Tunes

Are “Friends” Electric?

I’m programming and enjoying the music on GRRL Radio (you can see the songs they’ve just played here)..

Right now, they’re playing a wonderful cover of Gary Numan’s Are “Friends” Electric? by The Replicants, a side project made up of members of the post-grunge bands Failure and Tool.

Hey Mister

This is another song I’ve been listening to.

The story behind this delightful little ditty goes like this: a musician who goes by the name of Custom went out to a bar with his sisters. At the bar, he noticed all the guys hitting on his sibs and felt a little bit protective of them. As the night wore on, he himself was flirting with other women and it suddenly dawned on him: he wasn’t very different from the men making advances to his sisters. Duh. From this incident, he was inspired to write Hey Mister. It opens with

Hey Mister

I really like your daughter

I’d like to eat her like ice cream

Maybe dip her in chocolate

and it ends with this line sung over and over:

I hope I never have a daughter

You can check out the full lyrics here and download the MP3 and video here.

This song is full of delicious testorone-glazed sexual eeeevil that it appeals to my inner Scorpiopath. I give it the AccordionGuy thumbs up; this is definitely going in my busking repertoire. You might wonder how a guy who plays sweet accordion waltzes for an artist who writes romantic lyrics like “How long has it been since a boy made me blush?” can also get his jollies from Hey Mister. I blame it on a combination of Catholic school and aspartame.

I remember telling guitarist Neil Leyton how much I love this song and sang the first verse to him. He looked at me as if I had just suggested that cats are just egg rolls waiting to happen (which I think is true, anyway). Besides, how shocked could a guy who plays bass in CJ Sleez’s band really be (for Chrissake, the drummer’s name is “Fuckface“)?

Joey deVilla

Anonymous says:

August 21, 2006 at 4:46 pm

Here we are four years later and I'm still digging this song. For lyrics, Custom's notes and a link to the MP3 and video, check out http://www.teamcustom.com/fast_hey_mister.html.

Custom's also streaming Hey Mister along with a few new tracks at http://www.myspace.com/custom.