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seedarklyxeroWelcome to SeeDarkly Sunday DisCOVERies:
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
Let's wrap up this month's special feature: April Absurdities! The final of four wildly ridiculous covers in concept, style, or just the artists involved. Additionally, every song this month has degree of connection to our favorite prankster/absurdist musician, Weird Al Yankovic! (How many of those connections have you riddled out for yourself?)
Our last jig is an industrial rework of a farcical hip hop dance sensation from the New Jack era ending the eighties and kicking off the nineties, expressing at its core that, on the dance floor, you can doowutchyalike.:
Caustic – The Humpty Dance (Digital Underground)
Digital Underground released The Humpty Dance in 1989, one of three singles they released before their first album, Sex Packets in 1990. As a collective, the songs on the album revolved around the concept of the "Sex Packet" they called "G.S.R.A." or "Genetic Suppression Relief Antidotes," a fictional glowing pill, packaged in condom wrappers, meant to give the user orgasmic experiences when their environments wouldn't allow common methods of release.
As a single, however, The Humpty Dance centered on rapper/producer Shock G's pimpish alter ego, "Humpty Hump," who bragged his prosthetic nose and outlandish appearance were no obstacle to his sexual proficiency. The character took on a life of its own complete with a "tragic" backstory: formerly known as Edward Ellington Humphrey III, frontman for "Smooth Eddie and the Humpers," he joined ranks with the Underground after an incident with a deep fryer burned and scarred his nose, forcing him to conceal the injury with his goofy disguise.
Shock G (aka Greg Jacobs), of course, suffered no such injury. The track was a number one rap hit and a top twenty mainstream success, which made their label push for more "Humpty" hits. Shock G, reportedly surprised like the rest of the band that such a "goofy" song was a hit, believed the "Humpty" act was too much a novelty for such prominent use and effectively retired the character from compositions after a few other tracks. In interviews as Humpty, Shock G would distance the character as being uninvolved in anything other than dropping vocals and spoke of looking forward to ending his "contract" with the band to be free to do other projects.
The song itself is a mixed bag on a few issues. While it appears from some angles to be fat shaming and perhaps a bit lyrically toxic by some of today's standards, it also has an innate sense of multiracial inclusion to join in the dance and an underlying message that it's okay to exist outside conventional norms, oddity is no deterrent from accomplishment, and anyone can dance as long as they put their "body in motion." While the song has only been covered as few as three times, it has been sampled by other artists well over a hundred times.
One of the three times it was covered was when the industrial noise project called Caustic released their version on the Binge Drinking Bonus Disc of their 2007 album Booze Up And Riot. Caustic, a solo project of Matt Fanale, recruited a "rap crew" of its own for the track, bringing in Eric Gottesman of Deathline International and Tyler Newman of Informatik, for vocals. A second version featuring only Gottesman was also recorded and is on the Hangover Edition of the same album, released about eight months later the same year. Fanale says that Gottesman still performs it live. (A brief conversation with Fanale to find out if an authorized source for this cover and the album might be put up on his Bandcamp page indicated that he didn't care about making money on the track, but he did not elaborate on whether that's because he also considers it a goof or for some other reason.) Three other covers are on the "Binge" album: The Hustle by Van McCoy & The Soul City Symphony, Flower by Liz Phair and We Care A Lot by Faith No More. The "Hangover" version features those and an additional cover of Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me done in collaboration with Interface.
While the Caustic version is far more crunchy and aggressive, as an unironic tribute to style, they also sample several elements from the original, which was already constructed from several samples itself. Caustic also replaces D.U.'s shout out to M.C. Hammer with one for VNV Nation. Apropos of the lyrics, Caustic definitely "got it down" since they "appear to be in pain."
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
FOURTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF SEEDARKLY SUNDAY DISCOVERIES!
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.
(And if, after 209 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, please click over to my profile and find out how you can leave us a tip if you like...)
Thanks for reading and keep exploring the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Apr 21 - Klaus Nomi – Ding Dong (The Witch Is Dead) (The Munchkins)
Apr 14 - Discohen – Like A Virgin (Madonna)
Apr 07 - Front Line Assembly w/ Jimmy Urine – Rock Me Amadeus (Falco)
Mar 31 - Dicepeople – Strangelove (Depeche Mode)
Mar 24 - Cylab – Heart-Shaped Box (Nirvana)
. 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.
