shutitdown: taking one for the anecdote

Results tagged “italo”

Ramen weekend

So I said I was going to have an all-ramen weekend and I damn well did. Above is the ramen that I spent about 7 hours making today. Why is that egg a funny color? Oh that's a seasoned soft-boiled egg, or ni tamago. Other toppings: spinach, green onion, toasted seaweed (nori), pickled bamboo, chasyu pork and kamaboko. Basically what I am trying to say is: in your face, humanity.

Other high point of the weekend: was in Fabric, one of the largest UK nightclubs and my vision of hell. I try to avoid at all costs, but when one of my pals from the Chicks on Speed was DJing there, I consented to grace the place with my presence. Alex clearly knew how much of an effort it was for me, because she played Spacer Woman and then says into the microphone "This is Italo disco! For Lina! She loves Italo!" Or something like that. Now Fabric isn't the sort of place where one would usually (or ever) hear dedications, so between that and the guy that followed us around trying to show us his abs, it was a pretty sweet night out.

By Lina on May 25, 2009 8:36 PM

Italo Hammers: 10 Bad-Boy Gems of Italian Disco

A number of dance songs were released in Italy in the late 1970s and early 80s, but only a handful of them can truly qualify as Italo "hammers." These up-tempo tunes have driving synths, unintelligible lyrics and bubblegum choruses and instantly cause cheers to erupt on the dance floor when they hit the decks. The hammers are some of the most well-known from the Italo disco canon--far from being obscure within the genre, they are the songs that aficionados will spoon-feed to new recruits as their entry into the world of Italo disco.

...read the rest at Italo Hammers: 10 Bad-Boy Gems of Italian Disco on Splice Today.

By Lina on March 27, 2009 10:14 PM

Life update

I'm going to Amsterdam this weekend for more italo and Holland electro. I'm such a glutton. Last weekend I went to the Bloc festival, which is this electronic music thing in England. They also had an italo day. I'm clearly far too old for this sort of thing, but as long as I have flatmates and don't have a mortgage, I might as well live it up.

I've been working on writing and have been skipping the gym to do it. As such, I'm fat and prolific. I should have an article on Splice Today tomorrow, and an interview on Infinite State Machine soon. I will post links when it all happens. I'm working on a piece (in my head still) called "Loving the Mix and Not the Man." This is to try and talk myself out of loving DJs so much. I need to stop. I don't know what my problem is. Why is it that I need to obsess over imaginary (or sort of real) people? Is this the ultimate proof that I have no real enthusiasm for other people, and as such need to project personalities onto them in order to feign interest? Things I think about has I head back to Holland to continue my stalking.

In other news, my slumlord has refused to fix our heat for 3 weeks. We've had no heat or hot water for three weeks. I've given notice and have to find a new flat, which will bring me to four in six months. London is really a lot like Dickens described it.

By Lina on March 20, 2009 12:19 AM

City of destiny, or why I keep going to Holland

Check out my latest piece on Splice Today: West Coast Knows How to Party: In search of italo disco in Holland, the contemporary mecca of European dance music.

By Lina on March 9, 2009 5:21 PM

Crying at the discotheque

Have I written about italo here before? It's one of the only things I truly love. Anyway, I was chatting with my pal Kenny about italo the other day. I should mention that Kenny is angry, bearded and tends to wear t-shirts with band names on them. If Kenny were into computers, he'd wear shirts with unix jokes on them, but he's into gay disco. And he's angry.

So there's this guy in Dublin. He has a moustache. If Dublin were to have a scene, he'd be a scenester. He is, to put it politely, a cunting moron. Anyway, rumor has it that he's gotten with the program and is starting an italo night.

Here's what Kenny had to say about the fact that a guy with glittery jumpers is trying to co-opt Kenny's favorite ultra-gay, ultra-cheesy, '80s Italian disco music:

"blood is going to spill over this bullshit. stay the fuck away from my music you cunts"

By Lina on February 20, 2009 5:59 PM

Rage against the dying of the light, or, the twighlight of my twenties

Last weekend I was standing in a muddy field with a couple of thousand Irish teenagers having mucky beers passed around me and wondered to myself if this was really how I wanted to spend the twilight of my twenties. Somehow I've gone from being the youngest in my crowd to the oldest, and I'm not sure if this is really how the future was meant to feel.

