Recently, I stated that I didn’t really like posting live versions of tracks, since they were, generally, of a lesser sound quality than the studio version of the same song.
Since then, I’ve posted live versions of two songs, and after the first one, I suddenly found that I had the first song from this post annoyingly lodged in my brain. And so I figured if I was going to have to suffer, then so should you.
Okay, brace yourself. This is truly awful.
Surprisingly, considering it made Number 6 in the UK Charts (!!!!) it doesn’t appear on any of those Now! albums I recently got my hands on, so, and I want to make this very clear, this is not a song that I owned until I actively sought it out to post here.
What it does do is provide me with an excuse to post this clip of Chief Cocaine Schnozzler, King Mullet-wearing hand-ball player Diego Maradona doing his pre-match warm-up routine when Live is Life comes on the stadium tannoy:
That’s pretty great, I just wish it was to a better record. And he really should learn to tie his laces up, that’s just asking for trouble.
And, whilst we’re on Maradona, a quick trivia question: which is the only English team that he has ever played for?
That’s right, Tottenham Hotspur. And here’s the proof:
This was of course, before the 1986 World Cup and the whole Hand of God incident which saw Argentina knock England out of the competition.
Oh yeh, well done Leicester, by the way. Chuffed for you.
Anyway, on to the cover version, and I’ll be honest, I umm’d and ahh’d about whether to post this in the “How To Do…” or the “How Not To Do….” thread, before deciding that nothing could be as bad as the original, and thus plumping to house it here.
Now, if you’re a Slovenian avant-garde band and you absolutely have to do a cover version of “Live is Life” – and they by no means absolutely had to do one – then the only way to do it is to turn it into what sounds like the National Anthem of one of the countries trapped behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Which is lucky, because that’s exactly what Slovenian avant-garde band Laibach did:
Laibach – Opus Dei (Life is Life)
More soon.
A History of Dubious Taste 