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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.
Octoberween! Shlock Edition! Where the featured series of Halloween-themed covers fall into that fun range of gruesome knockoffs, no hit wonders, and spooky oddities. It's also Third Sunday Throwback where we're revisiting the 20th Century for some nigh forgotten shlock. Here's a song covered by an EBM band in the 90's that speaks, however unintentionally, to why we trick-or-treat. It also happens to fit into the "made popular by a cover you probably know best but wasn't the original" category. The original band, however, was one known for dressing up in costumed identities themselves, just as if every day was Halloween!:
Pouppée Fabrikk - I Want Candy (The Strangeloves)
The Strangeloves were Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer, but for the sake of publicity or perhaps a bit of anonymity, they disguised their identities as sheep farmers from Australia named Giles, Miles and Niles Strange, dressing in outrageous outfits and wigs. Their single I Want Candy was the title track of their 1965 album of the same name, released in 1965. The song actually started out as a cover of Bo Diddley's self-titled first single, but they tweaked the instrumentation a bit and wrote entirely different lyrics. (Truth told the two are so similar in sound, the lyrics are really all that distinguish them as different songs.) Those lyrics are said to have been inspired by a risque 1955 smut novel called Candy, written by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg under the shared alias of Maxwell Kenton. The novel would likely need a trigger warning today for its disturbing content involving various depictions of rape and incest, but the song paints a much more innocent picture of the main character's charisma.
While it was The Strangeloves' most popular single, it fell just shy of breaking into the top ten of the U.S. Hot 100.
At least two dozen covers of the song exist, but of course most know it best as done by new wavers Bow Wow Wow in 1982. Their gender-bended version, which depicted the titular character as male, was distributed more widely than the original, giving it tremendous cultural reach despite achieving only slightly better chart success. (Incidentally, Bow Wow Wow reportedly had to be talked into recording the cover by their producer who had told them they didn't have a "hit" of their own in their original material.)
A number of covers can be found on various seasonal Halloween compilations, though, like the original, none are particularly spooky and all reference "Candy" as a human object of amorous affection more than the confectionery reward for scavenging the neighborhood for "treats" under threat of "tricks."
Pouppée Fabrikk, a name made from French and Norwegian words for "Stern" "Factory" respectively, is an "Elektronisk Kroppsmusik" band from Sweden who released their cover of I Want Candy as a single in 1993. It may have been released earlier or later on an Energy Rekords label sampler titled Energy News 1993 but the exact timing for either release is unclear. They included the single on their fourth studio album, We Have Come To Drop Bombs, released sometime the following year and remastered in 2013. It would appear that PF chose to be faithful to the gender-bended lyrics of Bow Wow Wow's version, wherein lead singer Henrik Björkk roughly screams his admiration for the male "Candy." Björkk also appears naked on the cover art of the original single, sitting on a grassy stream-side with the rest of his fully clothed band mates. Pouppée Fabrikk has also done covers of Beers, Steers, and Queers by Revolting Cocks, and Photographic by Depeche Mode.
Björkks growling vocalizations, their beat-heavy electronic interpretation of the original blues-rock melodies and their stomping metal breakdown finale may not "spook" you this Halloween, but you could call it "scary!":
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
Octoberween '18 wraps up with one last bit of monstrous schlok from the modern age just days before Samhain proper!
Want to check out or revisit the previous 3 years of SeeDarkly's Octoberween DisCoveries? Click here and scroll down the tag!
Feel free to tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome!
(You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.)
Explore the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Oct 14 - Darken The Doorstep - The Hearse Song (Carl Sandburg)
Oct 07 - Zombina And The Skeletones - Dracula's Tango [Sucker For Your Love] (Toto Coelo)
Sep 30 - Nerd Revolt - Photographic (Depeche Mode)
Sep 23 - Riviera F - Echo Beach - (Martha and the Muffins)
Sep 16 - Project Pitchfork - In The Year 2525(Zager & Evans)
Sep 09 - Skold - Pale As Chalk (Leæther Strip)
. 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.
