Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Rarely Heard: The Flying Lizards - Summertime Blues



"The Flying Liazrds are remembered by most listeners as new wave one-hit wonders thanks to their deliberately eccentric cover of Barrett Strong's "Money," which became a surprise chart success in 1979. But The Flying Liazrds were in fact the brainchild of David Cunningham, a well-respected avant-garde composer, producer, and visual artist, and it became one of the first salvos in a long and fascinating career." (allmusic.com)  So the band was merely a side project, in which Cunningham took popular songs apart and put them together again as deliberately harsh and minimal versions. I was especially fascinated by their very first single, Summertime Blues; their version of James Brown's Get Up (Sex Machine) is similarly intriguing.

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