Novo Rock (2009)

The nagging mysteries of 69 and Novo Rock started for me with "Rock'n Latex," which showed up one day in my Top 40 playlist on Napster (me there squinting in the bright new world of streaming music). I stock the playlist from a number of different sources, plundering blogs, Billboard lists, and social media, usually in a binging kind of way so I often forget what source gave me which songs as I digest them over the weeks and even months by shuffle, an hour or two every day. I thought "Rock'n Latex," which is credited on Napster to Carl Craig with a release date of 2017, came from one of those places. But very occasionally, I go into the wilds of Napster personal playlists, and I think now that's where "Rock'n Latex" must have come from. I loved it right away and kept loving it. The band is called 69, and even though Detroit techno key figure Carl Craig does have a side project called 69, this is not it. This 69 is French and somewhere I got the impression it is just two people—maybe the album cover? The Vimeo video? Information on the internet is scant. The release date appears to be 2009 or 2010, not 2017. Yet though it is incredibly obscure in this day and age (or perhaps because, though I hate to think it) I am sold all the way. It reminds me of when Alan Vega of Suicide took on rockabilly on his first solo album, in 1981, and it also reminds me of another kooky rock 'n' roll novelty project in Music for Parties by the Silicon Teens, and in still other ways it's like Ultravox circa Ha!-Ha!-Ha! You can see from song titles such as "Flexy Body," "Dominatrix," or indeed "Rock'n Latex" that there are kinky sexy-naughty preoccupations harking to sectors of glam such as Lou Reed's Transformer (also note there is an ostentatious letter X in every damn one of their song titles). But the attack of guitar and keyboard is bouncy-brite at the same time, dare I say bubblegum. Inevitably, perhaps because they are French, they sound like Plastic Bertrand and "Ca Plane Pour Moi" to me too, in terms of the primitive rock 'n' roll aesthetic. "Rock'n Latex" remains my favorite, perhaps for sentimental reasons. The guitar chords are clanging muted, the yelpy vocal recorded suffocatingly tight with the highs shaved off, the keyboard bottom insistent, and the whole thing propulsive to the max. There's cowbell and even a guitar solo, light and melodic as it is robotic, before it all goes whirling off into a brief psychedelic episode. Poppers, I'm sure. The basic idea is that the people are dressed in latex. All that in 3:05. The intended hit was more likely the title song, which opens the album and actually has videos on YouTube and elsewhere. This song has more of a stomping Glimmer Twins vibe, prowling and tiptoeing all faux honky-tonk with a geeky staccato approach, until the thing opens up big to the tune of "Chinese Rock"—2:33. How did this ever miss?