Octoberween! Shlock Edition! Where the featured series of Halloween-themed covers fall into that fun range of gruesome knockoffs, no hit wonders, and spooky oddities. It's also Third Sunday Throwback where we're revisiting the 20th Century for some nigh forgotten shlock. Here's a song covered by an EBM band in the 90's that speaks, however unintentionally, to why we trick-or-treat. It also happens to fit into the "made popular by a cover you probably know best but wasn't the original" category. The original band, however, was one known for dressing up in costumed identities themselves, just as if every day was Halloween!:
Pouppée Fabrikk - I Want Candy (The Strangeloves)
The Strangeloves were Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer, but for the sake of publicity or perhaps a bit of anonymity, they disguised their identities as sheep farmers from Australia named Giles, Miles and Niles Strange, dressing in outrageous outfits and wigs. Their single I Want Candy was the title track of their 1965 album of the same name, released in 1965. The song actually started out as a cover of Bo Diddley's self-titled first single, but they tweaked the instrumentation a bit and wrote entirely different lyrics. (Truth told the two are so similar in sound, the lyrics are really all that distinguish them as different songs.) Those lyrics are said to have been inspired by a risque 1955 smut novel called Candy, written by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg under the shared alias of Maxwell Kenton. The novel would likely need a trigger warning today for its disturbing content involving various depictions of rape and incest, but the song paints a much more innocent picture of the main character's charisma.
While it was The Strangeloves' most popular single, it fell just shy of breaking into the top ten of the U.S. Hot 100.
At least two dozen covers of the song exist, but of course most know it best as done by new wavers Bow Wow Wow in 1982. Their gender-bended version, which depicted the titular character as male, was distributed more widely than the original, giving it tremendous cultural reach despite achieving only slightly better chart success. (Incidentally, Bow Wow Wow reportedly had to be talked into recording the cover by their producer who had told them they didn't have a "hit" of their own in their original material.)
A number of covers can be found on various seasonal Halloween compilations, though, like the original, none are particularly spooky and all reference "Candy" as a human object of amorous affection more than the confectionery reward for scavenging the neighborhood for "treats" under threat of "tricks."
Pouppée Fabrikk, a name made from French and Norwegian words for "Stern" "Factory" respectively, is an "Elektronisk Kroppsmusik" band from Sweden who released their cover of I Want Candy as a single in 1993. It may have been released earlier or later on an Energy Rekords label sampler titled Energy News 1993 but the exact timing for either release is unclear. They included the single on their fourth studio album, We Have Come To Drop Bombs, released sometime the following year and remastered in 2013. It would appear that PF chose to be faithful to the gender-bended lyrics of Bow Wow Wow's version, wherein lead singer Henrik Björkk roughly screams his admiration for the male "Candy." Björkk also appears naked on the cover art of the original single, sitting on a grassy stream-side with the rest of his fully clothed band mates. Pouppée Fabrikk has also done covers of Beers, Steers, and Queers by Revolting Cocks, and Photographic by Depeche Mode.
Björkks growling vocalizations, their beat-heavy electronic interpretation of the original blues-rock melodies and their stomping metal breakdown finale may not "spook" you this Halloween, but you could call it "scary!":
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
Octoberween '18 wraps up with one last bit of monstrous schlok from the modern age just days before Samhain proper!
Want to check out or revisit the previous 3 years of SeeDarkly's Octoberween DisCoveries? Click here and scroll down the tag!
Feel free to tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome!
(You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.)
Explore the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Oct 14 - Darken The Doorstep - The Hearse Song (Carl Sandburg)
Oct 07 - Zombina And The Skeletones - Dracula's Tango [Sucker For Your Love] (Toto Coelo)
Sep 30 - Nerd Revolt - Photographic (Depeche Mode)
Sep 23 - Riviera F - Echo Beach - (Martha and the Muffins)
Sep 16 - Project Pitchfork - In The Year 2525(Zager & Evans)
Sep 09 - Skold - Pale As Chalk (Leæther Strip)
. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .