bobby van, »small town girl«, metro-goldwyn-mayer technicolor, 1953
bobby van (en.wikipedia) born december 6th, 1928, was an american singer, musical actor and »entertainer's entertainer«. in the 1953 lászló kardos-directed musical production »small town girl«, bobby van plays the character of ludwig schlemmer, whose »hippity hop«-dance performance with it's 8523 hops soon became very popular. more on »small town girl« is avaiable in the new york times' review.
goldfrapp, »happiness«, dir. dougal wilson, 2008
goldfrapp (en.wikipedia), is a 1999 formed british pop music duo concisting of singer alison goldfrapp and producer (i.e. »keyboarder«) will gregory. »happiness« is the second single off their fourth album »the seventh tree«, the video in question is directed by dougal wilson (videoville). recent works of his include videos for jarvis cocker, bat for lashes, four tet, lcd soundsystem and the latest goldfrapp-single, »a&e«.
in the video for »happiness« we see – once again – a kind of suburbia. alison goldfrapp is being shown in the opening scene, sitting on the stairs, singing. nice! but it's getting even better. a young man pops up, pops down, pops up and down, over and over until the end of the video. though it might seem as if it was being filmed in one shot, there are several cuts in the piece. but back to the jumping man again: he's dressed in a nice cut white suit, wearing white slippers and a black&white tie. the similarities in the imagery of »small town girl« and »happiness« are huge, dougal wilson's music video obviously is a deep hommage to the musical. we see alison consistently in different cameos (the nerdy girl at the bus stop, the rigid police officer, the flower girl), we see skipping children, bmx-bikes, the friendly postman, construction workers, a lovely old couple and – a dancing dog! crazyness!
it's been quiet a while since i got boom bip's and gruff rhys' joint effort-album »stainless style« into my hands. back then – i guess it was in january. or was it earlier? later? nevertheless: quite a while – so back then i just gave the album a short listen. at that time i've been pretty obsessed with burial's »untrue«, so that's why. but »stainless style« was a good one, too! it still is!
watching róisín dance the mess around for 30 times over the weekend was good, though i simultaneously fell in love with neon neon's tune »i lust you«. after playing the song for 279 times or so, and after watching the video for around 726 times, i thought i might need to take a closer look at »stainless style« than i did before. i guess you should have a look at it, too, so here it is …
neon neon, »stainless style«, lex records, 2008
this is the packaging, obviously. it shows a female foot in a silver pumps and an older man holding the heel of said court shoe. it looks very mysterious. they seem to make a little sexy time in a car (which is making totally sense btw, since the album is a concept album about john delorean). pretty fancy! but there's more. let's open it up …
this is the inside. surprisingly there isn't a mp3 download voucher nor an usb-stick or all that modern stuff in it. instead, the package contains a so called »compact disc« which used to be pretty popular around the year 1891. it is round and has a hole in the center. also it's reflecting in silver and it says »neon neon« on it. brilliant!
here you can see the booklet. what you can learn pretty soon after unfolding it is that this album is not only a concept album about delorean, but also one about long, silver finger- and toe-nails. the nail art features orange details which might look pretty slick if one is into fetish stuff etc.
the flipside of the inside looks good, too. there are less pictures displayed here since someone decided to write various names, copyright information and all that arty jazz inside of the booklet. the typo is all shiny silver and reflecting my flashlight.
ambitious!
and that was in fact the new neon neon-album … sadly, there is no feet bareness involved in their brilliant, klaus thymann-directed video, which is good for a watch, though!
a video: goldfrapp's »happiness«
