Miss Kittin & The Hacker: 'Frank Sinatra' (1998)

Miss Kittin & The Hacker: 'Frank Sinatra' (1998)

More Miss Kittin video clips @ YouTube

Miss Kittin (born 1973 as Caroline Hervé in Grenoble, France) released in 1998 together with her producer The Hacker (a.k.a. Michel Amato) the debut EP Champagne, on which this raunchy little gem first appeared, paving way to the foul-mouthed paeans of Peaches. Note this was way before the dreaded electroclash craze, though Miss Kittin became labelled as one of the artists of that genre, and I still love the song.

I had a brief interview with Miss Kittin for pHinnWeb in 2001, when she told about this track:

"I love Frank Sinatra and the American crooners and romantic jazz in general. I was looking for a rhyme to 'area' and here it came. What you don't know, is when I said 'He's dead', I really thought he was... A friend told me it was funny because he's still alive... I couldn't believe it and felt guilty, especially when he died three months later..."

"every night with my star friends
we eat caviar and drink champagne
sniffing in the v.i.p. area
we talk about frank sinatra
you know frank sinatra?
he's dead... dead!
ha ha ha!"

"to be famous is so nice
suck my dick
kiss my ass
in limousines we have sex
every night with my famous friends
..."

"motherfuckers are so nice
suck my dick
lick my ass"

pHinnWeb's little Miss Kittin page (not updated any more)

A Correction to Gigolo Swindle Article

I wrote some time ago a blog entry about Gigolo Records' The Great Gigolo Swindle compilation -- of which I, honestly, had never heard when I wrote my "Great Electroclash Swindle" article in summer 2002. It seems I was wrong about the compilation's original release date. Shame, it would have been nice to be of inspiration.

I stand corrected as Steve Teeri writes:

"Let me first say I am a happy pHinnWeb list member, and enjoyed your "Electroclash Swindle" article a great deal when it came out.

But...

I must point out that The Great Gigolo Swindle mix CD in fact came out in 2000, not 2005, and was the 50th release for Gigolo records. If you look at the records that had come out by that point, most weren't too bad, not like the sludge Gigolo released in the 2000's. Below is a link to the discogs listing for the original release as proof:

http://www.discogs.com/release/101761

The story, as I heard, was that the CD came out with a very well put together picture book by the graphic designers for Gigolo records, Abuse Industries. Of course they used a ton of Arnold Schwarzenegger imagery, since he was the face of Gigolo records at that time. Unfortunately, this came out right when Arnold sued Gigolo for using his image without permission. All the copies of the CD and Multipage booklet were taken back from distributors under threat of lawsuit. A few copies did manage to get out, as a matter of fact I am the owner of one myself.

I got all this info from Carlos Souffrount, the DJ of the mix CD. I should also mention that Carlos went out of his way to play really good, and frequently obscure B-sides from the Gigolo catalog, and in my opinion he did a fantastic job. The CD also features BMG of Ectomorph and Paris the Black Fu of Detroit Grand Pu Bahs, doing a radio call in show in the back ground. Paris is doing a fantastic Arnold impersonation by the way.

My biggest message is, Carlos Souffront is one of Detroit's best kept secrets, and to claim he is on the Electroclash bandwagon is just plain false. He's played Detroit parties for years and has a reputation for delivering high quality music every time."

The Great Electroclash/Gigolo Swindle

I wrote in summer 2002 a text called 'The Great Electroclash Swindle' which received a lot of attention around the world. Basically it was a satirical bite inspired by Piers Martin's article in Muzik, which celebrated electroclash as the biggest dance music fad in 2002. Electroclash received a lot of flak from "original" electro fans who thought it was derivative "fake music" for trendies and wannabe hipsters. New York promoter Larry Tee who used to run the Electroclash music festival in Williamsburg got his share of bad-mouthing and changed the fest's name to the Outsider Music Festival. Since then electroclash has been both forgotten as new musical fashions have replaced it and at same time not forgotten since it seems to have been established as a musical genre name for certain combinations of new wave/synthpop/electro/techno/disco/whatever. For example, the Juno site in UK for new dance music releases has "electroclash" as one its categories.



In my article I mentioned Munich's International Deejay Gigolos label as one of the examples representing this controversial genre. The circle seems to have closed since the label has now released a mix album called The Great Gigolo Swindle. Heh, it's great to have been of inspiration!

[Addition, August 2005 -- Well, not actually: here is a correction Steve Teeri wrote to this text.]

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Some Net articles mentioning 'The Great Electroclash Swindle':

Philip Sherburne Reconsiders Electroclash
TokTok vs. Soffy: "A true electroclasher is against electroclash"