When I was 14, I was incredibly smug about the fact that all of the friends were seniors in high school and could drive me to Depeche Mode concerts and to off-campus lunch rendezvous at the nearest taqueria. When I was started dating, I daringly went for a man 10 years my senior thus making our relationship a violation of California penal code 261-267. I was so self-satisfied about this declaration of maturity--I couldn't wait to grow up and get on with my life. Now I'm so sick of getting on with my life that I regularly go clubbing on weeknights and have foregone a retirement fund in favor of traveling around Europe in pursuit of bangin' tunes.

I worry that I should be doing more constructive things; I should be at home planning my pension and having babies and focusing on my career trajectory, but the thought just fills me with melancholy. When I was a teenager I signed up for credit cards, took out the entire credit line in cash and then promptly forgot about them. I thought that I'd never live to see 20, so my credit line was something I'd never have to worry about. And now it seems that my credit line is something that I worry about endlessly. That is, when I'm not going to festivals or hanging around with people younger than those I was once paid to babysit. And of course I'm sort of ashamed of myself--this isn't the sort of person that I thought I would turn out to be. But I can't deny that it's pretty much worth it. Doin' it for the craic.

This weekend I'm heading back to Rotterdam to hear some of my favorite italo DJs kick out the tunes, and a week later I'm moving to London. I like to think I'm sort of like those surfers in the Endless Summer, traveling around the world as the seasons turn, chasing the never-ending summer. Chasing the endless buzz.

By Lina on September 17, 2008 9:30 PM

A short break for positivity - I love Dublin

I think my SAD lamp must be working, because I just posted a very chipper entry on my friend Rene's site, ilovethisworld.com. I've realized that I tend to post all of my happy thoughts on that site (note that I post rarely) and my bitchy thoughts on shutitdown. So I've decided to plagiarize myself and post it here as well.

I love Dublin

I guess it's finally hit me, but I'm pretty sure I'm having a love affair with Dublin. I've been saying that I love Dublin for a long time. Every time I get in a cab, which is often (I'm still a lazy American, after all), the driver asks me where I'm from after hearing my accent, and then asks me what I think of Dublin. This is not the time you want to complain about how you have to go sit in the immigration office for 4 hours every six months or point out that in America you can call other mobile phones for free rather than paying 20 cents a minute to call someone a mile km away. So I always say "Other than the weather, I love it here!"

And now I'm not lying anymore--other than the weather, I love Dublin. I love the people here. They're hilarious without seeming snotty in that particularly British way. I love how nice everyone is, it constantly surprises me. I love the way people talk and their accents and the language they use. I love the buildings and the brightly painted doors and the way things here are so old and beautiful. I love the countryside; it looks like a poster of what Ireland is supposed to look like, except it's completely real. I love how everyone here has been forced to take Irish dance--Riverdance, to you and me--lessons. I love the knackers. I love the taxi drivers. I love that people from all of the world are moving here in droves because they love it too. I love my friends. I love the Asian grocery stores. I love the way people are so old-fashioned about really silly things and don't even realize it. I love the way boys drink tea. I love that I live in a cottage next to a canal with swans and ducks. I love the history. I love the perpetual feeling of oppression. I love the way all of the good stereotypes are true. I love the scene most of all--there's more going in the disco/italo/electro scene than in places like New York or San Francisco. I love going out here. Parties here aren't over by 3am, they last at least two days, minimum. I love the fun, there's loads of it.

By Lina on February 13, 2008 10:18 PM

I love this world

I have a confession to make. I've been cheating on shutitdown. My friend Rene has a site dedicated to documenting the more positive things in life, ilovethisworld.com, and I've been posting on it. I'm sorry.

