The first entry here is a 10 inch I found at a garage sale. It caught my eye right away, the fellow on the cover gave me a feeling like he was really determined to walk down that road of revolution, but if he could, he would walk right over and kick my ass. So i bought it, the RED DETACHMENT OF WOMEN a ballet performed by the Peking Opera Troupe recorded by the China record company, 1972...now chinese opera is very strange to western ears, but quite enjoyable.
1 Red Detachment of Women - Side One (16:40)
Prologue: Escape from Tigers Maw
Scene One: Chang-Ching points out the road to revolution
2 Red Detachment of Women - Side Two (16:10)
Scene One: Road to Revolution
Scene Two: Ching-Hua tells of her grievances and joins the red army
Image: Cover
Next I have Toronto new wave artist BB GABOR, he passed away some time ago, but left us with some great cold war music. Recorded in 1979, on the defunked canadian label Anthem records. If you are ever in Toronto you can find his album in the 99 cent bins. Soviet jewellery was actually a top 10 hit in Toronto, a nice cold war propaganda new wave song! the b-side is my favorite.. MOSCOW DRUG CLUB, a "traditional russian sounding song" with cold war "comical" lyrics.
3 BB Gabor - Soviet Jewellery (2:38)
4 BB Gabor - Moscow Drug Club (4:26)
Image: Cover
Then we have PEE-WEE KING, a western swing 78 on RCA, "THE RED DECK OF CARDS", pure cold war propaganda music, it is a take on DECK OF CARDS, which was a country hit at the time, enjoy!
5 Pee-Wee King - Red Deck of Cards (2:59)
- Contributed by: Evil Pain Clown
"...Jewellery" is a great song, makes one wanna pogo...and "Metropolitan Life" is a nice tune, too. I've mentioned Gabor, and one of my other favorite Canadian new wave bands Teenage Head, in the blog before. Nice to see a couple of his songs posted.
Posted by: Dale Hazelton | October 09, 2007 at 09:33 AM
The Red Detachment of Women was one of the 8 model plays, the only plays allowed to be performed after the cultural revolution in China. We are all more familiar with the title "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" although Eno's music has nothing to do with the play. Yet you can see why he was attracted to these; the iconography is so bizarre and hallucinatory. For some demented reason I am reminded of those old viewmaster discs... Look around the web for those postcards from TTMBS and you'll see exactly what I mean, you lackey american running dogs!!!!
Posted by: K | October 09, 2007 at 10:37 AM
Great stuff. I hope that "defunked" (in reference to the Canadian label) was a witty pun (as in the removal of funk) for the defunct label.
"Red Deck of Cards" is phenomenal.
Posted by: Burch | October 09, 2007 at 02:52 PM
Yea for the new wave stuff from toronna! I miss my (cassette) copy of BB Gabor! Teenage Head! I always liked to think of them as Canada's ramones!
Posted by: Brian C. | October 09, 2007 at 04:51 PM
Good on you for putting up BB! So glad to see someone else out there who appreciates that album, but i just can't believe that you didn't post 'Lazer Love'!!!! The catchiest song EVER!!!!
Posted by: Cherie Birkin | October 09, 2007 at 05:20 PM
"the red detachment of women" was also featured, in a sort of reimagined, play-within-a-play form, in john adams' 1985 opera "nixon in china," which, if you've never heard it, is one of the few operatic masterpieces of the last 50 years or so.
Posted by: pea hicks | October 09, 2007 at 09:20 PM
Parslow.com has great pics from "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy." Also, the story is spelled out here. Thanks for sharing the great old opera, John! Fingers crossed that the Cantonese Opera House radio station will return to Shoutcast one of these days.
Posted by: Katya Oddio | October 09, 2007 at 09:30 PM
A collection of oversaturated Chinese postcards detailing the Glorious story of "Red Detachment" can be found at
http://www.lileks.com/institute/china
Now that I have the soundtrack, life is complete.
Posted by: Lileks | October 10, 2007 at 08:15 PM