PiraTED

Who stole “Vogue” first? 🤷‍♀️ Most people credit Madonna and her 1990 hit “Vogue” for bringing house music & drag culture to the mainstream but it was this equally precocious pop appropriator who did it first. In 1988 ex-sex pistols manager Malcom Mclaren saw “paris is burning”, the yet to be released documentary about NY’s underground dance and ball scene, and wrote the song “Deep in Vogue.” The song and video feature “paris is burning” star willi ninja. the song hit #1 on the club charts in 1989 so - its pretty likely Madonna heard it when she first saw dancers Vogueing at new york’s Sound Factory. Mclaren sampled MFSB’s 1973 hit “Love is the Message”; he also borrowed the chords, bassline and horn stabs. Madonna’s producer Shep Pettibone sampled 1983’s “ooh, i love it (love break)” by salsoul orchestra which sounds similar because…it’s the same musicians, reworking their own song.

TISM is possibly the most notorious band in Australian rock history, mixing equal parts songwriting chops, culture-jamming panache, art-project long game, and Pythonesque absurdity. Now, forty years after forming and eighteen years after their last gig, Americans can finally claim their own piece of the TISM subversion pie with Collected Versus: a 2CD set that brings their greatest “hits” to U.S. audiences for the first time.