Pitchfork

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.