Let’s get some serious stuff out of the way first.
Those of you who listen to my podcast might know that I’ve been struggling with some health issues for a while that I’ve been pretty vague about. Well, I finally opened up about all of them with a blog post I put up on Medium called, ahem, “My Penis Tried To Kill Me.”
It may sound funny but that’s more or less the gist of it. I was suffering from a severe pain issue in that area that nearly drove me to suicide. So if you want to know all about that nightmare, go read that! You can also hear me talk about my incredibly rare medical condition on the Sickbody podcast, a CBC production (I’m CanCon now!)
In case all of that sounds horrible or scary to you, spoiler – I’m doing much better now and both the article and podcast show that I think I’m in a pretty good place at the moment. I can honestly say that, although I’m recovering still and have bad days – I’m happy.
Anyway, enough about me and my dick, how about we talk about Pink Lady?
If you’re reading this blog you’re probably a big enough nerd to know who Pink Lady are. They’re a Japanese pop duo who were insanely popular in their native country for an extremely short period of time. I’m not going to go over their career here, because I just be summarizing their extensive Wikipedia page. Just trust me on this – they were hot shit.
(My boyfriend, who is Japanese and old enough to remember the era of Pink Lady, backs all this up by the way. He was only like five during most of this shit and he remembers Pink Lady being everywhere,)
But this post isn’t about Pink Lady; it’s about Disco Lady.
Disco Lady – Disco UFO (Right-click each to download)
ディスコUFO (Disco UFO)
ディスコ・ディスコ (Disco Disco)
Who is Disco Lady?
Disco Lady is no one.
Are you old enough to remember buying a compilation album with a name like TOP DANCE HITS or SMASH POP SONGS, only to get home and realize that all the songs are cheap cover versions and that the whole album was a rip-off designed to take advantage of you most likely not knowing that?
That’s kind of what this release is. Disco UFO is a 7” single that primarily features a medley of Pink Lady songs redone in disco arrangements. Actually, I suppose that’s not entirely accurate, because Pink Lady were already a disco act. What Disco UFO actually does is take those disco songs and transform them into much more electronic disco numbers. Imagine if Giorgio Moroder had adapted “The Hustle” into a song more akin to “The Chase,” that’s what’s going on here.
Disco UFO is credited to Disco Lady. Who are the singers? Who knows. They’re not credited. The backing group is, its the Teichiku Orchestra, who I imagine were the house band for Teichiku Records, but the singers are anonymous.
The only other person involved with Disco Lady’s Disco UFO to get a proper credit was Osamu Shoji. I’ve talked about Shoji on this blog many times before. In my opinion, he’s an unheralded genius of the early synth era. He deserves to be compared to the likes of Tomita and Wendy Carlos. He was doing really out there stuff before anyone else was. I think the main reason that he doesn’t get that credit is because, well, a lot of the records he worked on were like this – cheap cash-in cover albums to make a quick buck.
In addition to this Pink Lady covers album, he also released an album-length cover of the Halloween score (before the official score even came out in Japan!) and a ton of “Digital Trip” albums that featured synthesizer remakes of popular music from anime films and series.
He did put out a lot of original music, too, however, some of it is absolutely worth tracking down. 1979’s Night Flight fucking rips and his 1980 follow-up Shambala is a banger too. His best, and probably best-known work, is his amazing score to Wicked City, which I own on a deluxe vinyl but I wish would get a proper, high-quality CD release someday.
But even most of his covers albums are great, he really does some crazy things with the source material. You haven’t heard the theme to Lupin The Third until you’ve heard it performed on 100 different synths that probably cost a billion dollars in the mid-80s. One thing that’s really weird about Shoji is that, while the “switched-on” era of synth covers album mostly dried up by the late-70s, he just kept on releasing them. He did an all-synth Dragon Ball soundtrack in 1994. The man was committed to the art form.
Learn the Disco UFO dance! Click for an overly high-rez version!
And if you’re hankering to hear some original Shoji material after giving this silly Pink Lady rip-off medley a listen, good news; the B-side is an Osamu Shoji original. “Disco Disco” is, duh, a disco track. One one where he is clearly trying to imitate the style of Moroder at the time. It’s also oddly not that electronic. It takes about a minute before the synths push their way to the front of the mix, before that, it’s acoustic drums and real-ass guitar. It’s a fun little jam, I like it, but it’s not really representative of Osamu Shoji sound. Needs more electronic steel drums, bouncy beats, and twenty or more different sounds that are impossible to describe or identify. Oh well, I guess he was still refining his aesthetic at this point.
I know there are Osamu Shoji superfans out there, so I hope the two dozen or so of you appreciate these high quality rips of one of his earlier releases. And if you don’t know who Osamu Shoji (or Pink Lady) are, I hope you find these fun.
Going to try and clear out my backlog of goofy synth shit this year, so maybe expect another post like this soon. Or maybe a bizarre video game soundtrack, who knows.
And to everyone who has sent me messages of encouragement since I wrote that blog post, thank you very much – it really meant a lot to me.