Growing up, I was ensconced with Italo Disco or 1980s Euro dance music. On the weekends, I’d work the family business and my Vietnamese uncles would be playing music from the likes of C.C. Catch or Modern Talking. I’d get mixtapes from them. In an isolated Vietnamese community, it was pretty much Italo disco all the time. On occasion, there’d be some tried and true New Wavey acts from the likes of Duran Duran, Talk Talk, The Cure or Culture Club (exposed to me by the heyday of MTV), school friends, etc., but for the most part, Italo Disco was on all the time.

Italo Disco was also compounded by VHS editions of Paris by Night, a popular Vietnamese music and variety show that was ubiquitous in Vietnamese households. The performers would play only two kinds of music genres: Cai luong (traditional folk music) or you guessed it, Italo Disco. As a Vietnamese kid in the ’80s, if you liked it or not, Italo Disco was a part of your very everyday life. I wrote about this very phenomenon and the New Wave influence on Vietnamese American teens in the ’80s.

Here’s a quick reminder of what a typical OC based Vietnamese teen looked like back then:

Personally, as I got a little older, I abhorred Italo Disco. I was getting into more college radio and alternative music. Italo Disco was cheesy, poorly produced and I always connected it situations where I brought friends over to the house and Paris By Night would be playing all the time. My friends would chuckle and see the cheesiness ensue on the boob tube, and my parents, aunts and uncles watching with glee or, in the true Vietnamese fashion, hating on certain entertainers. Either way, it was bloody torture sometimes, especially if I had a girl over to meet the family. Typical child of immigrant parents living in new country bullshit.  But, now that I’m an adult, or at the very least, a man-child, I totally embrace it now. Call it nostalgia, call it a desperate attempt to recapture my youth, but  Italo Disco is the shit!

Therefore, I’m starting this semi-regular series highlighting my favorite Italo Disco artists growing up. First up: German singer FANCY! Not to be confused with the more popular Falco, Fancy was one of the kings of the Italo Disco scene. He was very popular in Eastern European countries, his own Germany, and yes, Vietnamese American conclaves and was ubiquitous in hotel and garage parties in the OC. Fancy was basically the bastard love child of Billy Idol and Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

Check out this amazing video for his 1985 song, Bolero (Hold Me In Your Arms Again). Man, aren’t those dance moves sick?

Fancy had a pretty successful career and still produces and writes music for other artists. Two interesting facts about him: He’s a practitioner of astrology and is close friends to Siegfried and Roy, and also produced some music for their show before, you know, the tiger mauling. Anyway, Fancy had several Euro chart hits, including this Oriental ditty, Chinese Eyes! I loved this song, when I was a kid. Why? Maybe because the song was called “Chinese Eyes.” Just mentioning anything Asian was cool in my book.