Revenge Recommends: "Infected" by The THE

Back in 1986, when The THE released their second album Infected, they little realized that the deadly Ebola virus would be sweeping the world several decades later.

The infection in the song is not the terrible civilization-destroying pandemic that we now face, but rather the emotional infatuation for another that we feel when we fall in love.

Back in the 1980s, the big epidemic was AIDs, which gained major media attention the year before The THE's album, following the death of Hollywood actor Rock Hudson in 1985. Infected may be partial recognition of this, as the lyrics have a darker vibe than the conventional "love fever" narrative.

Lyrics:

I've got too much energy to switch off my mind,
but not enough to get myself organized.
My heart is heavy. My head is confused,
and my aching little soul has started burning blue!

I can't give you up till I've got more than enough.
Infect me with your love
Nurse me into sickness. Nurse me back to health.
Endow me with the gifts of the man made world.

When desire becomes an illness instead of a joy,
and guilt a necessity that's gotta be destroyed.

I can't give you up, till I've got more than enough.
Infect me with your love.
Nurse me into sickness. Nurse me back to health.
Endow me with the gifts of the man made world.

Take me by the hands and walk me to the end of the pier.
Run your fingers through my hair and tell me what I wanna hear
Will lies become truths in this face of fading youth
from my scrotum to your womb, your cradle to my tomb.

I can't give you up, till I've got more than enough.
Infect me with your love.
Nurse me into sickness. Nurse me back to health.
Endow me with the gifts of the man made world.

I can't give you up, till I've got more than enough.
Infest me with your love.
Nurse me into sickness, nurse me back to health
Tell me what it is that I want in this world!!

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!