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Criminal Code - Capsules
Cabal or dartboard aside, the ascent of orange is probably too complex to attribute to any one actor. Tom Mirabile, senior vice president at Lifetime Brands (who handles licenses for Cuisinart and KitchenAid, among other increasingly colorful brands), notes that “at the high end, people have been trying to make orange happen for 20 years. Every time it comes in, it goes right back out. It doesn’t look good against most people’s skin.” So why orange now? Some of it may be for sheer effort. As Eiseman describes it, a color begins to appear in the consumer’s “peripheral vision.” “Oh, there’s yellow-green there and yellow-green there, hmmm, it’s not such a bad color. It doesn’t look bad in a shirt.” Or, as Mirabile puts it, “you see it enough and you start thinking it something you want to see.
TOMORROW WILL BE LIKE TODAY
From 1995 to 1997 Tocotronic had put out four full-length records, toured each, and carved out a fine niche for themselves with a distinctely identifiable blend of adolescent grunge-pop and dissociative rebellion. Naturally, sometimes a comfortable niche becomes just too small a place to maneuver.
1998 was destined to be the first year without new material from the band. Tocotronic embarked on their first US tour with American indie rockers Fuck to general indifference of the record buying public. However, their final gig in New York did attract rock royalty such as Sonic Youth and the kindred-spirits of Pavement.
Back home, the band decided to consciously go for a break with their former selves. They hired The Notwist’s Micha Acher to arrange horns and strings for their new recordings and holed up a record-breaking 70 days in a studio in France. (Remember: Their debut was recorded in a mere three days.)
The result, 1999’s glorious K.O.O.K. turned out to be a triumphant parting with their old ways. No more songs about hate and rebellion, no longer “teenage identification service providers.” The music grew longer, more spacious and elaborate, and less immediate, a farewell to the loud/quiet/loud ways of old; the lyrics more abstract and metaphorical.
I guess this is growing up.
Click through for the rest, as Hendrik is doing an excellent, clearly heartfelt take on Tocotronic over at his very own One Week One Band blog. Reading it, I’m most of all surprised how well many of the lyrics so far translate into english without losing their distinct feeling.
Which just reminded me of the existence of Tocotronic’s only English album: In 2000, they relased a version of K.O.O.K. containing English versions of all the songs - to pretty much zero international success I guess. Yet, some of them can be found on Youtube: Here’s Jackpot, Let There Be Rock and The Boundaries Of Good Taste 2 (original title: Die Grenzen Des Guten Geschmacks 2). I guess there’s also the title track, though since the German original’s lyrics are in English as well, the only difference is the anglophone pronounciation of “K.O.O.K.”.
Ke$ha was the very first one to do it. I told her about it in one evening, and by the next day I had her blood in the mail. Out of all the people I worked with, she’s the most like me because she’s just crazy and she loves all this shit. It’s not that everybody else was more hesitant, but they’re just not as crazy.
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| — | Wayne Coyne (via jonathanbogart) |
