Someone’s had a little too much birthday cake.
The King is dead, long live the King! Had Elvis Presley not faked his death some 40 years ago, he’d have turned 83 today… and probably still twisting his artificial hips and having granny panties thrown his way to wipe his sweaty mug with. Ah, but even better than it being the King of Rock & Roll’s special day is the fact that is falls on a Monday this year. That’s the day we get all shook up and go searching for another hound dog of a lost hit from that forgotten musical Graceland we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy’s only going to be shown from the waist up this week, though given the indecent costumes she usually wears, that should be the norm… and the Sponkies are looking into how in the hell Fat Elvis didn’t win the famous postage stamp battle of 1993. Ladies and gentleman, today’s earworm is entering the building!
The 80’s were full of strange bands with even stranger names… but one of its most bizarre in both elements that had a huge moment in the ozone free sun was a British trio that went by the name of Fine Young Cannibals. The name wasn’t just pulled out of a dictionary hat, it was actually part of the title of a 1960 Robert Wagner/Natalie Wood movie that sounds more like it should have been one of that era’s infamous B horror movies.
I wouldn’t let a cannibal like him near my lips, dear.
FYC is best known in America for coming and going in one short, but tremendously successful fell swoop back in 1989 when their hits “Good Thing” and “She Drives Me Crazy” both became #1 hits. They both still get some airplay these days, so the Cannibals largely avoided the late 80’s black hole that consumed many other pop acts of the time. But they date back earlier than that… and we were about the only superpower that paid no attention to their beginnings.
We had more important things to pay attention to then…. like the Soviet Union attacking us with shitty muzak.
Former (English) Beat members David Steele and Andy Cox teamed up with the very……. unusually sounding vocalist Roland Gift to release their eponymous debut album in 1985. Their first single from that album, “Johnny Come Home” barely dented the US Hot 100. And this single was completely ignored by us Yanks altogether…
As scary a notion as it might seem at first… when a New Wave band gets a hold of a classic song and covers it, the result can actually be a very beautiful thing. It may seem sacrilegious to say someone can do a song better than Elvis…. but the Cannibals’ version of “Suspicious Minds” really is better than Elvis’. And that’s considering the fact that Roland Gift’s unusual way of singing can often drive me up the wall. For whatever reason, it works perfectly on this cover. What do you think, Elvis?
Eh…. it’s hard to please the King.
Well, thankya, thankyaverruhmuch for listening to another slice of my weird taste in music. I’ll be back next Monday with another hunk of burning love that won’t step on your blue suede shoes…
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