I first heard Stereo Total while visiting London when I was 20. For the next few weeks after that trip I had a cold I couldn’t shake and also kept calling any apartment I was in a “flat” until somebody finally said “You’re not in London anymore, asshole.” But while I was in the U.K., I did a fair amount of walking and looking around, amazed to be such an adult out and about in one of the greatest cities in the world. I carried around a beat-up copy of Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London that I’d purchased at Myopic in Wicker Park before the trip and felt so cool. I had very little money and quickly found London wasn’t exactly the type of town for a person with $200 bucks in their bank account, so my friend and I were relegated to drinking in his sister’s home and listening to her record collection that consisted of a handful of a few old LPs and a ton of CDs all stacked on top of each other in no real order at all. It was basically what I did in the States most nights of the week, but it felt special because I was, well, down and out in London.
That was around the time I’d taken my Stereolab obsession to a new level. I always consider Stereolab and Belle and Sebastian specifically the two ‘90s indie bands that probably helped me get into most of the music I’m into today. Belle & Sebsatian got me into Love, Felt, Scottish indie, Nick Drake; Stereolab got me into yé-yé, Neu!, an appreciation for the old lounge albums that were a quarter each at thrift stores. At that point in my life, basically anything in French appealed to me. So when we pulled out a CD called My Melody by Stereo Total and popped it into player, I was pretty much in love instantly because of the name, but also because the vibe was like a more playful Stereolab. Two years later, when Musique Automatique was released in the States on Bobsled Records — a pretty much forgotten label from Illinois that put out a few great releases that I’m sure will be overlooked and rediscovered considered classics someday— I snatched up a copy almost immediately. The opening track was and remains one of the most perfect starts to an album I can think of:
I was so in love with the title track that the very same night I put the album on during a little party just as the energy was starting to shift, where the people who were strangers at the start of the night started to get closer, the temperature started to rise, laughter started to replace banal conversation. You remember what that feels like, right? The music had been good up until that point if I recall, so introducing a brand new album into things was risky. It could have ruined the entire vibe and then anything could have happened. We were all in our early 20s and when a party started going sour, the best plan of action was to go to another party or a bar.
But that didn’t end up happening. Instead, one person, then another, and another, started dancing. One after another, the whole place became a dance party to this song that, I assume, nobody had heard before. It was gorgeous to watch. Like something out of a cheesy film from the era that I’ve no doubt seen a hundred times.
I mention all of this because one of the two members of Stereo Total, Françoise Cactus, passed away yesterday from cancer. Because we’ve been living through a time littered with death announcements, I felt like it might pass by without much notice beyond a few music sites, but also because I feel it’s important to document the kind of magic Cactus and Brezel Göring helped create through their music, especially now, when we can’t really dance with anybody.
Not long after that party, I moved down to Miami and started DJing regularly in and around South Florida. The Friday night party I DJd in the Design District pulled in around 500 people, all of whom were looking to dance to what the magazines were telling them was “garage rock” and what was cool in NYC. Basically a mix of ‘80s, Brit Pop, the Strokes, a few soul songs thrown in, etc. The ones that usually got them moving were “Deceptacon” by Le Tigre, “Common People” by Pulp, “Call Me” by Blondie, etc. It all felt really formulaic to me and I acted like a snobby dick about it, but I was also getting paid and, let’s face it, being in your early 20s and DJing beats flipping burgers or sitting around wondering what to do with a college degree, so I played the songs they wanted and I was fine with it. I could spin my old soul 45s I paid too much money for at the English pub in Ft. Lauderdale or the weird funk and disco records at the little Miami dive on weeknights. But sometimes there were truly wonderful moments of coolness and joy that I think about a lot. The entire time “Groove Is In the Heart” by Deee-Lite brought the entire room together, but especially the part towards the end where the song would essentially stop, except for a couple of finger snaps, then the countdown of “One, two, three” that the entire room would shout together like we were at a wedding or bar mitzvah. It was just sheer joy.
The other moment was when the first parts of “Musique Automatique” started to play. There were always a few cool people that knew right away. They didn’t scream with excitement. They didn’t start bopping up and down. I always remember very specifically the way they just started swaying their bodies a certain, almost mechanical way. A few people would turn into a few more, and within seconds, the entire place was going gorilla.
I moved to Brooklyn after about a year, promising myself that if I was going to DJ, I was spinning only what I wanted to spin. And I did, often to mixed results. I could spin “Rasputin” by Boney M and then follow it up with “The Magnificent Seven” by the Clash and then “Rock Groove Machine” by the J.B.’s, then something by ESG would lead me into a few psych tracks or whatever. Sooner or later I’d feel I was losing the crowd. I knew that important moment was coming when people decided whether they wanted to stick around or go to an one of the 10,000 other options the city had to offer.
That’s when I’d put on “Musique Automatique,” and the results ended up being the same as they were the first time I heard the song in a flat in London, after I put it on at a party in Chicago or played it for hundreds of people in Miami.
We go in and out of this life so fast. There’s so much to do and so little time to do it. Françoise Cactus probably did a lot of things she loved in her lifetime, but the one that I’ll always be thankful for is that she made a song that made everybody dance. What an incredible thing that is.
Wisconsin’s “Sturgeon General”
As I was about to hit the publish button, Amber Sparks tweeted a bit from a news story about somebody nicknamed the “sturgeon general” and you probably guessed right that it took me five seconds to Google what the hell she was talking about. And what I found was what can only be described as the plot of the film I’m meant to write for the Coen brothers:
A state biologist known as Wisconsin’s “sturgeon general” is facing jail for his alleged role in a lucrative racket that prosecutors say saw valuable fish eggs marked for fertility research funneled instead for caviar production.
But wait. The best part of the article from The Guardian is this…
As a kickback, one supervisor allegedly told the wardens, department staff would receive jars of sturgeon caviar – which can cost hundreds of dollars per ounce – and eat it openly during meetings with colleagues. Others told the detectives their reward was moonshine.
I can’t really tell whether I find the scam or the reward to be more incredible.
Shirt of the Week
That’s right. I’m still doing a shirt of the week. And this time around it’s the New Commute “Dead at Duke” shirt for the 1971 Grateful Dead and Beach Boys show. It’s hard to call this shirt anything but absolute perfection.