80s Cup R4M2 - kaspar 16-11 TWP

[Penk!]

A

Soft Cell - Sex Dwarf



B

Malcolm McLaren - Double Dutch

[C]

Soft Cell...ooof!

-+A+-





.

[toomanyhatz]

...And here we celebrate the 80s in all its superficial, tacky glory. Fuck this round.

A, I guess, mainly by virtue of being shorter.

I enjoy what B celebrates and could even enjoy it if Malcolm were cut out of it completely. Might even make it a tolerable length.

[Dayodead]

A

[Darkness_Fish]

Here's Marc being seedy and meaning it, taking Suicide's stripped down synth and smearing it with sleaze and an alarming lack of taste. It's probably a better track-title than track, the extraneous squiggles and silly voices annoy me, though it feels more like it works in the context of the album.

I remember loving B at the time it came out, and I think I've hardly ever heard it since. It's quite a thing to celebrate the joy of African music whilst trying to avoid paying the African band you rip off any royalties. As has already been noted, it would be far, far better without Malcolm being present at all. If you ignore him, and just pay attention to the burbling bass rhythm, it's still a joyful thing to hear. And for that, he just about squeezes past Southport's finest.

B

[Polishgirl]

This particular Soft Cell is too overt in its leather-capped sweatiness for me; the sex noises too gimmicky.

B is just joyous. If we could all double Dutch, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.

B

[The Modernist]

...And here we celebrate the 80s in all its superficial, tacky glory. Fuck this round.

.

Hatz yesterday..

[The Modernist]

Despite liking Soft Cell and despite my attraction to the outre, A felt too seedy at the time. It still feels a little like that now, although its proto-techno aspects are quite impressive.
B is a bit silly, but its an amiable and eccentric silliness. It's the kind of thing that can quickly irritate, but heard in isolation every once in a while can be pretty joyous. Poor old Malc never achieved his ambition of seeing hip hop united with skipping and square dancing. Wouldn't it have been funny if hip hop had actually gone in that direction.

B

[Jumper K]

Seedy or joyous? Hmm.
Of course its A.

[Diamond Dog]

The Soft Cell track was never any good and time hasn't improved it either.

Sadly, I have to vote for B.

[never/ever]

B

[Purgatory Brite]

A

[The Write Profile]

"Double Dutch" is kind of dodgy, and there are legitimate concerns about the way it coopts certain musics without giving due credit. Yet it's also kind of joyous and eccentric, and is just a big skipping rush of sound. The Soft Cell track was appropriately sleazy, mind. B

[Samoan]

B

[Deebank]

Sex Dwarf is brilliant, still.

Malky manages to completely miss something great with his double dutch bollocks. The African (Zimbabwean?) guitar bass and drums are totally fantastic but he has to combine them with some weird skipping nonsense and his own annoying 'vocals'. Tit.

A

I used to have a little Casio keyboard that did the Sex Dwarf melody perfectly.

[algroth]

It's quite a thing to celebrate the joy of African music whilst trying to avoid paying the African band you rip off any royalties.

This sort of thing seems to happen time and time again for some reason. A may be the track deliberately trying for that queasy, seedy element, but it's B that seems to embody all that in ways it does not intend or even deliberately tries to hide through its "universal message". Ugh. Easy A.

[The Modernist]

In fairness McLaren did that to everyone!

[algroth]

In fairness McLaren did that to everyone!

True!

[Penk!]

Hey, if you're going to pick 'Sex Dwarf', you could at least provide a link for the video! It's quite a cool track for a minute or so, but is very overlong at five; less stupid lyrics might have helped.
B, though, is the kind of thing that probably sounded mindblowing in 1983 but sounds like an absolute car-crash now. The bass is good though.

A

[The North Yorks Moors]

A