BAD COVER VERSION 021: LOVE IS A BANQUET

This week's episode is a classic case of two acts covering a song that was written and recorded but never released by another famous act: The Bruce.

THE SONG: “Because The Night”

THE ORIGINAL: Patti Smith Group

COMMENTS: The story is that Bruce Springsteen wrote and recorded the song for Darkness On The Edge Of Town, but it didn't fit the rest of the record, so he gave it to Patti Smith (who was recording next door at the time) and the rest is history. Patti's take bubbles over with desire without resorting to sexy breathy vocals, and it's got a strikingly dark edge, as if the main character knows she's playing with dynamite but doesn't care – we either do this now or we die. It's arguably the ultimate carpe diem song from a female POV.

THE COVER: 10,000 Maniacs

COMMENTS: 10KM basically play it straighter than straight for their version, which became a big hit for them on VH1. Oddly, it didn't strike me until I heard  this how similar Natalie Merchant's voice is to Patti's. That said, Natalie has always had more of a languid singing style. It doesn't work against her here, but somehow the dark edges that haunt the original version are gone.

WINNER: Patti Smith Group. It's probably because I spent most of 9th/10th grade playing the PSG version (off of a K-Tel comp, of all places) entranced by its menacing, lusty call to action, but the 10KM version, good as it is, doesn't add anything new, and even loses some of what made the song attractive to me in the first place.

Next week: The Supremes vs Vanilla Fudge and Kim Wilde!

The night belongs to lust,

This is dF

YOU NEED A VACATION, SON

As you may have gathered from yesterday’s sundown series, Team Def kicked off a nine (9) day holiday, because it’s a bit quiet at Telephones! magazine, and I won’t have this chance again until probably Christmas. So why not?

As such, the bloggery may get slightly more interesting, although my traveling will be limited to a one-night stand in a hot-spring resort just up the Pearl River Delta in mainland China (because my mainland Chinese visa, for which I paid handsomely, expires soon, and I cannot replace it until after the Olympics because Beijing has stopped issuing them – and yet they can’t figure out why hotel occupancy rates for the games aren’t as high as they’d hoped). There may also be a day trip to Macau.

Otherwise, it’ll be me sleeping a lot and puttering around the house, and a movie or two. Who knows, I may even finish the first draft of the Great American Softcore Sci-Fi novel I've been working on for three years.

Oh, and there’ll be some swimming in the new Speedos I bought in Stanley yesterday. They are teh sexy. Pool ladies will swoon as I backstroke my way across the pool like a sexy otter. They will throw bikini tops and shellfish at me and ask me if they can film me with their cell-phones and post the videos on YouTube as a memento.

For they are the GOOD Speedos.

 Yr on the edge of yr seat already, I can tell.

Details forthcoming – starting with the Ballad Of Mad Cow Disease.

Undressed for success,

This is dF

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

As promised, the Ballad Of Mad Cow Disease.

When you last tuned in, we'd kicked off the Team Def Summer Holiday yesterday by heading to Stanley to buy me some Speedos. Before we actually left Disco Bay, the bridal unit and I decided to donate some blood at a local blood drive. Or rather, she decided to give some blood and teased me into joining her.

For you see, I’ve never given blood in my life. This is for a very simple and pure reason: I HATE the idea of a needle in my vein sucking blood out of me. I know it’s irrational, and that it won’t kill me. I suspect this fear stems from the time I had to give a blood sample, and the nurse stabbed me 17 times without finding a vein. By Attempt No. 18, I was perhaps understandably nervous.

Upon learning all this, KT did what any understanding bride of 11.5 years would do. She laughed in my face. At which time I decided it was time to face down my fears. Which I did.

So we went. And they screened us. And they rejected both of us.

Yes. KT was turned down because she’s athsmatic. And I was turned down because I am high-risk for Mad Cow Disease.

No, really. Apparently this is to do with the fact that I served on a US military base in Europe for two years between 1980 and 1996. The Red Cross explains:

In some parts of the world, cattle can get an infectious, fatal brain disease called Mad Cow Disease. In these same locations, humans have started to get a new disease called variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (vCJD) which is also a fatal brain disease. Scientists believe that vCJD is Mad Cow Disease that has somehow transferred to humans, possibly through the food chain.

There is now evidence from a small number of case reports involving patients and laboratory animal studies that vCJD can be transmitted through transfusion. There is no test for vCJD in humans that could be used to screen blood donors and to protect the blood supply.

Which means I can’t give blood because I lived in a high-risk area for vCJD for two whole years.

And that’s the story of how I started my holiday: by finding out I might have a variant of Mad Cow Disease in my blood.

Moo. MOO, I say! Come and get me, Vampire Lestat.

Etc.

We took it well. For the rest of the day, KT wouild call me The Mad Cow. And I would say in a bad East European accent, “I am not Mad Cow! I am Angry Cow! Why are you not my name be getting the rightness? All the timing with that."

Those of you who spent as much time as we did watching Sheep In The Big City may laugh along with us.

Yr blood is no good here,

This is dF