Three Tune Tuesday Week 92: Blue Monday, Popcorn and Magic Fly.

Three Tune Tuesday Week 92: Blue Monday, Popcorn and Magic Fly. | Ecency

A big greeting to all, my object this week is to share with you the version of Blue Monday performed by Orkestra Obsolete, and the original songs Popcorn by Gershon Kingsley and Magic Fly by Space, but I also wanted to pass on some anecdotes associated with these pioneering tracks of dance music, synth pop and electronic.

1.- Orkestra Obsolete- Blue Monday.

Blue Monday by New Order is one of the main themes of the band from Manchester England, the original theme is a real electronic party. This band was formed by the former members of Joy Division after the disintegration of the latter due to the unfortunate suicide of their singer Ian Curtis. In 1983 the song was released, influenced by the onslaught of new technology.

The track sounds like a jackhammer rhythm and a big bass, the song was inspired by a book that New Order's drummer was reading at the time: Breakfast of Champions, a post-modern satire on society published in 1973 and Goodbye Blue Monday appeared as the subtitle of this book.

This single of more than seven minutes became one of the most successful electronic music singles of the last decades. Blue Monday talks about a violent love or it can also refer to drug abuse on a particularly sad Monday.

There are many versions of this song, but in 2016 a music project of the BBC in London called Orkestra Obsolete presented a version played only with instruments from the 1930s, such as the harmonium, the theremin and a musical saw.

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Nothing is known about this particular group to date, but this version of the song is surprising, obscure and highly imaginative. As an added bonus and for comparison purposes let's hear the original version with its lyrics.

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I really like the version for its originality in daring to perform the song with such old instruments.

Gershon Kingsley - Popcorn.

When I was a child, I spent hours watching television in my country Venezuela and in those 70's the commercials always used a very catchy song, at all times in all channels I heard it and I still associate it to a comb that was used a lot in the help to remove lice. Later I heard a version in 1972 sung by a very famous Argentinian group in the 70's called The Golden Triplets.

I eventually researched the name of the song and was very surprised to find out that the song was called Pop Corn and is considered the first hit of electronic music.

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This song was composed and performed by the German Gershon Kingsley in 1969, and became really famous in 1972 with the version of the band Hot Butter.

This man has the honour of being the first to give a concert with a Moog synthesizer, and in 1966 he debuted on the record market with the Jean-Jacques Perry album The In Sound From Way Out. In 1969 Kingsley started his solo career with "Music to Moog By", which contained covers of Beatles, Beethoven or Simon and Garfunkel, and the famous Popcorn theme.

To this day in the year 2023 this song is still in my head and because of its repetitive rhythm, and when I want to joke with my wife I try to imitate this song with my tongue and mouth, she immediately recognises it and had already named it to me 30 years before. I think the song is very influential with many versions, and there is even one in particular by Jean Michel Jarre that is very good.

Space - Magic Fly.

In 1978 when I was 9 years old I saw a Jackie Chan film called Snake in the eagle's shadow, during the film there was a very spacey melody and although it felt like something catchy it didn't fit in with what the film was telling me.
The song was called Magic Fly, and that version I heard was not the original. There was a French group called Space who released it on their first album entitled Magic Fly in 1977.

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I don't know about you, but I think this video was seen many times by another band we all know: Daft Punk. I think this group influenced them in some way, besides enjoying the music, just look at that look.

This group was founded in Marseille in 1977 by Didier Marouani, a former piano student at the Munich and Paris conservatories, and musicians Roland Romanelli on keyboards, synthesizers, Joe Hammer on drums and percussion, and Jannick Top on synthesizers.

He was very successful in the Soviet Union, as well as in the United States he was one of the pioneers in what is called space disco music and precursors of electronic music. I understand that they have been working under other lineups of musicians until 2011.

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