soldiers burping

I'm having a renewed love affair with Depeche Mode. They have a new album coming out AND! they're also playing the Garden in December (thanks for the heads up, Adena!)

I'm SO there and WILL be screaming like a silly little girl. Depeche Mode/Nitzer Ebb was the second concert I ever attended (The Cure/The Pixies/Love & Rockets being the first.) Depeche Mode put on an amazing show. I chirped about it in school for weeks afterwards to anyone who'd listen. Unfortunately, the only one interested was Kenny, the art student who was always in dire need of a breath mint. He had a retainer, you see...

I love this band dearly and cannot pass up the chance to see them live. Oh and FYI, boys and fellow lesbos, if you give a mix tape with a Martin L. Gore-penned song on it to the right girl, you WILL get ya some, get ya some. Trust me on this. In my case, I used "A Question of Lust." Worked like a charm. Subtle, right?

Anyhoo, I'm listening to Violator right now and "Enjoy the Silence" just finished up. When I first heard the song, which, as I recall, was on Earth Day 1990 (I was watching an Earth Day concert on MTV all day and they world-premiered the video during the show), I fell instantly in love.

Speaking of Earth Day, I was REALLY insufferable about the environment in the early 90s. Oh how I wanted to be aboard the Rainbow Warrior in Alaska with The B-52s, Alec Baldwin and the rest of that Greenpeace ilk ramming into oil tankers and freeing Flipper from fishing nets.

Instead, I was stuck in Jersey lecturing people about the horrors of animal testing while imploring them to cut up their plastic six-pack holders and buy dolphin-safe tuna. Furthermore, I wanted to be a filmmaker in the worst way so that I could piece together the torture of bunnies and space monkeys into a powerful snuff film with The Smiths' "The Draize Train" providing the soundtrack. Again, subtle.

Yeah, I was one of those.

But I digress... I got the Depeche Mode CD as soon as it was released, namely so that I could open up the liner notes and check the lyrics. Up until that point I was confused by Dave Gahan's warbling of a certain line so I just made do and sang along as best I could. This was my take on it:

"Pleasures remain / Soldiers burping"

I was all, "Soldiers burping? Wait, that can't be right. What the fuck, Dave?! This is such a nice song and you're talking about gassy servicemen? What.the.fuck?"

And then I read the lyrics: "Pleasures remain / So does the pain."

OOOOHHHHHHHHHH! Now that made sense. But, I still can't listen to that song without inserting my own lyrics. I kinda like mine better, come to think of it.

So, in the spirit of 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy and my own retardation, here are a few lyrical crimes committed by me and certain people I know:

"Take your pants down and make it happen."
The "Flashdance...What a Feeling" lyrics my friend's father misheard thereby causing him to ban the song from his household. Real lyrics: "Take your passion and make it happen."

"Ah... pussywillow!"
My sister's friend's take on "Push It" by Salt-n-Pepa.

"Two Pop Tarts! I need you. I need you!"
My friend's sister interpretation of Stacy Q's "Two of Hearts"

"Daddy-o! If you daddy-o! You daddy-oooooooooooo!"
Um, that's what I swore Mick Jagger was singing in "Start Me Up." NO IDEA where I got that from. NO FUCKING IDEA.

"Girls WHAT the boys?!?"
This one's courtesy of my mother. Years ago I was watching MTV and "Cum on Feel the Noize" by Quiet Riot came on while she was fishing around in a nearby closet. The chorus was a bit muffled through the sheet rock, you see, so naturally, my mother assumed there was all sorts of fucking going on in the song she could barely hear. She thrust her head out of the closet and exclaimed the above line in a shocked tone. Truthfully, I don't think my reassurance that the girls were in fact rocking the boys made her feel any better.

As it was, she was threatening to cancel the channel from our cable service. She thought it was a bad influence on us. Sheesh, you sing Cheap Trick's "She's Tight" in front of company one time and suddenly the MTV's in jeopardy. Such a tyrant.

Feel free to add your own mangled lyrics to the comments. J'adore this sort of thing. Danke.