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Welcome to SeeDarkly Sunday DisCOVERies:
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
It's time for our monthly voyage into the 20th century and another "Third Sunday Throwback" as we continue the February "Dark Valentine's" theme I've entitled: "Love Songs to Beautiful People You Think Are Sexy But With Whom You Are Not In Love!" This week our featured cover is some sleazy disco/industrial as performed by artists with so phallic a sobriquet as to invoke the adolescent sniggering of hormonal teen-age boys:
Revolting Cocks- Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? (Rod Stewart)
Rod Stewart, a London-born pop-rock artist, released his ninth album, Blondes Have More Fun in November 1978. It was the first of his efforts to explore the disco trend of the time and with its first single, Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? it proved to be a fairly successful gamble. Unfortunately, Stewart took a little too many liberties with the production of the track, appropriating two different elements of the song from other artists without attribution or compensation: the chorus of the song plagiarized from Jorge Ben Jor's 1976 Taj Mahal and the synthesizer hook taken from the string section of Bobby Womack's 1975, (If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It. Ben Jor filed suit, Stewart admitted the theft and made restitution by donating proceeds from the track to UNICEF. Copyright rules, however, seem to protect Stewart for his limited use of Womack's material.
In addition to those misdeeds, many were highly critical of his shift from rock to disco styles, making the track contentious despite its popularity as a number one hit on multiple charts in several countries.
Revolting Cocks covered the track on their third studio album, Linger Ficken' Good ...And Other Barnyard Oddities, released in 1993. It was the album's first single, delivered in the same satirical and fun-loving industrial rock style that set them apart from the other bands with which its members were affiliated: Ministry, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, etc...
When asked about the song before it was recorded, Al Jourgensen (who describes RevCo as "juvenile and lurid and delinquent") said, "We're going to start showing exactly how insipid and inane some of the music that people have listened to for a long time is."
Even Stewart himself has said it was a "campy" track he "used to be embarrassed to sing" and that he didn't "want to be singing Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? at age 50 and be a parody" of himself. In recent concerts however, now in his 70's, he makes a point of showcasing that latter quote during performances of the hit.
Disco such as this had a bit of a sleazy pick-up image connected to it, though in this case, Stewart seemed to be going for a reciprocal coital motive in the track's lyrical story, where both characters shared equal interest. RevCo transformed the tracks disco sound to something more of a raunchy electro-rock strut of uber-masculity, preying aggressively on such base interests in such an over-the-top way as to make the original seem all the more ridiculous.
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
While Stewart's album title contends that blondes have more fun, that doesn't make them immune to heartbreak as we'll discover in last installment of the "Dark Valentine's" theme, when the featured cover brings this month-long tale to its inevitable and somewhat tragic conclusion. v_v
Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome!
I DJ next in western Mass this Friday. For details on that event and others on my schedule, check out my website. ^_^
Explore the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Feb 12 - Roniit - The Beautiful People (Marilyn Manson)
Feb 05 - Leæther Strip - Love Song (Simple Minds)
Jan 29 - Rammstein - Stripped (Depeche Mode)
Jan 22 - Avarice In Audio - Welcome To Paradise (Front 242)
Jan 15 - Vogon Poetry - Mourn (Apoptygma Berzerk)
Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
It's time for our monthly voyage into the 20th century and another "Third Sunday Throwback" as we continue the February "Dark Valentine's" theme I've entitled: "Love Songs to Beautiful People You Think Are Sexy But With Whom You Are Not In Love!" This week our featured cover is some sleazy disco/industrial as performed by artists with so phallic a sobriquet as to invoke the adolescent sniggering of hormonal teen-age boys:
Revolting Cocks- Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? (Rod Stewart)
Rod Stewart, a London-born pop-rock artist, released his ninth album, Blondes Have More Fun in November 1978. It was the first of his efforts to explore the disco trend of the time and with its first single, Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? it proved to be a fairly successful gamble. Unfortunately, Stewart took a little too many liberties with the production of the track, appropriating two different elements of the song from other artists without attribution or compensation: the chorus of the song plagiarized from Jorge Ben Jor's 1976 Taj Mahal and the synthesizer hook taken from the string section of Bobby Womack's 1975, (If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It. Ben Jor filed suit, Stewart admitted the theft and made restitution by donating proceeds from the track to UNICEF. Copyright rules, however, seem to protect Stewart for his limited use of Womack's material.
In addition to those misdeeds, many were highly critical of his shift from rock to disco styles, making the track contentious despite its popularity as a number one hit on multiple charts in several countries.
Revolting Cocks covered the track on their third studio album, Linger Ficken' Good ...And Other Barnyard Oddities, released in 1993. It was the album's first single, delivered in the same satirical and fun-loving industrial rock style that set them apart from the other bands with which its members were affiliated: Ministry, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, etc...
When asked about the song before it was recorded, Al Jourgensen (who describes RevCo as "juvenile and lurid and delinquent") said, "We're going to start showing exactly how insipid and inane some of the music that people have listened to for a long time is."
Even Stewart himself has said it was a "campy" track he "used to be embarrassed to sing" and that he didn't "want to be singing Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? at age 50 and be a parody" of himself. In recent concerts however, now in his 70's, he makes a point of showcasing that latter quote during performances of the hit.
Disco such as this had a bit of a sleazy pick-up image connected to it, though in this case, Stewart seemed to be going for a reciprocal coital motive in the track's lyrical story, where both characters shared equal interest. RevCo transformed the tracks disco sound to something more of a raunchy electro-rock strut of uber-masculity, preying aggressively on such base interests in such an over-the-top way as to make the original seem all the more ridiculous.
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
While Stewart's album title contends that blondes have more fun, that doesn't make them immune to heartbreak as we'll discover in last installment of the "Dark Valentine's" theme, when the featured cover brings this month-long tale to its inevitable and somewhat tragic conclusion. v_v
Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome!
I DJ next in western Mass this Friday. For details on that event and others on my schedule, check out my website. ^_^
Explore the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Feb 12 - Roniit - The Beautiful People (Marilyn Manson)
Feb 05 - Leæther Strip - Love Song (Simple Minds)
Jan 29 - Rammstein - Stripped (Depeche Mode)
Jan 22 - Avarice In Audio - Welcome To Paradise (Front 242)
Jan 15 - Vogon Poetry - Mourn (Apoptygma Berzerk)
Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies