We saw the Queen / Freddie Mercury biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" about two weeks ago. I enjoyed it, even though Danette is a much bigger fan of Queen than I am. I don't dislike them, and I certainly recognize their proficiency and importance, but they were never important to me. Regardless, the movie was enjoyable and it motivates today's choice for a "forgotten song".
Even though the movie ends with Live Aid (1985) and thus did not cover the 1986 LP "A Kind of Magic" from which the single "One Vision" was released (it was also on the Iron Eagle soundtrack, if anyone still remembers that movie...). "One Vision" received radio and MTV airplay at the time, but it's certainly not one of their better songs and has mostly faded from our collective musical radar...
So why choose this song? Because I want to introduce you to Laibach, a band which was (is?) important to me (albeit for other portions of their canon). What can I say about Laibach? They're exactly what you'd think an Eastern European, martial, art-by-committee, collective would sound like. It was never really clear if they were fascist or communist, or perhaps simultaneously both in defiant self-negation, but it was clear they were authoritarian. I've never been sure if they're serious, or if they are just the Slovenian version of Devo and the Church of the SubGenius and it's just a long running inside joke that I lack the cultural context to process (in the same way the Chinese Government struggled to understand The Onion).
Regardless, I'm using their "cover" of "One Vision" as an opportunity to introduce them here. Laibach occasionally did loose covers of popular Western songs, although whether they did them out of respect or disdain is not entirely clear either. Their "cover" is appropriately renamed "Geburt einer Nation" ("birth of a nation"), and is from the 1987 "Opus Dei" LP.
Are they for real? Or a performance art, musical version of the Colbert character? Either way, they convey more middle-class shock than Queen ever did...
Queen - "One Vision"
Laibach - "Geburt einer Nation"
P.S. Both Freddie Mercury and "Eber" (a pseudonym; lead vocals for Laibach) are both sporting the same 70s pornstache...
Thursday, November 29, 2018
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