SeeDarkly™

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 another Second Sunday Slowly downtempo cover! This week it's boss! Do people still call things "boss?" Probably not. But for this heated synthy dark-pop trip-hop remake of an eighties pop-rock ballad, it fits a particular angle.:

Clavvs – I'm On Fire (Bruce Springsteen)

Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen first released I'm On Fire on his seventh studio album Born in the U.S.A. in June 1984. He released the track as a single the following year in February. The opening lyrics for the song originated from a track Springsteen wrote and recorded in the late seventies called Spanish Eyes, a vastly different style of ballad. It was excluded from his 1978 album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, but was released in 2010 with a number of other outtakes from those sessions on a collection titled, The Promise. Fire developed into a rhythmically up-tempo trotting ballad with a sense of impassioned longing, deepened by the mystery invoked by its video that featured a woman whose face was never shown. There is a degree to which some of its lyrics could be interpreted as a bit sinister and even problematic, but on the whole the song seems an earnest expression of yearning desire.
Apart from being a top ten hit and an international success, the song set fire to the hearts of many artists, inspiring nearly a hundred covers (over fifty of which were done in the last decade!)
Some covers of note include those by Awolnation, Bat For Lashes, Chromatics, Tori Amos, and Johnny Cash (who is said to have been among inspirations for the original.)

The darkpop triphop duo Clavvs (pronounced "claws") first released their version of I'm On Fire in March 2016. It was the final release of a slow roll out of all the tracks found on their April 2016 EP, halfblood. In one interview they said, “We chose to remake I’m on Fire first as a request from a friend & fan, but then we saw the opportunity to completely reinvent the classic. It turned into a destructive, almost creepy story about dangerous love, which is a recurring theme in our work.”
In a later interview after they had also released covers of Chris Issak's Wicked Game and MGMT's Electric Feel they further note that they "only like doing covers if we feel like we can really flip it and bring something new to the song."
Clavvs transform it into a witchy eroticized seduction, feminized by Amber Renee's vocals, faithful to the original lyrics in every respect. Simultaneously haunting and dreamy, its a blood-boiling shiver down the spine.:

The Cover:


The Original:


Next week:
Third Sunday Throwback to the 20th Century. We'll put you on the hot seat and it's Electric! No, not a boogie woogie line dance but a late nineties EBM remake of a post punk track from the eighties(one hat ALSO happens to have been covered by Johnny Cash!)

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 reply below, but all replies are screened for spam prevention.

(And if, after 4 years and 220 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 dancing in darkness,

-Xero

Previous DisCOVERies

Jul 07 - 3Teeth – Pumped Up Kicks (Foster the People)
Jul 30 - Gaytron – Tora Tora [Tora!] (Depeche Mode)
Jun 23 - Blind Delon w/ HIV+ – Almost A Kiss (Throbbing Gristle)
Jun 16 - Erasure – Supernature (Cerrone)
Jun 09 - Xiu Xiu – Falling (Julee Cruise)

. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .

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.

Today marks the end of PRIDE Month so we wrap up our month-long focus on songs by, or covered by, LGBTQ+ artists. And because this is also a five-Sunday month, that means we end with a Fifth Sunday A La Mode! Depeche Mode, while not queer (or out) in any respect themselves, have been long associated with queer culture and very popular at gay night clubs since their formation. In fact, they have actively pushed back against the perception that they were gay throughout the early days of their career, but there are still those who today believe, or perhaps hope, otherwise. Regardless, it's no surprise that many LGBTQ+ acts have covered them: LeætherStrip/Klutæ, Massive Ego, Placebo, Jimmy Somerville, et.al. Today's EBM cover of a song from their first album is certainly "gayer" than the original:

Gaytron – Tora Tora [Tora!] (Depeche Mode)

Tora! Tora! Tora! is the only lyrical composition by Martin Gore on Depeche Mode's debut album, Speak & Spell, released on October 1981. (He also wrote the instrumental, Big Muff, but the rest of the album was written by Vince Clarke before his departure from the group.) While there may be some confirmation about its origins from Gore unfound in the annals of countless interviews given over many years, it seems evident that the song is intended to be about the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Historic anecdotes seem to indicate that "Tora Tora Tora" was a battlecry or code phrase used by the Japanese as the bombs dropped. However it's unclear if that's entirely accurate or a dramatization of events as presented and remembered in popular culture from the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!. Other accounts claim that because the bombers were equipped with telegraph transceivers instead of audio transmitters, Japanese Commander Tadakazu Yoshioka designed code similar to Morse: "To" (two dots, pause, two dots) and "Ra" (three dots). "To" is believed to have signaled the attack while "ra" confirmed that their targets had been taken by surprise. It is not confirmed through reliable sources that "to" was actually short for "totsugeki," Japanese for "assault" and "ra" was short for "raigeki" or "lightning strike." The fact of "Tora" being the Japanese word for "tiger" is apparently no more than coincidence. Whatever its full origin, the titular phrase is nonetheless now intimately associated with the beginning of World War II.
It is interesting though that this song, one of British-born Gore's first songs for Depeche Mode, has them "playing an American" in its narrative.

Only live versions of Tora! Tora! Tora! appear on some pressings of their Get The Balance Right! single, but the studio version was never included on any single, and has been covered perhaps less than ten times, mostly by fairly obscure artists.

Alfa Matrix released Re:Covered, Vol. 2 - a Tribute to Depeche Mode in June 2011, a various artists compilation of 31 different covers of the band's music. EBM artist Claus Kruse appears twice on the collection: with his project Plastic Noise Experience, covering New Life and with Gaytron, covering Tora Tora. (He also contributed a version of World In My Eyes with Plastic Noise Experience on the first volume of this compilation.)
When asked in one interview about the project's name Kruse, proudly out as gay, said "Gaytron was politics, a kind of personal Christopher Street battle against intolerance." Christopher Street, of course, referring to the site of Stonewall Inn and center of the gay rights movement in New York during the seventies. Kruse continued, "The name basically combines the words gay and electronic, what you hear is what you get. I founded Gaytron in the early years of PNE (Plastic Noise Experience) 1992. At that time homophobia was still an issue, even in the EBM scene. I decided to make this point clear." In the same interview, Kruse also stated that he did Tora Tora because he liked it and said "the 'battle cry' totsugeki raigeki (misinterpreted as ToRa) fits to Gaytron pretty much."
Regardless of historical accuracy, his interpretation of it has inspired a fully fleshed out, modernized, and energized take on the song. Homophobia is as much an issue today as it was when Kruse founded Gaytron. Perhaps this might be an appropriated battlecry to protest injustices while assaulting such bigotry with a lightning strike of glitter bombs!:

The Cover:


The Original:


Next week:
Something "Stranger" at which to Marvel... (Because I'm drowning in current pop culture over here!)

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 reply below, but all replies are screened for spam prevention.

(And if, after 4 years and 218 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.)

Hope you had a happy PRIDE month! Thanks for reading and keep dancing in darkness,

-Xero

Previous DisCOVERies

Jun 23 - Blind Delon w/ HIV+ – Almost A Kiss (Throbbing Gristle)
Jun 16 - Erasure – Supernature (Cerrone)
Jun 09 - Xiu Xiu – Falling (Julee Cruise)
Jun 02 - Bones UK – I'm Afraid of Americans (David Bowie)
May 26 - Stoppenberg – Knight Rider Theme (Stu Phillips)

. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .

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.

Happy PRIDE Month! We continue with our month long focus on songs by, or covered by, LGBTQ+ artists. Some entries may have less to say other than recognizing the original or cover artists for their identity. Some may be straight/cis artists covering queer artists or vice versa. The point is there are many LGBTQ+ artists inspiring amazing music that is worth appreciation and consideration. This week it's a Third Sunday Throwback to the twentieth century when an eighties synthpop act with one of the most prominently out lead singers covered a one time disco dancefloor hit from the seventies that has its roots in post-punk new wave artistry.

Erasure – Supernature (Cerrone)

Supernature was the title track and first single from Cerrone's third album released in September 1977. Marc Cerrone, a French euro-disco producer and musician, composed the song with Alain Wisniak, but the lyrics were written by Lene Lovich just before her career in the new wave/post-punk/goth scene blossomed. Lovich, who was uncredited on the album, penned the song as a sci-fi eco-horror story, imagining the consequences of continually exposing the earth to harmful chemicals which would mutate animal life into monstrous beasts that take their revenge on humanity. How much of this story was hers or something she was interpreting for Cerrone is questionable. In one interview she said, "It all started with a vague phone call while I was in the studio with a soul band (The Diversions?). Somebody needed somebody to work with this foreign guy who couldn't speak much English, but he was into disco, and because we were doing soul/funk, they just sort of shouted in our direction. And I, grabbing every opportunity whether I could handle it or not, said I could do that, and because I had put my hand up I ended up being on a plane to Paris and had to figure out how to do this new thing."
Cerrone conceived the album art and video depicting naked men and women with animal heads, though the video handled the nudity with a little more stealth than the album jacket. Vocals were provided by Kay Garner who was known at the time under the alias "Chi-Chi Favelas." She was also not credited on the album.
Supernature was a dance club success but was not much of an overall breakout hit. It has had very few covers; one done by Lovich herself for a various artists compilation released in 1987 titled Animal Liberation, produced by Al Jourgensen with royalties donated to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The ironically named synthpop duo Erasure, led by the very demonstratively and openly gay Andy Bell, released their cover of Supernature first as a b-side track on their single for You Surround Me in 1989. Gaining somewhat more attention than the A-side (from their fourth album Wild!), they opted to release the cover as a single of its own shortly after. While there is little to speak to their overall motivation or inspiration for doing the cover, they certainly seemed committed to the activism of it. They worked in collaboration with Lovich on the song Rage for yet another of her PETA benefit compilations, Tame Yourself, released in 1991.
They released two mixes of Supernature nigh simultaneously; one mixed by Daniel Miller and the other by William Orbit. They have indicated Orbit's as their preferred version, though it's a little unclear which came first. Erasure have also covered Gina X, a couple by Blondie, several by ABBA, and many more. But out of every other song they've covered, this is for them perhaps one of the darkest they've done in both tone and message, even if it is, at its core, still pretty pop.:

The Cover:


The Original:


Next week:
Pride month continues and we'll try to get you something from a more gothic vein!

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 4 years and 216 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 dancing in darkness,

-Xero

Previous DisCOVERies

Jun 09 - Xiu Xiu – Falling (Julee Cruise)
Jun 02 - Bones UK – I'm Afraid of Americans (David Bowie)
May 26 - Stoppenberg – Knight Rider Theme (Stu Phillips)
May 19 - Deathline International– Rawhide (Frankie Laine)
May 12 - Covenant – A Rider On A White Horse (Lee Hazelwood)

. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .

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.

Happy PRIDE Month! For the month of June, I'll be focused on songs by, or covered by, LGBTQ+ artists. Some entries may have less to say other than recognizing the original or cover artists for their identity. Some may be straight/cis artists covering queer artists or vice versa. The point is there are many LGBTQ+ artists inspiring amazing music that is worth appreciation and consideration. This week, with a nod toward increasing efforts of an administration bent on stripping the LGBTQ+ community of their rights, protections, and lives, I can think of no better way to start than with a sentiment many share with this song from a late queer icon covered by an industrial-rock electro-punk duo.:

Bones UK – I'm Afraid of Americans (David Bowie)

David Bowie released the first version of I'm Afraid of Americans (co-written by Brian Eno) on the soundtrack of the 1995 film Showgirls. The film itself was considered a critical failure but seems a cult fave or guilty pleasure with a remarkable soundtrack of goth/industrial music including Prick, Siouxie & the Banshees, Killing Joke, Young Gods, and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. The Showgirls version was originally intended for Bowie's 1995 album, Outside but instead he reworked the track, change the chorus lyric from "I'm afraid of the animals" to the title line, and released it on his February 1997 album, Earthling and as a multi-track single in October later that year. The most common version with which most are familiar is the remix done by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who appears in the video as the American of whom Bowie is afraid. But what specifically did he have to fear?
According to a press release for the track, Bowie stated, "It's not as truly hostile about Americans as say Born In The U.S.A.: it's merely sardonic. I was traveling in Java when its first McDonald's went up: it was like, 'for fuck's sake.' The invasion by any homogenized culture is so depressing, the erection of another Disney World in, say, Umbria, Italy, more so. It strangles the indigenous culture and narrows expression of life."
While this may be entirely valid, the timing of the song's release also lends itself to another theory. Bowie famously outed himself as gay in the early seventies saying, "“I’m gay and always have been, even when I was David Jones.” However in the eighties he began vacillating about it, saying that revealing it was "the biggest mistake [he] ever made." A few years after the release of this song, Bowie explained further. "I don't think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners nor be a representative of any group of people." Bowie felt his bisexuality stood in the way of his artistic efforts in what he called a "puritanical" America that focused on his sexuality.
Yet Bowie, without being so "representative," has unquestionably influenced the lives of LGBTQ+ people. In truth though, an amount of universal appeal has led to over 175 of his songs being covered by a wide spectrum of people from a variety of identities.
I'm Afraid of Americans has been covered at least a couple dozen times, though none of those covers use the original version's "animal" lyric.
Some of the notable artists who've covered the track in recent years include A*O*A, Frame Of Mind, The Grey Disorder, knifesex, Lana Del Rabies, and Slighter.

Howard Stern assembled twenty five artists for a Tribute to David Bowie special on his satellite radio broadcast which aired in February 2018. The British female duo Bones UK contributed their version of I'm Afraid of Americans, a song that Bowie had actually once performed for Stern at his 44th birthday bash. Lead vocalist Rosie Bones said “As a British band who has just moved over to the U.S.A., I'm Afraid of Americans was the perfect track for us to cover and one of our favorite Bowie tracks—the pressure was totally on. So we did our best to insert a little slice of us nasty Brits into the song in hopes that we both did the track justice and made it our own all at the same time.” She continued that she and guitarist Carmen Vandenberg "love how he always said that it’s when you’re a couple of steps out of your comfort zone, that's when the most exciting stuff happens. Obviously, when covering a Bowie song, you are immediately out of your comfort zone because you just want to do him and it justice.”
Bones are, like perhaps Bowie might have chosen, somewhat ambiguous about their own sexualities, but language in the lyrics of their original music, some of their online shares on social media, and their performance at London Pride 2015 indicate a strong support for the LGBTQ+ community, if not the possibility of being bisexual themselves. They are, however, also unabashedly critical of "the beauty industrial complex, toxic masculinity, and music-scene sexism."
Despite the fact that it reportedly gets occasional boos from their audiences, the band will feature this cover on their self-titled debut full-length album, due for release this July. Their version is a gnashing and savage grind of feminine defiance, interpolating Obama's 2008 campaign slogan and a lyric from one of their own songs into the chorus.

It's shamefully wrong that we who celebrate this month of PRIDE could be made to feel the kind of fear that this song symbolizes but if you do have reason to, rock out to this amazing rendition and let it embolden and empower your fight for equality, visibility, and acceptance!:

The Cover:


The Original:
Album Version


Showgirls Original (the actual original version)



Next week:
Pride month continues here with another Second Sunday Slowly down tempo cover! (I'm STILL hunting for an impressive goth or industrial cover of Erasure, so please let me know if you've found one I might not have!)

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 4 years and 214 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 dancing in darkness,
-Xero

Previous DisCOVERies

May 26 - Stoppenberg – Knight Rider Theme (Stu Phillips)
May 19 - Deathline International– Rawhide (Frankie Laine)
May 12 - Covenant – A Rider On A White Horse (Lee Hazelwood)
May 05 - The Death Riders – Mexican Radio (Wall Of Voodoo)
Apr 28 - Caustic – The Humpty Dance (Digital Underground)

. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .

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 another Third Sunday Throwback to the twentieth century! Last week I decided "riders" had become a theme and fully intended to offer up something specific that fit by way of its title. And my tease for this week probably sounded like I was going to do something with a spirit of vengeance in mind, but I actually had another plan. What "burned my chaps" was the fact that NEITHER options for the feature have viable sources I could share. So I had to rethink the approach...and remembered I've been sittiing on this industrial remake of a late 50's country western TV theme song that adequately describes the consequences of long term ridin'.:

Deathline International– Rawhide (Frankie Laine)
Rawhide was written by Ned Washington & Dimitri Tiomkin as the theme song to the 1959 television show of the same name. The song was recorded and released as a single in 1958 by Frankie Laine, who already marked his career in the 50's performing other notable TV and movie theme songs: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 3:10 to Yuma, Bullwhip, etc... He was also called upon to do the theme for Mel Brooks's country western comedy Blazing Saddles in 1974. Rawhide, starring Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood, aired for eight seasons between 1959 to 1966, and ran in syndication for years after. Laine actually guest starred on the show once in 1960. In 1961, Laine included Rawhide on his album, Hell Bent For Leather, the title derived from the lyrics of the song.

It's been covered nearly 50 times, by various country western artists and the occasional oddity (Jackson 5, Oingo Boingo, Dead Kennedys, Sublime, and Reizstrom to name a few.)

German electro-industrialists Deathline International released their cover of Rawhide in April 1995 on the five-track E.P. Venus Mind Trap. Later that year it was included on their second full length album Zarathoustra. The album also features their cover of Tainted Love by Gloria Jones. Other covers in their discography include Wild Boys by Duran Duran, Troops of Tomorrow by The Vibrators, and Paradise City by Guns And Roses.

Where Laine's rendition is loaded with the twang of country western styling and the sound effects of herding cattle and cracking whips, Deathline International's version is a gritty stomper reminiscent of early Ministry. The remake certainly might give you the sense of being pistol-whipped with addition of a grim sample from the 1990's gangster film Miller's Crossing. Of course, if you're "hell bent for leather," this will probably speak to those desires better than the original.

The Cover:


The Original:


Next week:
One last "rider" to cover... with a recent retro synthwave remake of another TV theme song, this time from the 80's.

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 4 years and 212 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

May 12 - Covenant – A Rider On A White Horse (Lee Hazelwood)
May 05 - The Death Riders – Mexican Radio (Wall Of Voodoo)
Apr 28 - Caustic – The Humpty Dance (Digital Underground)
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)

. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .