Back in the early 80s, it was impossible to turn on mainstream radio without hearing the pox of OliviaNewton-John's "Physical". I remember long car trips with the AM radio on, with some sweet voiced chanteuse singing every second song. Sometimes it was "Never Been to Me", but mostly it was Newton-John. To be fair, she captured the post-disco zeitgeist and turned in into sweet, sweet AOR fodder and made a tonne of money with what was probably her last hurrah in mainstream music. Good on her.
Enter Al Jorgenson.
Old Uncle Al has a knack for turning pop culture into sheer ugliness. His main band, Ministry, had been subverting music for years before he started branching out into numerous side projects, which included the infamous Revolting Cocks, formed with fellow industrialists Richard 23, Luc Van Acker and Chris Connelly. While they sounded a lot like Ministry, the Cocks were much more subversive, meldling sleazy disco with pounding industrial. In 1990, the Cocks released Beers, Steers and Queers, which featured a brutal and sleazy cover of "Physical".
Now, when this song came out, it was like a bomb going off. I remember being at CKUL in Lethbridge listening to the 12" that came in for this song. There had been rumours going around that the band was forced to change the song due to Newton-John's people having trouble with the sheer ugliness of the cover version. And, the rumours turned out to be true. There's an original version of the cover, and a cover that appeared on the album itself. The differences are significant. The original version's lyrics are much closer to the original Newton-John song. The second version can be more rightly termed as an homage to the original song, with altered lyrics and less obvious references to the original song.
The original (censored) version:
http://youtu.be/vpvHeTsgdUk
There's no Youtube video for the studio version of the album track, but there are plenty of live versions.
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