Frankie Says Relax

 

For Mr. Mago, who was puzzled.

 Since I've referenced this band and their excellent song here several times recently, I'm going to post up the video version that was banned (!) in the U.S market when it first came out:

                                    Damn, I need a glass of icewater and a smoke after that

Now here is the version of this rampaging, danceable disco anthem to anal sex that was released in America! It too was juuuust this titty-close to getting banned for the suggestive sound effect at 0:15, which was deemed 'too liquid' by reporters on MTV:

                                     Oh go ahead.  You know you want to listen to it twice.

And here are the lyrics to the American version:

Mi- hi-hi-iiiiiine....
Give it to me one time now
Well, whoa, well

Relax, don't do it
When you wanna go do it
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna come
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna suck, chew it
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna come
When you wanna come

Relax, don't do it
When you wanna go to it
Relax, don't do it
When you want to come
Relax, don't do it
When you want to suck, chew it
Relax, don't do it
When you want to come
Come
Whoa-oh-oh

But shoot it in the right direction
Make making it your intention
Live those dreams
Scheme those schemes
Got to hit me (hit me)
Hit me (hit me)
Hit me with those laser beams
Laser beam

Relax
Don't do it
Relax
When you wanna come (come)

I'm coming
I'm coming (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)

Relax (don't do it)
When you wanna go to it (what's inside me?)
Relax, don't do it
When you want to come
Relax, don't do it
When you want to suck, chew it
Relax, don't do it (love!)

When you wanna come
When you wanna come
When you wanna come
Come

Get it up
The scene of love
Oh feel it

Relax, don't do it
When you wanna go do it
Relax, don't do it
Relax, don't do it
When you want to suck, chew it
Relax, don't do it

One time, one time, one time (hey!)
Come!

Yes children, it was 1984, the Stainless Steel Amazon was but an infant, and I was living on Capitol Hill in the middle of Seattle. Our top 40 Hit was 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' by Yes, until this song came down like dynamite! This song had them literally dancing in the street when it came out!  You heard it everywhere on The Hill.  It wouldn't be until 1991when local boys Nirvana pushed it off to the side with 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' during the height of the Grunge movement, which overlapped the post- Punk, NuDance club scene. I didn't make up those dopey genre names, btw.  That was the fault of The Rocket magazine, which was for a brief while even more prestigious than Rolling Stone here in the U.S.

I had just left my first husband and moved back to Washington.  I had gone right back to my club clothes and my Bowie-Meets-Bernadette Peters look, and there I was, on Welfare, not a dime to my name, literally an outcast living amid a whole community that was also on the edge of acceptance, and this song wasn't asking anybody for acceptance; it was celebrating what it was.  That needed to happen.  People saying 'Your foot is no longer on my neck, and I'll never express myself in terms of victimhood again.'

So you can probably see why it stuck in my mind.  Not only was it fun and irresistible, it was winning a kind of battle.  And face it - who doesn't like a rousing tune about butt sex?

I'd always wanted one of those huge block print t-shirts, the long ones that were so fashionable in the 1980's, that had FRANKIE SAYS RELAX on it, but I felt at the time that would be going a little too far, seeing as I had an infant and was at the beck and call of the Welfare agency.  Surprise visit by your caseworker? Oh, it happened.  And had it happened go me, sure as shit,  there I'd be in my 'Frankie' t and nothing else, fighting off the cockroaches in my little railroad flat with one bathroom down the hall - unacceptable living standards by Welfare's rules right there.  Nope. Sorry, Frankie.  And so I waited until last January, in 2020, to order myself the t I'd craved for so long.  Trump was in office.  It was practically a necessity.

The henbiddies in Lynden, home of Christian Separatists, homeschoolers, and the practice of Abusive Home Birth, absolutely freeze in horror when I come rocking up wearing this bad boy.  And they should.  That is the revenge that lifelong hatred enacts upon the ageing bigot.  Let them pay in anger, high blood pressure and palpitations for being shitheels.  Because they know what the lyrics to that song mean, and just knowing those lyrics is SINFUL and my t-shirt grabbed them by the throat and rubbed their noses in that meaning, right?  Ah, displaced blame.  Nothing like it.  Suffer, motherfuckers.

Do you have any memories associated with this song?  Do share them, in detail, in the comments!