For many years now (mostly thanks to listening to RTR FM in the early 90’s) I’ve been vaguely aware of a band called Genghis Khan. I figured (based on the accents in the few songs of their’s that I’d heard) that they were German, and I knew that they’d done covers of both that old Moscow! Moscow! song and Europe’s The Final Countdown. Today, after not thinking about them at all for ages I woke up with Moscow! Moscow! in my head and decided out of idle curiosity to see what I could find out about them online.
Well.
Turns out that my ear for accents was correct – they were German. But on just about every other point I was completely wrong. They weren’t Genghis Khan, they were Dschinghis Khan (which is admittedly German for Genghis Khan, but we should still strive for linguistic accuracy). And far from being a late 80’s, slightly industrial group doing ironic covers of 80’s hits (as I somehow managed to conclude) they were a full on, silk wearing, late 70’s/early 80’s disco group who competed in Eurovision! And they didn’t cover Moskau, they wrote it!
They’ve also been a bit of an internet meme lately that I’ve somehow managed to completely miss – unless psychically tunning into it during my sleep counts – so talking about them on my blog like this is no doubt so yesterday, but I don’t care, because they rock! (In a severely campy and naff seventies disco way, naturally 🙂
You can witness the wonder that is Dschinghis Khan thanks to YouTube which has videos of two of their biggest hits…
Moskau is definately the better song of the two (although Dschinghis is not without its charms). Things to watch out for in the clip include the Genghis character nochalanty wandering off stage to prepare for his rather unimpressive re-entrance later on (0:53), crazy seventies moustache action! (1:04 to 1:20), Henriette Heichel’s (the one in red) startling resemblance to a heavily made up Allison Mack (particularly apparent at 1:23) and the insane pseudo-cossack dancing thoughout. It’s fantastic! 😀
I haven’t updated in a loooooong while I know. I’ve got a fair bit of stuff backed up to write about and I’ll try and cover it over the next week, I’ve just been really busy and really tired (and have an infected spliter wound in the ball of my right foot making walking rather painful – you really wanted to know that didn’t you?). So expect some less disco influenced posts soon 🙂
Hi! Hi! Hi! Moskau! Moskau!…
PS: I just remembered, Allison Mack was born in Germany in the early 80’s. Freaky coincidence or what!? 🙂
