“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is Billy McKloski from Palm Springs, reporting for NBC Sports of America
Twenty seconds to the start of the thirty-first Formula race on a hot, sunny afternoon here in California…”
Neve will I forget the scorching summer of 2011, one of the hottest on record in Colorado. That was the last year I was still living in a beautiful vintage building on Capitol Hill in the heart of Denver, as things were beginning to take a turn for the worse and the city was headed down the tubes. I could feel the changes around me, as the atmosphere on the streets was detectably less festive – less fun – than it had been in years prior: the recession from the 2008 crash and its aftermath had taken hold by then, and people across the land were hurting. I was no exception.
Coming home from work that summer to a place without air-conditioning (in years prior I had never needed it) there was a struggle to keep cool, and late night glasses of sugary absinthe made with icy water helped mellow out the atmosphere. This was the year that I rediscovered a band from the past that I had always been peripherally aware of but had never really explored, and that band’s unique music has, ever since, been the score for my hot summer nights at home. And that band was…
To many North Americans, Yello’s career began and ended in the 80’s with their biggest hit “Oh Yeah,” the one track that everyone knows thanks to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The real story is infinitely deeper and more interesting: Yello have in fact been making music for nearly 50 years! First formed back in 1978, they released their first album, Solid Pleasure, in 1980. Their most Recent? Point, released in 2020! Now that, dear readers, is staying power!
The band’s history is cosmically weird: formed in Switzerland by sound technicians and “tape men” Boris Blank and Carlos Perón, the group got off the ground with the addition of vocalist Dieter Meier, who’s resume reads like that of a Bond villain: the playboy son of a multi-millionaire banker, a professional gambler, golfer, semi-pro chess player, and savvy investor, Meier was also an artist and a filmmaker. Since Peron left the band in 1983 never to return, Meier and Blank have soldiered on as a duo ever since, releasing an album every few years to a total of 14, with nearly countless singles, remixes, videos, side projects, promotional pieces, and numerous other performance art curiosities for good measure, and they have also worked with many famous musicians and guest vocalists through the years. Though few music fans have ever even heard of them, their influence on modem music is far and wide!
This combination of obscurity and eccentricity is what makes the band so cool! They’re utterly unlike anyone else. Blending suave Euro-electronic rhythms with a wink of absurdist humor, they crafted a sound that’s equal parts avant-garde, cinematic, and downright funky. Their music thrives in contradiction—robotic yet sensual, minimalist yet lush, catchy but weird as hell. Boris Blank’s meticulous sound design builds surreal sonic worlds, while Meier’s deadpan vocals add cryptic charisma, often sounding like a secret agent reciting beat poetry in a smoke-filled lounge. Classic tracks like “Call It Love,” “Vicious Games,” “Drive/Driven,” and “The Rhythm Divine,” to name just a handful of my faves, are all the proof you need of this!
This got me to thinking… I can’t just listen to one band all summer! My winter playlists are miles long with hundreds of artists and thousands of songs, but what else is out there that will fit the bill for hot sultry summer nights? What else goes with Absinthe and gasoline? What other band sounds like this?
Lounge music is an obvious fit, such as the type personified by Martin Denny and many others so notably collected by the Rhino Records “Ultra Lounge” series of CDs, and its modern practitioners like Combustible Edison. But lounge isn’t quite enough; I need something a little more offbeat than that, something a little more… weird.
Enter “THE DARK LOUNGE”
Now if you’ve even bothered to read this far, you’ve probably thought this is starting to read a lot like that post about “Jesus Built My Hot Rod” and Wiseblood from back in early March, and you may be shaking your head going: “What does any of this have to do with Thunderjets?” Well dear readers, let me welcome you to Drag City After Dark, and a look at how Wardglenn changes a little at night. I’m coining a new phrase today, kidz, one that I’m certain has never ever been used before, EVAR! I’m making it up right now, so I get credit for it, see? On hot summer nights, the noise and fumes from the track mix with the cigarette smoke and the Four Roses bourbon to turn the businesses along Bear Valley Road and even the VIP grandstands of the track itself into the DARK LOUNGE! Think of it as an adult playground for gearheads looking for a buzz when they’re off the track!
