The art of the cover version as stripped down reconstruction. In which stiff upper lip English public school takes on Atlanta GA’s funkiest and comes home with a surprising away point.
In fact, the Flying Lizards were most famous for their 1979 chart hit cover of ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’, dismantled and then reassembled in similar robotic fashion to ‘Sex Machine’. But it’s the much less famous and far more difficult to find, James Brown cover that demonstrates the art of the Flying Lizards cover version at its best.
With every ounce of soul removed and practically every word, every syllable, every grunt of the original painstakingly and forensically detached from every other before being dipped in formaldehyde and then preservered, like a collection of natural history specimens, in ridiculously unemotional Queen’s English, the Lizards’ version isn’t just a different take on James’ original, it’s the equivalent of its anti-matter opposite. Anti-funk. Anti-human. Anti-soul. Anti-alive. Anti-sexual.
And whilst it’s a fascinating and addictive listen in its own right, the real genius of the Lizards’ version is that – just like anti-matter is to matter- it is completely bound to the original. It’s impossible to listen to it without feeling compelled to seek out and to reassess the original – and in doing so, to realise just how magical the creator of that original was.
Because in dissecting the original’s corpse into its constituent parts and then putting them under the forensic microscope the Lizards reveal just how banal the original’s lyrics really are and how minimal that riff really is when left out on the morgue’s slab, in the cold, on its own.
And when the reality of all that hits, then you appreciate just how much God-like intangible magic James Brown had at his disposal to be able to inject so much life – and so much funk – into such bare bones.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Lizards never bettered this track. In fact they never tried. David Cunningham, king Flying Lizard, retired the band soon after its release. He didn’t throw away his scalpels though - he just swapped forensic analysis for life-saving surgery and became a music producer.
Released 1984.
Originally released on the Flying Lizard’s album ‘Top Ten’, which consisted entirely of covers and is impossible to get hold of these days. However, the track is available on Rough Trade Shops’ difficult but not impossible to find ‘Post Punk 01′ compilation: Amazon