warehouse find!! To be honest the press release for this 12-inch is so epic that the best thing to do would be just to quote it in full. With full record geek's enthusiasm it details the cratedigger's journey that befell Mike Simonetti and Johnny Jewel and lead them to no less than four versions of "Hollywood Seven." As a result, Simonetti and Jewel take the artist's slot on this one not only for their extended edit of the original track but for their digging chops in unearthing a little dusty, dollar-disco diamond. It seems like there's weird cover versions of this all over the world. One surfaced in Australia. Another at a North Portland rummage sale. Another, sung in German, was found by Jewel in San Diego, "outside of a record store in an alley behind a pharmacy," which is how you know these guys are hardcore: they are literally looking for records in the alley outside the record store.
The original, a lynchpin of the duo's lauded Albuterol mix, is an immensely catchy trash-disco delight, with over-the-top everything: urgent horns, handclaps, scratchy guitar, rousing melody and an unbeatable soap opera storyline that revels in the clichés of stardom dreams born and broken in California. With its brutal, near-ridiculous melodrama, I could imagine Rainer Fassbinder spinning it.
The cover versions are a cabinet of wonders, or hotel mini-bar of wonders, unto themselves. The German version plucks the riff from Clapton's "Layla," replaces the horns with bright-ass synths and retells the tale in Dietrich deadpan, suddenly conjuring not only smoky Berlin cabaret but traditional German schlager-schmaltz. The "Piano" and "Ballad" versions are close kin, both slowing the tempo and upping the pathos with that world-weary feeling you only get in overwrought '70s rock.
| A | Alides Hidding - Hollywood Seven (Disconet Dilemma) |
| B1 | Juliane Werding - Hollywood Seven (German Version) |
| B2 | Alexander Love - Hollywood Seven (Piano Version) |
| B3 | Jon English (3) - Hollywood Seven (Ballad Version) |