Let's wrap up this month's special feature: April Absurdities! The final of four wildly ridiculous covers in concept, style, or just the artists involved. Additionally, every song this month has degree of connection to our favorite prankster/absurdist musician, Weird Al Yankovic! (How many of those connections have you riddled out for yourself?)
Our last jig is an industrial rework of a farcical hip hop dance sensation from the New Jack era ending the eighties and kicking off the nineties, expressing at its core that, on the dance floor, you can doowutchyalike.:
Caustic – The Humpty Dance (Digital Underground)
Digital Underground released The Humpty Dance in 1989, one of three singles they released before their first album, Sex Packets in 1990. As a collective, the songs on the album revolved around the concept of the "Sex Packet" they called "G.S.R.A." or "Genetic Suppression Relief Antidotes," a fictional glowing pill, packaged in condom wrappers, meant to give the user orgasmic experiences when their environments wouldn't allow common methods of release.
As a single, however, The Humpty Dance centered on rapper/producer Shock G's pimpish alter ego, "Humpty Hump," who bragged his prosthetic nose and outlandish appearance were no obstacle to his sexual proficiency. The character took on a life of its own complete with a "tragic" backstory: formerly known as Edward Ellington Humphrey III, frontman for "Smooth Eddie and the Humpers," he joined ranks with the Underground after an incident with a deep fryer burned and scarred his nose, forcing him to conceal the injury with his goofy disguise.
Shock G (aka Greg Jacobs), of course, suffered no such injury. The track was a number one rap hit and a top twenty mainstream success, which made their label push for more "Humpty" hits. Shock G, reportedly surprised like the rest of the band that such a "goofy" song was a hit, believed the "Humpty" act was too much a novelty for such prominent use and effectively retired the character from compositions after a few other tracks. In interviews as Humpty, Shock G would distance the character as being uninvolved in anything other than dropping vocals and spoke of looking forward to ending his "contract" with the band to be free to do other projects.
The song itself is a mixed bag on a few issues. While it appears from some angles to be fat shaming and perhaps a bit lyrically toxic by some of today's standards, it also has an innate sense of multiracial inclusion to join in the dance and an underlying message that it's okay to exist outside conventional norms, oddity is no deterrent from accomplishment, and anyone can dance as long as they put their "body in motion." While the song has only been covered as few as three times, it has been sampled by other artists well over a hundred times.
One of the three times it was covered was when the industrial noise project called Caustic released their version on the Binge Drinking Bonus Disc of their 2007 album Booze Up And Riot. Caustic, a solo project of Matt Fanale, recruited a "rap crew" of its own for the track, bringing in Eric Gottesman of Deathline International and Tyler Newman of Informatik, for vocals. A second version featuring only Gottesman was also recorded and is on the Hangover Edition of the same album, released about eight months later the same year. Fanale says that Gottesman still performs it live. (A brief conversation with Fanale to find out if an authorized source for this cover and the album might be put up on his Bandcamp page indicated that he didn't care about making money on the track, but he did not elaborate on whether that's because he also considers it a goof or for some other reason.) Three other covers are on the "Binge" album: The Hustle by Van McCoy & The Soul City Symphony, Flower by Liz Phair and We Care A Lot by Faith No More. The "Hangover" version features those and an additional cover of Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me done in collaboration with Interface.
While the Caustic version is far more crunchy and aggressive, as an unironic tribute to style, they also sample several elements from the original, which was already constructed from several samples itself. Caustic also replaces D.U.'s shout out to M.C. Hammer with one for VNV Nation. Apropos of the lyrics, Caustic definitely "got it down" since they "appear to be in pain."
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
FOURTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF SEEDARKLY SUNDAY DISCOVERIES!
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.
(And if, after 209 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, please click over to my profile and find out how you can leave us a tip if you like...)
Thanks for reading and keep exploring the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Apr 21 - Klaus Nomi – Ding Dong (The Witch Is Dead) (The Munchkins)
Apr 14 - Discohen – Like A Virgin (Madonna)
Apr 07 - Front Line Assembly w/ Jimmy Urine – Rock Me Amadeus (Falco)
Mar 31 - Dicepeople – Strangelove (Depeche Mode)
Mar 24 - Cylab – Heart-Shaped Box (Nirvana)
. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .