TRACK #362:

Frankenstein by Phoebus

We’re gonna segue out of Disco here with 2 different Frankenstein tunes from the same year out of the Italo-Disco scene.

We’ve got a few Italo-Disco tracks already on The Shindig, namely Disco Halloween from Forbidden Fruits. But what the hell is Italo-Disco? It doesn’t seem much like Disco, nor does it sound terribly Italian.

It’s been years now since we posted that song, and you don’t feel like clicking away to reread stuff you maybe never even read back then,  so why don’t we just talk about it again, huh?

Well, it seems the question of “what is Italo-Disco” elicits a fairly complicated answer. Enthusiasts and historians can’t seem to agree on what exactly is, where and when it all started or what even really qualifies as, Italo-Disco.

As such, the sound of Italo-Disco can be a bit elusive. Some of it skews more Disco and Space Disco, while a bunch of it leans more toward dancey 80’s Pop.

The short versions seems to be that it’s what happened when inexperienced Italian producers in the late 70’s tried to imitate the Disco hits that were no longer flooding in from outside Italy in the wake of Disco’s stateside decline.

That said, it was also the eventual electronification of Disco and the precursor to just about every form of EDM that now exists. Wow, ok Italo-Disco, shit. Take it down a notch, huh. That’s a pretty bold statement.

These 2 things seem to be most important to a definition though: heavy use of electronic instrumentation (synths, drum machines and vocoders) and either overly melodramatic themes of love and sex, or robots. There’s lots of robots.

Most of it was sung in English, perhaps explaining why a lot of it doesn’t sound terribly Italian. Dunno if that was an attempt to mimic classic disco tracks or simply to appeal to an American audience.

Oddly enough, it’s was a German Record label ZYX, that is largely cited as being the originators of the term. They marketed full-on mixes of the emerging pop scene out of Italy as “Italo-Disco.” Soon, that sound was coming from all corners of the globe and getting slapped with the same moniker.

Meanwhile, over here in the States, guys like Patrick Crowley and Bobby Orlando were touching upon some similar sounds with Hi-NRG. That also featured heavy use of electronic instruments, but typically ran at a higher tempo than Italo, so is somewhat easy to pick out of a lineup. It was popular in the Gay club scene of the mid-80’s and was very much a precursor to Techno and House. We even have a Hi-NRG hit here on the playlist courtesy of Bobby Orlando’s own Whisper to a Scream, which appeared (perhaps less than coincidentally) in 1985’s Freddy’s Revenge.

So, as you might suspect, I’ve been listening to a lot of Italo-Disco over the last year or so, and given its overall variety, I find it to be a wildly mixed bag. Some of it I love, some of it I hate.

The beat and the bass are typically right on the money. The first couple minutes of any Italo song is usually pretty great. But by the time the singer joined the party, it seemed like a 70/30 split on whether I was bailing out. A lot of it just sounds like cheeseball dance music of a variety I’m not terribly fond.

Now, I love Giorgio Moroder, and his pop-driven 80’s work is great. Kano released some good tunes. Koto, Scotch and Casco too. But the genre seems less defined by particular artists then it does the one-off records dropped by total randos never to be heard from again. Those can definitely be hit or miss.

I seemed to prefer the older, earlier variety which leaned a little more into Space Disco territory, a genre that I love which has a lot of overlap with Italo.

But the point at where a thing stops being Italo and starts being any number of other genres that sprung up in its wake, is located somewhere just outside my range of hearing.

Consensus seems to be that the genre had mostly dried out by the early 90’s and had given way to House, or Eurobeat or Eurodisco.

Tonight’s selection, Frankenstein by Phoebus, is a great example of what I’m talking about. This song doesn’t bear the hallmarks of what I think of when I think of Italo-Disco. To me, this just sounds like generic 80’s dance music, which isn’t not what Italo is, but it’s hard to explain. I dunno, maybe I’m not even really sure what Italo is, but I don’t know if it’s this. However, according to the folks on Discogs anyway, it definitely is.

Despite that, I still kinda dig this tune. Perhaps it’s a testament to the fact that just singing about Frankenstein can afford you a fair bit of goodwill over here with The Shindig.

This one seems to be about the Monster. And specifically the monster from the movie, as Phoebus has just recently seen a Frankenstein picture at the cinema.

From what I can gather, the monster has left an impression on our dear narrator. The nature of which, however, I can’t exactly say. Is this guy sexually attracted to the creature? Is that what’s goin on here? Am I adding that in? Am I sexually attracted to the creature? What’s the deal? Cause Phoebus seems to be getting real worked up over this thing, and I’m not sure it’s of the “Hey, just pick up a copy of Famous Monsters and an Aurora Model kit and work it out” variety.

So much so, in fact, that his friends all say he needs a doctor, his dad has kicked him out of the house and his girlfriend won’t even talk to him.

As such we dropped in some clips from Andy Warhol and Paul Morrisey’s Flesh For Frankenstein, cause…c’mon.

But enough of my rambling about a genre you probably don’t care to know about for some Monster song that I’m not even sure is prime example of that genre, in theme or sound.

He’s talkin’ about Frankenstein, so lose your mind already.

P.S. – If anyone listening happens to be familiar with this song but is finding they not familiar with this particular version, that is because it is a Shindig specific edit exclusive to the playlist. 

It is a mashup I made of the 7” Mix and the Horror Mix. Not sure why I did this exactly, as I did it quite a while back. I think I liked the Horror Mix better in general, but preferred the opening of the 7” Mix. I think anyway. There’s something going on at the end too that’s different. Either way, we hope you enjoy!