wellrespected: postpunk: Devo - (I Can’t Get...

Sunday, September 12, 2010

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

postpunk:

Devo - (I Can’t Get Me No) Satisfaction (1977 single version)

It’s slower than the Brian Eno-produced version on Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, but it feels funkier and Mark Mothersbaugh is more present, less detached on this recording. I’d say the difference between the two tracks is that the album version plays like a “clever” new wave cover and this one is a deliberate, statement-making kind of cover: Devo’s herky-jerky delivery exposes something neurotic and not quite right with the unsatisfied narrator. I mean, listen to that “babybabybabybabybabybaby” line.

I never really thought of it in those terms before, but I think I hear what you’re saying. Jagger’s delivery in the Stones’ original has always been tinged with haughtiness, where the man who can’t be a man because he doesn’t smoke the same brand of cigarettes as Mick is dismissed as a pesky annoyance, which makes his lack of satisfaction come across more as a symptom of frustrated entitlement than, I don’t know, some kind of heartfelt disappointment. When you hear Devo’s cover on the album, as slick as it is, there’s a chance it might just be an elaborate send up: “Oh yeah, sexual dynamo Mick Jagger isn’t satisfied. And get a load of these lyrics!” But this version, with the sharpness of the off-beat snare and the hollowness of sound on the verses, Mark Mothersbaugh starts to enter the same realm of David Byrne’s narrator on “Psycho Killer,” so tormented by these rigid and neurotic rules for living that when he encounters a man who doesn’t smoke the same brand of cigarettes and therefore cannot be a man, it registers as a fatal Does Not Compute error.

Anyway, this is still one of the Greatest Covers of All Time, so, re-blog.

Been hearing this song (album version) a lot at parties lately, but I’m digging the single version of this better. Also, I sort of feel the same way about the album vs. single version of Mongoloid. Hmmm…