Face it: only douchebags still believe the typical music soundtracks of 1970's porn films are "classic." Although, since only a douchebag would watch enough actual pornography to allow himself (or herself) to eventually arrive at such a conclusion, perhaps that particular revelation is a moot one. Nevertheless, an example: I was recently watching yet another John Holmes "classic" mid-70's porn film (not for any unseemly reason. Let's just say I was...masturbating) and as soon as the screeching, thin, artless fake-funk soundtrack began to mask the fake shrieks and moans, I had to wince. It was like an un-orgasm for my ears. How did the myth that this abominable 70's music represents some sort of cultural climax come to be? Why is it still perpetuated? Was 60's porn music any good? Is 80's porn music any better? 90's porn music? 00's porn music? Do porn movies of the 00's even have music anymore?
Unsatisfied, I decided to ask the opinion of notorious guerrilla pornographer and author Sam Benjamin, who possesses a vast, throbbing brain filled with the where/when/who/why of most porn films from the second half of the 20th century, and on, and on. He's has suffered hard trench experience as an actual pornographer, pro-porn film cameraman, agency talent-scout and general entrepreneur in the brightly colored dark void that was and is the Los Angeles pornography underworld. Sam recently wrote a book about his adventures, called Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer.
According to Sam, 80's porn video music is far superior to 70's porn film music, even though it's actually quite worse. It all has to do with context. Read on...and stick around to the end, he's brought a few audio clips for your enjoyment.
Mark: So you think the opinion that 70's porn music is the "peak" of the genre is a myth?
Sam: Great to be here. Thanks for having me on your show. Yes. 70's porn music sounds like a high-school band performing a soundtrack to a disco musical that should have never existed -- so bad, it's bad. If you took the worst genre in the history of contemporary American music (funk-disco -- narrowly edging out big-pants trance for sheer lack of imagination) and paid a group of mustachioed degenerates sixty bucks apiece to "jam" for a couple of hours so you could give your badly-lit, badly-shot, ill-conceived, glorified stag film the non-diegetic musical punch it didn't need in the first place, you'd end up with typical 70's porn music. And yes, that's exactly what happened.
Movie-music is about establishing mood. And the mood established in your typical 1970's porno film was what I like to call "corduroy bop" -- a cheesy, sleaze bag, cornball vintage that's amusing once, but insufferable afterwards. I particularly hate how the words "bow-chicka bow-bow" have become synonymous for "let's get it on" in our contemporary culture.
Although, 70's porn music isn't a failure because it's bad. All aspects of porn, from the faked orgasms to the terrifically sub-literate scripts in pornography have always been "bad." 70's porn music fails because it doesn't match the visual tatteredness of its movies. Directors were working with film in the 1970's -- occasionally 35 mm, but for the most part 16 mm reversal -- blotchy, grainy, and orangey, shot by guys for whom keeping in focus and avoiding giant patches of shadow were massive accomplishments. The dialoge was often dubbed in later, like a terrible Italian horror movie, or just tossed off in a "one take is for damn sure all you get, Johnny!" way. These films were mysterious, myopic, bastard children of the 1970's, and an ideal porno soundtrack would have been one part Frank Zappa at his most satirical, two parts Jello Biafra at his most nasal, three parts Gil-Scott Heron at his most seductively negroid, and twelve parts Li'l Blind Stevie Wonder taking a naked shower with R. Crumb and Al Goldstein at the same time.
70's porn music could have invoked all that was dead and dying and wrong with the "Me" decade: the slow stagnating crumble of the hippie movement, the crushing depression that was Yankee baseball and Kissinger's violently engineered overthrow of Socialist Chile, the feathered weirdness of Joni Mitchell going down on Jimmie "Dyn-o-mite!" Walker, the rise of DDT, black power, Reggie Jackson, leisure suits, feminism, and the quiet rise of the corporate Reich. Instead, you just got leisure suits. Porn-disco failed to ironicize -- or even complement -- what were at that time the first fledgling acts of public copulation that we had been forced to deal with on a grand scale in quite some time.
Mark: Okay, sounds good. So what do you like about 80's porn music?