  • I Love Dance Videos
  • I Love Duck Butts
  • I Love Italo Disco
    • By Lina on December 25, 2007 1:19 AM

    DJ please

    Sorry kids, I still don't have internet. I promise to be better in the future.

    Somehow, I've fallen into a scene. Having been a perpetual scenester since my early teens, I've seen a lot. Overambitious gradesters hustling for GPA, intravenous drug-using punk rockers, riot grrls with questionable gender politiks, sexually perverse photography involving tennis racquets, grain-eating, therapy-loving "motivation" examiners--it's endless. But I'm not sure if anything I've been a part, or on the fringe, of, could possibly be as weird as what I've gotten myself into now.

    Techno.

    I know. Seriously, I don't think there's anything I can say to explain this away or even make sense of it. I can only being by saying moving to a new country is a very, very lonely time in one's life, and one's decision making abilities are often clouded by the desperate longing for human companionship and free drinks. Also, I think we all know that overall, I'm a miserable person. But the times in my life when I've been happiest are when I've had a gang and been on a scene. That's my best justification.

    When I moved here, my only close friend was a DJ. Before I met him, I had been told he was one of the top DJs in Dublin --"Like being the best speller in your 3rd grade class," I later quipped to him--and thoroughly unimpressed, I proceeded to give him the notorious Lina stink-eye and brush-off when we first met. The second time, though, I said "So you're a DJ, eh? Do you know this tune?" I proceeded to list some of the stupidest songs I could think of, and he not only knew them all, he knew their 12" b-sides and the Razormaid mixes that sampled them.

    Now, I'm known for having the most random musical preferences on the face of the earth. And not in a cool I-listen-to-60s-French-pop tunes sort of way, but in a kind of lame I-collect-Samantha-Fox-singles sort of way. So to find someone that although didn't necessarily support it, but at least knew it, was a breath of fresh air in this strange, new country.

    Little did I know that this was like when the drug dealer gives you your first hit free. Talking about my favorite 80s new wave songs slowly brought us to italo disco, one of his--and now mine--passions. Italo is a word to describe music from the late 70s and early 80s, mostly Italian in provenance, and cheesy and wonderful beyond belief. Think Baltimora's 'Tarzan Boy.' I'm not going to write more about Italo right now because I have too much to say about it to do it all now.

    Anyway, as it turns out, my new best friend is known for DJing two types of music, Italo and techno. Mainly techno.

    It started slowly. Invited to a show or two, meeting a few people who became friends, getting perma-guestlisted at weekly clubs, but it wasn't until I had a shocking realization that I finally got into it. The predominant fan base at techno gigs are boys. Young boys. This in combination with the free ins I get to the clubs have made me a regular on the scene, albeit a ambivalent one. Don't get me wrong, I love anything with a synthesizer; I was there for the original Electroclash, after all, but I never thought I was going to be having idle chats about 808s with Dutch techno djs. Just last week I was talking to a German techno dj who was in town to play, about dubstep. I was telling him that I had heard it had to be listened to with a ton of speakers, festival-style, to be appreciated and I wondered what he thought about it. "I think if music is good, it sounds good at any volume," he said.

    "Like Chris de Burgh, 'Lady in Red,'" I squealed happily, looking up for a sign of agreement.

    "Uh, yes, like that."

    So clearly I haven't quite learned to fit in yet. That night, I was in the club, leaning against a wall watching said German play. I was watching the dance floor as if it were a controlled experiment and I was a sociologist trying to sort of the relationship between man and ape. I can't begin to describe what really, really, enthusiastic teenage techno-heads behave like after midnight. I was standing with one of my other dj friends--I have about a dozen now--and finally he turns to me and says, "do you even like techno?"

    He's caught me. My face turns red. "I just come here for the boys," I say, abashed. "I just come here for the boys."

    Anyway. I have a lot more to say about what's going on musically in Dublin, and how last night, a DJ saved my life. Promise to update more.

    By Lina on July 23, 2007 11:23 AM
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