Rousers – "Magazine Girl" (1980)

I found my girlfriend

In some porno magazine

The Latin poet Ovid wrote about the sculptor Pygmalion, who created an ivory statue of a woman that was so beautiful and lifelike that he fell in love with her.

According to Ovid, Pygmalion asked Venus (the Roman goddess of love) to send him a woman who was as beautiful as the statue.  But Venus did him one better – she transformed the sculpture into a real woman named Galatea. 

“Pygmalion and Galatea,” an 1890
painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Pygmalion promptly married Galatea, and the two of them lived happily ever after.

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The singer of today’s featured song is a latter-day Pygmalion who falls in love with a beautiful work of art.  The object of his desire is not an ivory sculpture but a hot chick who is featured in a porno magazine.

Sadly, no deity transforms his two-dimensional photo into a living, breathing woman.

Worse yet, his mother finds the magazine and throws it away.  (“That’s no good for you!” she tells him.)

According to Shakespeare, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”  Truer words were never spoken – especially when you have a mother who gets all up in your business.

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When it comes to pop music, the Dutch absolutely poned the French, Germans, and Italians.

We’re talking the Shocking Blue (“Venus”), the George Baker Selection (“Little Green Bag”), Golden Earring (“Radar Love”), Focus (“Hocus Pocus”), Gruppo Sportivo, and – last but certainly not least – the Rousers, who gave us “Magazine Girl” in 1979.

I remember hearing that song and a number of others from the Rousers’ first album, A Treat of New Beat, on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show in 1980.

I’m trying to track down Jan and Cocke de Jong, the two brothers who formed the Rousers, so I can interview them for 2 or 3 lines.  I haven’t had any luck so far, but I’m going to keep trying.

Click here to listen to “Magazine Girl.”