Sam: 80's porn music reeks of repetition, stupidity, loneliness, unoriginality, and unrelenting sadness -- and that's a great thing. 80's soundtracks actually speak to the visceral experience of masturbation itself: it's like the dull, throbbing death-beat of your heart in your head as you forsake real life and real partners for yet another unhealthy, scared wank. 70's porn music is busy; conversely, 80's porn music is solitary. The advent of the analog synth meant that one lonely loser could score your whole movie for you, and guess what: that's precisely what happened. With the exception of anomalies like Greg Dark's 1984 masterpiece New Wave Hookers (a precursor to the alt-porn movement), by the middle of the decade you had almost no live accompaniment at all in porn.
The 1980's ushered in Video Sex, but it was also the age of the synthesizer; we shouldn't forget that. The fuckings of superstars Randy Spears, Tom Byron and Peter North (and the women! That aggressively coked-up, highly-arobicized, poison-silicon-betitted clan!) were set to the strangest of keyboard sounds. To me, the retarded, computer-generated loopings actually work: complimenting videotape's bleary, vacant resolution to perfection. Synth-sound created a production value that is Lo-Fi at its very best. It provided an ambiance that underscored the abject, majestic cheapness of pornography -- its poverty of connection, of hope.
It's amazing the way that technology has truly been the deciding factor when it comes to the aesthetics of porno. Nowadays, porn has got the stain of the internet all over it: it brings with it a tinge of computer-screen radiation, an insane amount of procrastination-guilt, and the taste of multifarious and multi-media conquest (i.e., having three or four clips playing at the same time and having a wank to all of them simultaneously. Or maybe that's just me.)
But back in the 80's, it was Pac-Man, conspicuous consumption, "gadgets" like answering machines, Colecovision, and Betamax. And porn rose to the immediate occasion, both in music and vision, and emphasized all that was sad and plastic and hopeless in our culture.
The upshot -- or downturn, depending on how you look at it -- is that bonky synthesizer 80's porn music pretty much killed off the porn music genre. Oh, sure, it hung tight for a while; big-budget 1980's pornos pushed their resources toward stupid movie parodies for the most part, as they made the awkward transition from film to Vivid Video, and those guys needed dumb scores by the truckload. But the synth revolution gave birth to Gonzo, the hand-held, up-skirt, New Wave-style of a thousand newly independent pornographers, and Gonzo truly took advantage of the new and cheaper medium, the hand-held video camera. The new, smaller, and easily-focusable cameras took you up close and personal with the medium's newest stars, with no fear of wasting film or breaking the fourth wall. And while there continued to be music in Gonzo (there will always be porn music for people who like to throw in a beat when the action devolves into pure, animal rutting), but the music lacks the dumb grandeur of previous times, when it was meant to underscore a dramatic plot point or mise-en-scene. The fourth wall began to get broken the day consumable pornography was created, that's the thing. But people only started taking advantage of that, only started doing it right, in the 80's, when they began to use video and lonely-sad-man soundtracks.
Mark: Hmm...interesting. Okay Sam, I understand you brought a few clips? [non-music sounds on these clips definitely NSFW!]
Sam: Yes Mark, I did. To get us started, here's a typical 80's porn soundtrack. Robotic, but robust. Sounds pretty good, right?
Nasty 80's
But let's dig deeper. Check out this one from a classic 80's Kay Parker video. It's decidedly 80's, but it sounds like Trevor Horn went into a coma while at the mixing board. Also note the music's sound quality in comparison to the actor's voices (this is digitized from a 1st generation video):
Kay Parker 80's
Check out this audio clip from a domestic kitchen scene in a mid-80's video. I'm sure Kraftwerk aren't proud. Again, note the quality of the music recording in relation to the actors (I also think the accidental phone ringing in the background is a nice touch).
Milky Tit Fuck 80's
Listen to the music from one of Nina Hartley 80's videos. It sounds like the worst possible mash-up of Vangelis' Chariots of Fire and Brian Eno's Music For Airports...set to a three-way. Have you ever heard anything so bleak and desolate?
