Vacation II: Day 4 – Bees on Pie

Since my quest for a clean-sounding mp3 of the Zit Remedy song ended up with my being in possession of an excellent freeware audio extraction program, I’ve been sifting through my video archives for any other unreleased or otherwise unavailable music worth ripping.

High up on the list was this song from the Pod People episode of MST3K…

Joel & The Bots – Idiot Control Now

…a send up of the vapid pop song and baffling recording studio sequence featured in the movie. The film is an incredibly weird and inept European attempt to cash in on both E.T. and Alien, featuring Trumpy, a lost space traveler who resembles the bastard child of Max Rebo and Alf, and who can do “magic things” through the power of stop-motion photography. The song wasn’t included on either of the MST3K music collections, presumably because of licensing issues. (The magnificent musical medley inspired by the Fugitive Alien films’ score was omitted for similar reasons, I suspect. Such a shame, too.)

You can watch the original version here (beginning at the 1:30 mark) and Joel and the ‘Bots superior rendition here. The full episode is also available as part of the second volume of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection box sets. Highly recommended.

I’ve previously mentioned the concept of mental mashups, how the brain takes it upon itself to blend two similarly-sounding songs into a single infuriating earworm. The examples I used before were The Cure’s “Close to Me”/George Michael’s “Faith” and The Avengers’ “We Are the One”/Heaven 17’s (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang.” “Idiot Control Now” comprises one half of another mix and match do-si-do, with this obscure, interestingly-titled bit of power pop as its dancing partner:

The Automatics – When the Tanks Roll (over Poland Again) (from a 1978 single; collected on Shake Some Action, Vol. 5, 2003)