Stereo Total- Total Pop           
(Available from Cherry Red)

So, I’m at the record store a month ago, flipping through the metal vinyl section, wondering if I’m actually gullible enough to let these crooks cheat me out of 16 bucks for a mangled, scuffed copy of the first Pretty Maids EP (I was not, by the way), when said cretins changed cd’s from whatever bullshit Velvet Underground rip-off they were listening to, to what sounded like a short circuiting Casio keyboard and an impossibly French sounding chick cooing in broken English about going to the Holiday Inn. It was one of the most crazily brilliant things I’ve heard in ages, so wrong it was perfectly right. The cd played on, and the twisted pop songs continued, sometimes in French, sometimes in German, sometimes in garbled English or even more garbled Japanese, most of the times all of ‘em at once. Filled with bleeps and gurgles and bare-bones garage rock, this was obviously the greatest pop record I had ever heard, and I had no idea what it was. I looked at the record store clerks- the bored, miserable looking fat goth chick, and the irony-dripping, beer-bellied hipster in the too-tight Witchery shirt- and decided that I wouldn’t ask these two for help if my guts were spilling out on the floor. I just paid them 3 bucks for the Spread Eagle record I found and split, the baby-speak refrain of “Let’s go to the Holiday Inn/ And, I will show you something” bouncing around in my head like a possibly obscene nursery rhyme. Oh, I’d find out who it was, and I wasn’t gonna need some pot smoking minimum wager with a chip on his shoulder to do it.

Thank Christ for the internet, because 2 seconds after googling “Holiday Inn French pop band”, I had the answer. Stereo Total. Thank him again for making me a rock writer, because a sweeping compilation of all their hits and misses, “Total Pop”, landed in mailbox a few weeks later. “Holiday Inn”, a bonafide hit in the UK, is the centerpiece of the comp, but there’s plenty of other amazing things here too, like a 45 second bee-buzzing version of Salt n’ Pepa’s “Push It”, and a raved-up “Get Down Tonight”, too. Stereo Total are a German prankster duo, but they very nearly turn into a real, world class powerpop band with the awesome cover of Errol Brown’s (?) “Heaven’s in the Backseat of my Cadillac” and the mesmerizing trance-pop of “Supercool”. Elsewhere, the minute long teenage crush-pop of “Ringo I Love You” is one of the most compulsively danceably little songs I’ve ever heard, and if this song was on a cassette, it would have snapped already from constant rewinding. Significantly, it’s counterpart, “I LoveYou Ono” is noisier, and not nearly as much fun- just like in real life. Lots of the songs are sung in French, or a random hodge-podge of Euro-tongues, but whatever voice she chooses to chirp in, Francoise Cactus is such a playful, cryptic diva that it really doesn’t matter. Aided and abetted by one Brezel Goring on everything thing else, these two are crafting a brave new world of funny, sexy, international electro pop, and when Scottish ‘folktronic’ superstar Momus (who compiled this collection) claims that Stereo Total are “The greatest pop group in the world”, I am not arguing with the cat. “Total Pop” is utterly charming, and completely irresistible, even to a rock and roll burnout like me. I anxiously await their inevitable fuzz-disco Esperanto album.