Today’s Song of the Day is a real challenge. Not only do I not have a copy of this song, I’ve never even seen records by the group itself. Ever have an itch you can’t scratch? Well, I’ve got one today. The song in my head is “Flesh Beat Fever” by Dubset. I recall seeing the video on one of my infamous MTV middle-of-the-night tapes, so I have the music video for this. Somewhere.

Way back in 1984 when Bruce Springsteen had just started making music videos (and thereby monopolizing MTV playlists from more worthy UK bands), I found that if I actually wanted to see the new rotation clips (which I followed weekly in Billboard) it would mean taking a videotape and timer setting it to record in the 2-6 AM hours in the hopes of snaring rare clips you’d never see otherwise. It was off of one such tape that I encountered Dubset. The music was twitchy, off-kilter, post-punk funk. The song is in my head right now, even though I haven’t heard it in over 20 years.

The clip featured the singer, Nicky Holland, going to a peepshow where he crawls into the booth and marries the dancer (Perri Lister) and gets into a life of domestic drudgery (complete with scowling wife and bawling infant) right there in the process with other pervs coming into the peepshow and then watching his life unfold for their “pleasure.” It was shot on 16mm and sure looked like a Tim Pope video, if memory serves.

There’s not much data out there on the Wild Wild Web on Dubset. It seems like there was a single album on US Elektra called “Word Made Flesh” with a promo 12″ of “Flesh Beat Fever,” and that’s it. I can’t find any references to releases outside of US territory, which is very unusual for what was obviously a British group. There’s no other singles that I can find reference to and certainly no deluxe CD remaster. If I mail order the album and single it looks like I’ll have it all.