Dark Lounge is:
– Yello’s “Desire”
– Art of Noise’s “Moments in Love”
– Hooverphonic’s “Eden”
– Portishead on quaaludes
– Barry Adamson scoring a cabaret where everyone’s pretending not to know each other
And who else? Here’s what I’ve come up with so far…
- Cibbo Matto
- Leonard Cohen
- David Lynch & Thought Gang
- Grinderman (A Nick Cave side project)
- Tuxedomoon
and rounding out this list, a band I’ve been into for years and speaks to me most in the summer…
- Ladytron
How’s that for a good start? Got your motor runnin?”
🥃 The Dark Lounge Manifesto
A Statement for the Cool, the Crooked, and the Beautifully Bored
I. This is music for the mirror.
Not the one you look into to check your hair.
The other one—the one behind the bar.
The one that shows you who you really are after your third drink.
II. Dark Lounge is not chill.
It slinks.
It prowls.
It whispers sweet somethings in languages you don’t speak.
III. The beat doesn’t drop: It slides.
A slow descent.
Like a cocktail olive settling at the bottom of a glass you didn’t order.
Like velvet drapes in a room no one leaves.
IV. Lyrical themes may include:
- Love that never happened
- Cities that don’t exist
- The moment before the crime
- Nightclubs on the ocean floor
- Dancers made of smoke
- Regret in a suit
V. Voices should be whispered, crooned, or intoned.
Auto-tune is an intruder.
Anger is gauche.
We speak in riddles here.
If someone shouts, they get escorted out—gently, but permanently.
VI. Instrumentation may involve:
- Rhodes pianos
- Flanged guitars
- Fake strings
- Real tape hiss
- Reverb that smells like old perfume
- Synths with European passports
- The ghost of a saxophone that died in 1982
VII. Influences include:
- Yello (the prophets)
- Art of Noise (the technicians)
- David Lynch & Thought Gang (the oracles)
- Hooverphonic, Portishead, Barry Adamson (the priests)
- Morcheeba & Sneaker Pimps (the dreamers)
- Tuxedomoon (the architects)
VIII. Dark Lounge is best heard…
- In a red room
- After 11:00 PM
- With a drink that burns a little
- Alone, or with someone you used to love
- While it rains—but not outside. Inside.
IX. It is a mood, not a movement.
No merch. No festival.
Just the feeling that you’re not supposed to be here, but you’ve been here before.
And now, back to the heart of the matter: Drag City Raceway! As always, let’s go to the track!
🏁💄Drag City Nights: The Velvet Trackside Tapes
- After the engines cool and the sun drops behind the bleachers, the track belongs to a different kind of crowd.
- The VIP lounge over Pit Row turns the lights low.
- Someone’s spinning Yello’s “Get On” on vinyl through weathered Altec Lansing monitors.
- There’s a man in a white racing suit who hasn’t spoken all night—he’s been watching the door.
- No one remembers inviting Shirley Bassey, but there she is; who knew she was a racing enthusiast?
- Behind the dragstrip, someone’s mixing drinks with ice stolen from the medical tent.
- And down by the garage bays… someone’s playing “Grinderman” on a boombox like it’s a dare.
In other words: Dark Lounge might not be part of the daytime Drag City canon—but it’s definitely what plays after the gates are locked and the moon is up.
It’s the after-party, the backroom, the Track Manager’s private tape stash.
The Race is Ended for the night, but the music is just getting started! Pour yourself a drink and one for your lady too, and maybe buy a round for your favorite driver and his mechanic!
Let me know if you’d like me to craft a short “Drag City Nights” story vignette around this vibe, dear readers! Could be a standalone epilogue… or the start of a very strange sub-series!
And with that, you now have the prologue to our new series of story posts! The first official “Lorelei” chapter drops next week, so stay tuned!
