Song Of The Day 8/15/2013: Figures On A Beach - "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"

Quarterly Covers Report: The proliferation of the synthesizer in the 1980's led some artists to re-examine the popular music songbook and see if there were any hits they could remodel with keyboards and drum machines. Sometimes the updates made perfect sense. And other times, they were Figures On A Beach covering Bachman-Turner Overdrive's masculine rocker and biggest hit "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet."

Seizing the song from the meaty, scruffy hands of Canadian classic rock and running it through a cheese cloth of digital handclaps and stutters, FOAB takes BTO's youthful ode to erotic maturity and gives it the flat-out wussy treatment. This has a lot to do with Anthony "Not The Unibomber" Kaczynski's positively boyish, vote-for-me-for-student-body-president vocals. Imagine Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode having a stab at "We're an American Band." Same effect. Although this effectively neuters the song, there's something enjoyable about it. In fact, believe it or not, it was almost a hit. It got up to #67 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989. They were just 27 steps away from total validation. America decided to ditch the ring toss and go play Skeeball instead.

Fun fact: FOAB keyboardist Chris Ewen would later form Future Bible Heroes with Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson, and on their 2013 tour Kaczynski sang Merritt's parts since the songwriter decided to sit out the tour. This song was not performed, sad to say.