Nina Hartley 80's
I do believe Rinse Dream's (aka Stephen Sayadian) great movie Nightdreams was the only porn movie to officially feature a top 100 hit - that being Wall of Voodoo's Johnny Cash cover Ring of Fire.
Great flick that's worth checking out.
He also made the wonderfully weird Cafe Flesh and the cheesy, Dada porn attempts Party Doll A Go Go and sequels.
Posted by: DJ ManRich | June 22, 2009 at 03:51 PM
one of my fave tapes from my dad's closet whilst growing up in the eighties featured an instrumental ripoff of Billy idol's white wedding, which surprised me even then, and I appreciate the irony now.
Posted by: doomsday fartshadow | June 22, 2009 at 03:59 PM
My all time favorite, with a soundtrack chock full of traditional sailor ditties, is "Captain Lust". Made sometime back in the mid to late 70s. Hard to find, but it's still available.
Posted by: The Captain | June 22, 2009 at 04:39 PM
I always thought the genre became the radio format called "Smooth Jazz"
Posted by: Larry In Seattle | June 22, 2009 at 04:45 PM
Reminds of a gay porn from the 70s called "Greenhorns" where one cowboy pushed away his rain slicker to reveal a big boner, and as the second cowboy went to it . . . the soundtrack went to John Fahey's "Some Summer Day." Forgot to see if they credited him at the end.
Posted by: Jaylefus | June 22, 2009 at 07:19 PM
Imagine my surprise at the extinct porno DRIVE-IN in dallas that the movie we were watching featured the theme to the People's Court.
Posted by: carrie nation | June 22, 2009 at 07:32 PM
people's court! great!!! it's repetitive and driving and a little funky. it makes sense. though there is a track in debbie does dallas that sounds vaguely like the people's court theme, it has nearly the same 9 note riff- da dun dun DUN...da dun dun DUN dun...
the debbie soundtrack is great all around and one of the few actual 70's bow chicka wow-wow type of funky soundtracks.
Posted by: doomsday fartshadow | June 22, 2009 at 07:48 PM
I think the answer to why 'Bow-Chika-Wow-Wow' has entered into the common pop patois is simple: It's far enough in the past that its meaning has become a safe, politically neutralized, post-rebel reference- not unlike the Metalhead's de-fanged 'Devil Horns' hand sign and the Mohawk.
Posted by: Mars | June 22, 2009 at 10:23 PM
It is rumored that Rinse Dream's (quite excellent) soundtracks were done by Mitch Froom under a psydeonym.
Posted by: Hecubot | June 22, 2009 at 10:28 PM
The delightfulness of this article is matched by the knowledgeability conveyed in the comments. WFMU never disappoints.
Posted by: M Munro | June 23, 2009 at 01:07 AM
The Peoples' Court music was during a disco scene in the Opening of Misty Beethoven, if I recall correctly. I cracked up when I heard it.
Posted by: Rev. Foley | June 23, 2009 at 01:20 AM
a fascinating look at music
Posted by: sir jorge | June 23, 2009 at 09:04 AM
Hercubot: it wasn't a pseudonym. Mitchell Froom's name is right there on "The Key of Cool," the soundtrack to "Cafe Flesh" that came out on Slash Records. (Still got my vinyl copy). Hey, he didn't know he'd be an A-list producer - he was a kid!
Posted by: Mr Fab | June 23, 2009 at 12:27 PM
As soon as I clicked on the sound for the first example, it immediately crashed Firefox. Score another one for the Taste-Police.
Posted by: Andy in Berlin | June 24, 2009 at 04:17 AM
I also saw a 70's era porno that utilized the People's Court theme. Watching some folks bumping their unshaved uglies to the Judge Wopner theme was a hoot.
Posted by: Fernando Cruz | June 24, 2009 at 10:53 AM
The Greatest 70's porn soundtrack in my estimation was Teenage Cruisers which featured music from Ron Wiesers stable of starsat Rollin Rock Records which included the Blasters, Johnny Legend, Colin Winski, Jackie Lee Cochran and host of other west coast rockabilly hipsters. Seeing John Holmes in action to a rockabilly beat is something to reckon with. Long Live Nina The Nuthouse Nympho!
