Fischerspooner - Emerge
Shit...it's been 7 years already since I saw them perform at the "now dead" Avalon, and although the show wasn't as spectacular as this video, I knew I was at the right place at the right time. I'm not gonna lie...I loved Fischerspooner's #1 album. Emerge might not have been the the best thing that came out of the short lived Electroclash scene, but it was to me the equivalent of a Blue Monday. Some things just have that magic to be unpredictable. I loved Fischerspooner and I loved everything about 2002. Gigolo was the label to follow and black was my weapon of choice. It was the year when Output Recordings became a cult label. It was the same year that DFA was a baby. Tiga was wearing sunglasses at night and Peaches was fucking the pain away. Miss Kittin & the Hacker professed their love to Telex and revealed that Frank Sinatra loved oral and dirty sanchez. I loved the Ersatz Audio releases and any remixes by Adult. 2002 was also the debut of Chromeo on Turbo. A lot of good music came out that year...all full of sleaziness and all with the energy of punk music channeled through a 4/4 beat. I loved the rediscovery of Italo and the rebirth of Disco through artists inspired by post punk and new-wave. In the end, It was the year that the underground flipped the bird to electronic music and the lameness of the well established electronic genres...oh and how could one forget the absurdity of Moby's Carbon copy to Play. In retrospect, It's funny to be so nostalgic for something that was so short lived...but perhaps it never went away. It just started wearing fitted hats instead. Only time will tell... for now all I can say is:
"I was there...I was there in 1968.
I was there at the first Can show in Cologne/I'm losing my edge/I'm losing my edge to the kids whose footsteps I hear when they get on the decks/I'm losing my edge to the Internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1962 to 1978/I'm losing my edge.
To all the kids in Tokyo and Berlin/I'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties.
But I'm losing my edge/I'm losing my edge, but I was there/I was there/But I was there.
I'm losing my edge/I'm losing my edge/I can hear the footsteps every night on the decks.
But I was there/I was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices in a loft in New York City/I was working on the organ sounds with much patience/I was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band/I told him, "Don't do it that way. You'll never make a dime."/I was there/I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids/I played it at CBGB's/Everybody thought I was crazy/We all know/I was there/I was there/I've never been wrong.
I used to work in the record store/I had everything before anyone/I was there in the Paradise Garage DJ booth with Larry Levan/I was there in Jamaica during the great sound clashes/I woke up naked on the beach in Ibiza in 1988.
But I'm losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent/And they're actually really, really nice/I'm losing my edge.
I heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody. Every great song by the Beach Boys. All the underground hits. All the Modern Lovers tracks. I heard you have a vinyl of every Niagra record on German import. I heard that you have a white label of every seminal Detroit techno hit - 1985, '86, '87. I heard that you have a CD compilation of every good '60s cut and another box set from the '70s.
I hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real. You want to make a Yaz record.
I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables/I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.
I hear everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that I know.
But have you seen my records? This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars, The Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd Terry, the Germs, Section 25, Althea and Donna, Sexual Harrassment, a-ha, Pere Ubu, Dorothy Ashby, PIL, the Fania All-Stars, the Bar-Kays, the Human League, the Normal, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Monks, Niagra (Joy Division, Lower 48, the Association, Sun Ra, Scientists, Royal Trux, 10cc)
Eric B. and Rakim, Index, Basic Channel, Soulsonic Force ("just hit me"!), Juan Atkins, David Axelrod, Electric Prunes, Gil! Scott! Heron!, the Slits, Faust, Mantronix, Pharaoh Sanders and the Fire Engines, the Swans, the Soft Cell, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics..." (R.I.P 2002)
LCD Soundsystem - I'm Losing My Edge (DFA/Output)
