Monday 19 March 2012

The Fulminators cover the Shocking Blue classic "Venus"



Yes, the long wait for new Fulminators product is finally over! But it's a bit of a cheat really, because it's well over a year old. To be honest, I've been too busy honing my acoustic guitar skills for the past few weeks to convene the lads for a recording session. But I know how antsy our public gets if there's too long a wait between releases, so I revisited a rather a substandard recording from our pre-vocal era and did some mucking about with it: speeded it up, selected a new bass sound (muted electric, in case you're interested), added a bass drum, and repeated the nice wheedly electric guitar break right at the end.

And now it's quite jolly.

Needless to say, the original is a genuine pop/rock classic - maybe the first great pop single to escape from the Low Countries (The Hague, to be precise). It reached No 1 in the US and No 8 in the UK and was huge hit everywhere else in 1970. Shocking Blue had the benefit of a female singer with a strong voice and a strikingly vampiric look - take a bow, Mariska Veres - and some interesting guitar sounds from Robbie van Leeuwen, particularly the acoustic guitar intro (which he mimes to with an electric guitar in the accompanying video, lazy sod) and the aforementioned wheedly electric guitar bit.



Bananarama did a crappy cover version, but then Marc Almond produced a dance version (HI NRG Showgirls Mix - please don't ask, I have not a clue) which has been a guilty favourite of mine for years (it's probably best not to watch the bimbos gallumphing around trying to dance while listening to it - most off-putting).

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