RE: (TV) Unbelievable!

[leif joley <leifjoley@hotmail.com>]

I doubt this theory. The similarities between "Leve incesten" (which means
"Long live the incest") and "Breakin' in My Heart" are not over-whelming, at
least not to my ears, and the chronology makes it impossible to believe that
Verlaine would have been exposed to Zacharias' song. "Breakin' in My Heart"
was a Television song, dated back to 1975, if not earlier, whereas Zacharias'
records in Swedish were both released in 1975 -- in Sweden. Released might be
a too strong word in this context, since they were not only obscure but
ultra-underground. Believe me, I'm a Swede myself, born in '62, so I recall
this -- although vaguely because if anything, this was hushed-down
entertainment at the time. It was mainly an affair for enthusiasts of porn and
teen boys who thought this was daring and exciting. Ordinary consumers of
music were occupied with listening to either ABBA or their nemesises, the
"progressive" movement, the latter being an off-spring of the flower-power era
which then became more and more leftist. The clash between these two opposites
culminated around 1975, when ABBA had won the Eurovision Song Contest and
Sweden had to arrange this expensive show and then, in 1976, choosed not to
participate in it. In that climate, no sane person cared about Tom Zacharias.
Americans, generally even more depraved than Swedes, might have been an option
for Zacharias; at least the potential audience was bigger. But considering
that the Swedish records were out in porn-shops in '75 and the ill-fated U.S.
version was ready that year or the year after, and then never was released in
America, the only chance that Verlaine wrote "Breakin' in My Heart" after
being inspired by the Zacharias song would be if the two men knew each other
and Zacharias played his tune in Verlaine's presence. There's no record of
Verlaine visiting Sweden before 1977, though, so this possibility seems
farfetched.



Listening to Zacharias today, more than 30 years since the previous time, is
no rewarding experience. Life seems to be too short to start looking for the
English versions of the songs, but in Swedish, they are execrable. Who in his
or her right mind would want to listen to this? There might be some musical
qualities, but who would notice with lyrics like that? Perhaps people who once
saw, and approved of, "Freddie got fingered". This is in the same vein. Noone
should think about this as some kind of hidden gem. In Sweden, Zacharias is
totally forgotten. The few who remembers him probably do so more because he
once -- some ten or fifteen or twenty years ago -- participated in the
televised national enema-championship. It was not a high-point for commercial
Swedish television.



Leif J, Sweden






> Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:05:25 -0700
> From: jesseh58@yahoo.com
> Subject: (TV) Unbelievable!
> To: tv@obbard.com
>
> So the other day I'm in Repo Records on South Street here in Philly
(http://www.reporecords.com/) and I hear coming out of the speakers what
sounds like a bizarre foreign-language cover of "Breakin' in My Heart." So I
ask the clerk whether that's indeed what it is. She says, no, I don't think so
- this is by Tom Zacharias, and it's a reissue of "Belinda," an obscure
Swedish record of mostly pornographic songs from sometime in the fairly early
1970s. She shows me the CD cover, and sure enough that's what it appears to
be. She tells me the song is track 15, "Leve Incesten." I don't speak Swedish,
but I think I have some idea what the general subject of the song is.
>
> Today I Googled the record. It's on the Swedish label Sublminal Sounds!
(http://tinyurl.com/ct62v2), available in the US from Anthology Recordings
(http://tinyurl.com/anxdt7). You can listen to the track - and the rest of the
record - at http://tinyurl.com/detcsz. It doesn't start out sounding much like
"Breakin' in My Heart," but sometime around 1:30 the song changes and the
resemblance becomes pretty striking, to my ears. Not just the basic riff -
which is, after all, pretty simple - but the tempo and something about the
approach to the guitar soloing, though the latter is not as delicate as Tom's
and far from note-for-note identical. Listen and let me know what you think!
>
> So now I find myself wondering if Tom more or less stole "Breakin' in My
Heart" from this obscene obscurity. On the one hand, it that's the case, I'm
disappointed - I'd like to give him full credit for a song I've loved since
its release. On the other hand, somehow it seems like Tom to know about an
album for which ads were placed, according the Subliminal Sounds! site, "in
both Screw magazine and Mayfair." I can't remember specific quotes, but I seem
to recall from interviews that Tom gets a kick out of rather "outside"
recordings. I was talking the other week about Tom with Jay Schwartz, who runs
the Secret Cinema film series (http://www.thesecretcinema.com/) here - this
was after a Secret Cinema show of Scopitone films
(http://www.thesecretcinema.com/recent.htm) - and he mentioned having seen Tom
at WFMU's Record Fairs.
>
> - Jesse
> --------------
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