birth control and gina x performance

it wouldn't be the worst thing i've ever done, but i feel like this starting to become like James Burke's Connections. If you've never seen it (it's BBC show) or read it (for a while he was writing something for Scientific American) it involves him drawing a thread of connections between historical thinkers and events and persons, starting with one to seemingly take a random course of connections only to lead back to the first person in the end. Connecting different, superficially disparate musicians and thinkers it was i've done in a couple of posts so far. Downtown no-wave to hip-hop to mancunian electro etc. And so I do it again.

This time is a little different because I haven't actually heard the performer I'm starting with, Gina X Performance. Apparently she recorded, or properly they, a classic of early synth-dancey-electro which electroclash types still dig. The tracks No-GDM and Nice Mover fit in nicely with the first Soft Cell or DAF or other Mute folks. Obscure-ish dancefloor smashs. The intersting part is that the producer Zeus B. Held/music guy behind the act started out as the keyboardist of non-canonized kraut-rock/boogie-rock band Birth Control, though he joined the band right as they went down hill and was not on their high point album/song HooDoo Man/Gamma Ray, which I recently tracked down. Apparently Gamma Ray can still be found as a obscure dance-floor filler today.

And the whole story reminds me of the Ike Yard, DCC guy who also recorded the seminal NYC electro hit 'the Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight'. Similar story, similar result, similar people still digging it today. Who knew?