Song Of The Day 9/23/2013: Amanda Lear - "Enigma (Give A Bit Of Mmh To Me)"

Sometimes when I'm reaching for ideas for Song Of The Day I just Google something off the top of my head and try to back into a selection. For today I simply entered "weird disco songs." I got a list of someone's ideas of the five weirdest disco videos that were ever released, and their top choice was Amanda Lear's "Enigma." However the YouTube link to the video led to a dead end (user deleted their account), so I searched for the song on YouTube itself, and got this. I'm pretty sure this is the video they were talking about.

Perhaps I should give some context, because I think you're going to need it: This is a clip from an Italian TV series called Stryx. It was six episodes and it was broadcast in Italy in 1978 during the height of the disco explosion. The show, from what I can glean, was a musical fantasy about life in Hell. The pseudo-Dantean Hell, not the Matt Groening strip. This was a variety show conducted from Tartarus itself, with a bunch of Dark Ages set pieces and various unsettling creatures. And since it took place during the golden age of disco, most of the singers who appeared on Stryx were disco singers. Grace Jones was on once.

And Amanda Lear was another. Lear was something of an "it" girl during the '60s. She was romantically linked to Rolling Stone Brian Jones, and is the subject of their song "Miss Amanda Jones." In addition, and this should speak volumes, she was a protégée of Salvador Dalí in the '60s. So this effort, with its inflatable, multiple life-saver shaped cells and a clowder of kittens who despite their stone faces still look like they were desperate for something else to do, might in fact be one of Lear's tamer works. All of this kind of overtakes the notion that she probably does the best Marlene Dietrich impression the gilded age of disco ever heard.

Google. The Web Is What You Make Of It, God help you.