According to the AMG:
Vinny Fazzari did an “Easy Listening” version in 2002 while The Luddites did a “Jazz” version in 1998.
Don’t know anything about the versions, but according to this “Hey You” has been covered by Furnace and Dream Theater.
I wish new bands would leave classic rock alone. More than likely it is just going to suck anyway compared to the original imho. Get your own ideas. Lame.
Yeah, like the Beatles and the Stones did.
Oh, wait…
The Scissor Sisters ain’t the Beatles or the Stones.
Not the point I was making.
I really really love Pink Floyd. The Scissor Sisters cover is a lot of fun. Thumbs up from me.
Why haven’t I heard of the Scissor Sisters before now? Are they actually famous?
Not being snarky … I really think this is the most obscure band I’ve seen on SNL since Portishead.
Nah. It depends on where you live and the radio stations you listen to, I wager. Around here, “Take Your Mama Out” was on incessant radio rotation, especially with the more adult contemporary stations like Mix 102. If it’s making adult contemporary stations, it can’t be that obscure.
While I do think they have better songs, I think their cover of “Comfortably Numb” is exactly what a cover should be: recontextualizing an old song in a fresh new way. It surprising, it’s fun, and it’s The Scissors Sisters and noone else. If you’re going to do a cover these days, do it really differently. (Unless you’re one of those singer-songwriter-with-an-acoustic-guitar types. You can get away with
more straightforward interpretations then.)
BTW, the Saturday Night Live performance was quite good. If you didn’t like them on SNL, chances are you’re not much going to like the album, either.
Oh, OK. I only catch about 15-20 minutes of musical radio a day, and that’s almost invariably classic rock or 70s stations.
I went and listened to the allmusic.com clip of the SS version. It’s a pretty nice clubbing-type song. Because the style is so different from PF’s version, I really don’t make the mental conneft to the original “Comfotably Numb”. It sounds too different, so I’m not holding it up against the original.
(Maybe if I could still do the bar-hopping thing, I’d have heard of this song. 
)
Another Pink Floyd fan here. I laughed out loud when I heard this. The BeeGees style is just so very wrong for the song it’s hilarious. But it’s a one joke song once you’ve heard it once who’d want to hear it again? Shame they couldn’t think of a way to include the guitar solos in some way.
The Scissor Sisters got their big break in the UK. In fact, they couldn’t get a US record deal but were snapped up by Polydor in the UK. Throughout most of 2004, they’ve been absolutely huge here. They performed at Glastonbury and sold out heaps of London and regional gigs, including Wembley. They’ve been on TV a number of times and fawned over by all the respectable music mags, so they’ve become very well-known in a short period of time. Their eponymous album sold over 1.3 m UK copies, I believe.
My feeling is that a British audience appreciates the tongue-in-cheek high camp of the Scissor Sisters very well. The fact that there’s only straight man in the band doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. This is the land that brought you (among other example) the Darkness, so a band which (as it did at Halloween in Brixton) performs in Rocky Horror costumes is well-received.
Now it seems they’ve headed back to the US on the strength of their UK success. Whether it’ll sell in the US remains to be seen.
PS: there’s another quite-funny Scissor Sisters cover out there. They do Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” in a loping slowed-down funk stylee.
I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, but I think the cover is hilarious. My wife bought the CD and it’s a real grower - lots of very good tracks, if you like camp kitsch and early Elton John soundalikes.
Didn’t catch this performance, and never heard of the Scissor Sisters. But it brings up a related question, “how do you like your covers?”
I, myself, prefer when a band does something different with a song. For example, I couldn’t stand Bauhaus’ cover of “Ziggy Stardust”. Why? They tried to make it sound exactly like the original. No thanks, if I want to hear that I’ll listen to Bowie. OTOH, I really liked Judas Priest’s version of “Johny B Goode”. Why? A complete reinvention of the song (complete with a very catchy metal hook).
I’m not opposed to bands giving their own feel to a song, but sometimes I guess it can be abominable. I’m not big on sacred cows in music, hey, it’s just a song.