evil. Snoopy, of course, representing good and the Red Baron evil. However, the evil that the Baron represents is not the evil that really exists in the world today. The evil is a gentle evil and in the battle nobody is supposed to get hurt. In this conflict, namely of the simple truths that so often get lost in our hectic civilization come readily to the fore. In its simplicity, this conflict becomes almost a romantic adventure.
Our recording of Snoopy’s Christmas was made with this philosophy in mind. There is an underlying seriousness. Snoopy’s Christmas basically exposes the futility of never-ending conflict. This fact is particularly accentuated at Christmas time.
Side I of this LP presents a drama as fanciful as any child’s dream world involving all three of the Snoopy records. It uses the medium of radio when radio didn’t really exist to tell the story. We did this because there is a universality of timelessness represented by Snoopy’s battle against the Red Baron. The battle against evil is yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever.
1) This is a Quincy Jones production, as in the Quincy Jones who molded Michael Jackson into The King of Pop.
2) Michael Jackson sings backup vocals on track number five, “This Had To Be”. These guys actually got Michael Jackson to be their backup singer.
3) Louis Johnson, the non-spectacled brother, plays bass on Michael Jackson’s album Off The Wall, so you know the tracks on this LP are funky as all hell.
4) The Song “You Make Me Wanna Wiggle” is sampled heavily on Justice’s song “Newjack” from their album Cross for a double wiggle piledriver.
Here’s MJ set to both songs.
5)The cover features Louis blasting a purple cocksaber all over George’s face in a triumphant display of sibling domination.
Synthesizer – Greg Phillinganes
Written-By – Valerie Johnson
Written-By, Electric Piano – Rod Temperton
Written-By, Lead Vocals – George Johnson
Written-by, Bass [Solo] – Louis Johnson
A2
Light Up The Night
3:46
Written-By – Louis Johnson , Rod Temperton
Written-By, Lead Vocals – George Johnson
A3
You Make Me Wanna Wiggle
3:36
Lead Vocals – Alex Weir
Written-By – Rod Temperton , Valerie Johnson
Written-by, Guitar [Lead] – Louis Johnson
Written-by, Guitar [Lead], Lead Vocals – George Johnson
A4
Treasure
4:09
Lead Vocals, Percussion – Richard Heath
Written-By – Rod Temperton
B1
This Had To Be
5:13
Written-By – Louis Johnson
Written-By, Lead Vocals – George Johnson
Written-by, Arranged By [Backing Vocals], Backing Vocals [Fills] – Michael Jackson
B2
All About The Heaven
3:59
Lead Vocals – George Johnson
Written-By – Rod Temperton
B3
Smilin’ On Ya
3:46
Synthesizer – Larry Williams
Written-By – George Johnson , Greg Phillinganes , Louis Johnson
Written-By, Trumpet – Jerry Hey
B4
Closer To The One That You Love
3:11
Written-By – Louis Johnson , Rod Temperton
Written-By, Lead Vocals – George Johnson
B5
Celebrations
4:30
Effects [Vocal Percussion], Percussion – Paulinho DaCosta*
Synthesizer – Larry Williams
Written-By – George Johnson , Rod Temperton
Written-By, Bass – Louis Johnson
This is yet another album that I picked up because of the cover. I hadn’t seen the movie but Charles Bronson just chilling there with his gat resting on a popup map of the city made me all tingly. I’ve since seen all of the movies and marveled at just how many shady folks were willing to step into the path of Master Marksman Bronson. I’m pretty sure the body count for the complete Death Wish saga must easily total over 2 million. It also cracked me up how flamboyant the villains in these movies are–I totally expected them to bust into high art choreography at any point during the seemingly infinite gun fights.
Here’s a fab electrocution slaying from Death Wish 2
Anyway, this is a legitimately badass soundtrack scored by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame. I highly recommend it if you’re a fan of any mind altering drugs; especially sparkly gold spray paint. It will give you that static zing you’ve been craving.
