dinsdag 4 januari 2011

ELECTRIC BOOGIEMEN; another commercially driven fad

Sorry boys and girls....unfortunately another example of media culture-leeches jumpin' on the whole hip hop bandwagon in the early '80's. Just like with MASTER GENIUS (see my 1st post), this was a Dutch production that got released like a nanosecond after the release of US motion picture "Breakin'" (which itself is a commercial rape of what was going down in L.A. at that time hip hop wise).

In 1983 a Dutch songwriter called Piet Souer and a famous Dutch producer called Hans van Hemert put together a track called "Breakdancing" (what's in a title ey?) and used a b-boy crew called "ELECTRIC BOOGIEMEN" for the recordcover and the video (more info on this crew is appreciated). The track is basically soul disco stuff.....pretty middle of the road dance music.

The artwork in the back is by famous Amsterdam
street artist HUGO KAAGMAN.


The track was a minor succes in Holland but sold an acceptable amount of copies in Germany (you gotta love the neighbour's taste in music, jeez...).

The video is kinda fun though...as it portrays some decent b-boying by the Boogiemen, especially considering this is 1983 y'all! Check it:



In 1984 the boys returned with another 7" called "L-i-n-e u-p" which had even less in common with b-boy music. They dropped the "Electric" part of their name (makes sense to me!) but the cover still portrays the crew kinda b-boy like. If you happen to find this record in a bargain crate for minor change....leave it alone.


Why devote a post to these releases you ask? Well...as you know history ain't always laughter and partyhats is it? God knows Dutch hip hop history ain't! I'm off slamming my "Breakin'" soundtrack to pieces.....no sweat cause I got "Reckless" on 12".....haha.

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