Dead Or Alive
Nukleopatra
[Cleopatra]
Rating: 2.1
I remember it distinctly. I was in the sixth grade, wearing hightops with fat
laces, trying to find my nu-wave self in the midst of budding pubic hair and
inexplicable erections. MTV was still a new thing, and oh shit, Dead Or Alive
was pretty crazy for a kid learning to masturbate. There he was, that crazy
lookin' fucker, singing "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)." The man was a lesson
in androgyny if there ever was one, looking deep into my eyes and soul.
As I wandered through the aisles of Chess King, the Members Only jackets
triggering envy and lusty greed, he (she?) pranced around in my head, mocking
both my neo-1950s upbringing and the size of my penis. I got the single and
listened to it often, but the video disturbed me, so I could never fully
handle it. His tounge was so red, so very red...
Today, I find myself looking at the ridiculous cover of this disc, pondering my
responsibility to review it for you. You might be pleased to know that there
are what appears to be eight photos of the gender- bending Pete Burns himself.
He doesn't look much like a Pete with such shiny black goth makeup, though--
maybe a Thaadious, maybe a Simon, but the guy just doesn't cut it as a Pete.
At any rate, the disc's tray insert includes a great shot of Pete grabbing his
crotch, to which I say, "Hell, yesits! Givvit to me, baby! Ooh!" Not that
there's anything wrong with crotch- grabbing, other than putting it on
a CD with a flourescent orange background! My god! It's horrid! Such an
awful sense of color! Everybody knows that flourescent orange draws the eye
away from the nipple!
Pete's already waxy complexion is also in desperate need of some time in the
Bahamas, though he ought to be careful as I have a feeling he'd look a little
too much like his peers Milli Vanilli with a dark tan. But what does the disc
sound like? Do you really need to know? Well, it's all summed up in their
dreadful technoid cover of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel," but in hopes to save
you from the hell that is Nukleopatra, I'll say this: The description
that springs to mind while listening to this blaze- orange
disaster is "utterly vacant dance music that suggests fucking."
I had this in the disc changer for three weeks and was sent into convulsions
almost every time it played. The possibility that the poor goth kids down at
the 7-Eleven think this is cool hurts me deeply. Maybe it's just adolescence.
Regardless, Pete Burns, the pied piper of puberty, continues to play his skin-
flute through the streets, the children coming to join in, his stiletto heels
clicking on the sidewalk-- it's modern life in the space-age, folks. And it's
so bad it's funny.
-James P. Wisdom