Thursday, January 10, 2013

"45 45's until I'm 45" (#03/45)

Hello my beauties,

and yes, dear readers, the hits keep happening here on Sexyloser, 'cos, as my boss of the bar where I used to DJ in back in another century said to me: "Oh Dirk, can't you at least sometimes play something with some recognition value, please?!", here is a record you should indeed know if you are about to retire in not more than 20 years 'in your best years', as they say ... which I suppose is true for all of the five middle-aged men who occasionally read this blog.

This is for you, your number three:

 
Mute - MUTE 002 (1979)

Ground breaking stuff indeed, I'm sure you agree, and, for a change, one of the very few records I was not introduced to by John Peel's BFBS programmes, in fact this one I discovered on the dancefloor (albeit not in 1979 (but a few years later ... I was too young, you know ...) and not on the dancefloor itself (more accurately most probably whilst crossing it on my way to the bar)).

Robster - in a previous comment - suggested I should give some details about when I first listened to the specific records. The thing is, you see, I'm getting 45, not 25, means my memory has started to decline quite a long time ago. Nevertheless I remember though that this tune was frequently played in a very strange (and, regrettably, short-lived) club I used to visit in the mid eighties, The Fleshtemple (sic) in Wijnandsrade in Holland, a very small village just behind the Dutch/German border. In order to be able to enter the venue itself you had to cross the local pub in which the pensioners sat and played their game of cards. I suppose it was rather odd for them to sit there and watch all those freaks coming in all evening long: Punks, Goths, Skins, Mods ... everyone was there and people even drove in from as far away as the Ruhr Area (which was quite a distance. Suppose it still is, to be precise).

But despite of the variety of the visitors, there never was a single outbreak of anger as far as I remember and I suppose this is what made the Fleshtemple so special. This and the fact that basically there was no decoration at all apart from stark naked display dummies all over (which explains the name, so there you are). Plus they offered 0.2 water glasses brimfull of pure white Martini for a little bit more than 1 Gulden ... which today would be something along the lines of 45p for British readers or $ 0.70 for the Americans ... prices too impossible to imagine nowadays!

And, of course, the music there was just awesome: they always had the newest stuff from Britain combined with an outstanding amount of great rare records from a few years before. I think after it shut down I never ever discovered a club again which offered music of comparable quality.

Enjoy,

Dirk

4 comments:

Swiss Adam said...

Great record Dirk. Love it. Groundbreaking stuff.

Swiss Adam said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Walter said...

I agree to you Dirk and SA - Groundbreaking, and I can still remember the times when we played Fat Gadget while djing. Another great tune from FG ist collapsing new people. Did you ever watched the movie Herr Lehmann?

Greetings
Walter

Dirk said...

Yes, Walter, I do: a great movie and I also have the soundtrack on CD.