2005-06-06 - 4:02 p.m.
Thanks to the powers of Russian techonology and a local culture with really tacky and bad taste, there are numerous bands and singers that could make a killing if they moved their base of operation here. When I talk about a rather unfortunate sense of taste when it comes to music, I’m not just referring to the fact that the song “Yeah” by Usher and “Everytime” by Britney Spears is on a continual loop. Nay. Rather, T-stan is the country where bad singers come, not to die, but to live out unfortunately successful careers through pirated cassette tapes, a Russian music video request channel, and a people who mistake the rudimentary thumpings of 4/4 time as the complicated apex of musical sophistication.
Case in point: Modern Talking. Who is Modern Talking? No one in America really knows or can remember—is it related to that Talking Heads group or something? The name sounds so ridiculously familiar to every other 80s band name—Culture Club, Talking Heads, Crowded House, Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees—that it’s hard to think of what this group might have actually done. For all of our intensive purposes, they’ve disappeared from the golden, gorgeous horizon of American popular music.
But not in T-stan. Oh no. Here they’ve continued their fabulously unimpressive career here in T-stan, which I’m sure would flatter/horrify them if they found out. When I first came here, people would ask what English and American groups I liked and I, being pretentious and obnoxious about everything, would list off bjork, Iron and Wine, Kathleen Edwards, PJ Harvey, Bob Dylan, and others. Blank faces. Everywhere a blank face, which isn’t that different from if I said some of those name in America. This was all a ruse for them to tell me what English groups they liked. “Oh!” they’d chortle delightedly, while clasping their leathery hands, “I LOVE Modern Talking. They are really the great.”
I really had no idea who they were until last night when I saw not one but two of their videos in a row on MusicBox, “Cherrie Cherrie Lady” and “Brother Louie,” the first being a rather poor, deformed version of the Neil Diamond original. When they first appeared on the screen, I kind of couldn’t believe it was happening—it was a lot of hairspray and tan and lipstick and really happy faces. And they were both men. “Brother Louie” is played CONSTANTLY here in cafes and in cars and is notable for having one of the most obnoxious choruses I know I’ve ever heard.
This is how I’ve been able to transcribe the lyrics: “something something something something mooky pooky lookie, ahhhh sooky sooky sooky, ahhhh dooky sooky pooky.” It was more than a little awkward to ask my sister if she heard of that one “mooky pooky lookie” song, especially when I kept having to sing it to her over and over again. “You know, it goes something like, ‘dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah MOOKY POOKY LOOKY! They just say words with ‘ookie’ at the end of it or something. I think it’s Indian or something.” This is also the point when my sister also joined the ranks of friends who are worried about my mental state.
But no matter how bad Modern Talking’s songs are and how tempting it is to crown them the worst band ever, their own title worth receiving is the “Most Terrifying Use of Pale Pink Lipstick on a Male During the Years of 1961-1996.” I’m serious. You need to see pictures or something. Pale pink on a tan face is something that no child in the growing world needs to see.
Other singers living out their last, painful, third-world days include C.C. Catch and the group Boney M, which just sounds wrong. C.C. Catch is another mid to late 80s disaster constructed from the last remains of a couple canisters of hairspray. She sang a song called “Cause You Are Young” whose video features a lot of black belts that cinch yellow blouses and the endless twirling, swinging, and ferris-wheeling of Ms. Catch’s arms. Boney M, from what I was able to discern from their illegally made cassette tape in the local music “store”, is a really exuberant group of black people from the early 90s; they also apparently make music.
I love the image of C.C. and the crew of Boney M sitting with their friends who are trying to console them for a career never having taken off the ground and telling them, “C.C.! Don’t worry! You’re a smash in T-stan! There’s hundreds of thousands of people who love your music. Even though they don’t understand a lick of English and their own taste border on the grotesque, you could at least tour there! You could make a killing on tacky products with your name on it—they love tacky!”
There is one thin filament of gossamer in the dark thunderheads of Turkmen music—and it isn’t Smash! or Dima Bilan or Valeriya or Tootsie or the tons of other amazing Russian music groups that I’m obsessed with; I’m saving that for another entry. In the thick and fog of it all, Abba still remains popular and wildly famous among older people. It’s basically the only reason the teachers at my school still tolerate me—we can sing “Knowing Me, Knowing You” together. Granted, they think that the Abba song “Happy New Year” is an English language holiday standard that Americans sing to each other every year but I think that’s a price we’re all willing to pay for the opportunity to dance around to “Mamma Mia” when no one here thinks for a second that it might mean you like members of the same sex. A silver strand, indeed.