Posted by: Red Neckerson | June 24, 2009 at 05:10 PM
FYI: Sam Benjamin has created a fabulous extended/expanded version of our interview about 70's/80's porn soundtracks at his website, here:
http://www.ivyleaguepornographer.com/archives/568
Posted by: Mark Allen | June 24, 2009 at 07:23 PM
THANKS YOU
Posted by: mcF | June 25, 2009 at 11:52 AM
Are those last too stills from Private Nurses? If so that was the first porn I ever saw.
Posted by: larry | June 26, 2009 at 12:39 AM
Wall of Voodoo got their start doing porn soundtracks.
Posted by: Fake Name | June 26, 2009 at 08:38 PM
@Carrie nation - People's Court theme is in the middle of a disco orgy in Barbara Broadcast. I was watching it with a lady and we were not really watching at the moment but then we both stopped what we were doing and looked up. "HUH?!?"
Red Nickerson - Teenage Cruisers does have a great soundtrack. It was directed by wrestling manager Johnny Legend and is a wild, anarchic slop of a movie with spliced in short silent loops of some porn, but most of it being comedic bits until the end devolves into darkness.
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Posted by: Account Deleted | August 03, 2009 at 02:13 AM
Finally some decent background for my sexblog on the bow-chicka-wow-wow phenomena. Thank God it was relatively short lived, tho it seems bad funk never truly dies, just multiplies...
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SUCCESSFUL PHONE SEX TIPS
Means that setting your vocal tones pacing and dirty chat phrases must reimburse for this lack through igniting your man’s fantasy – replacing what’s physically unavailable with imaginative projection of what is possible. Fortunately, since a man’s fantasy can run itself and conjures up only his upmost sexual desires, he will picture you as the fantasy girl of his dreams as long as you can spark off his fantasy.
Below are a few things that you can focus on when talking dirty on the phone to your man, that will inspire the imagination of his fantasies:
1) SETTING THE SCENE - When starting to talk dirty on the phone, set the scene and mental picture of where you are and what you’re doing. And if you then ask him what he’s doing, it will likely lead him to respond with the same question back. You can reply with something like “Oh, I’m just laying around in my silky black lingerie all by myself, thinking about you and how hot you make me…”
This type of descriptive dirty talk will trigger his imagination to take in the scene and scenario looks like. Once the stage is set in his fantasy, you can move on too...
2) GET THE “Go” - Talking dirty on the phone obviously leads to mutual masturbation. But before you get all hot and heavy with your dirty talk, make sure to know if that is possible for the both of you to do at that moment. Since you already asked what he was doing – right now – you will have an idea if masturbation is even possible on his end. If it’s not, you might want to save your phone sex for another time.
If you DO “get the go” you can take your dirty talk to the next level. Saying something like “Oh my god, I’ve been so horny all day I can’t stop touching myself!” in a shy and innocent manor, will add to his fantasy.
3) DO THE DEED - Once your dirty talk has now set the stage and gotten the green light, it’s time to get down to talking dirty on the phone and getting real sexual. Your dirty talk thus far will given him a mental image that you now get to control in his mind. He will be thinking about you looking hot and masturbating, the ideal time to ask “Do you like when I touch myself for you?” this will obviously be “yes.” You can then follow up with “Good because I’m touching and stroking myself right now”. This will be music to his ears.
If you’re masturbating, he will start as well. Ask him if he’s touching himself, or just tell him that he does. This is where your real dirty phone sex starts to escalate into something super hot and heavy for both of you. Then start talking dirty to your man in the way you would normally. His masturbation replaces your touch, his fantasy replaces your presence, and your voice will be in total control of it all.
Learning how to talk dirty to your man on the phone means understanding how your dirty talk affects him while the two of you are apart. If you follow these tips you will find it much easier to talk dirty on the phone as you would talk dirty in real life. It’s just a matter of learning how to relax and talk dirty to your man by stimulating his fantasy mind.
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Posted by: Phone Sexxx | November 08, 2009 at 08:43 AM