Strathclyde Students Union. A Thursday night. The DJ rarely said anything, preferring to let the music speak for itself.
But on this occasion he said he had an exclusive white-label remix of New Order‘s best known song. The floor filled…..but it turned out he was having a laugh at the expense of us so-called cool indie kids who only realised they had been caught out when the vocals kicked in:-
As our great friend and font of all knowledge, Post Punk Monk said on his blog back in 2014,
The development of Divine into a disco star was not an event that I ever would have predicted. But as sure as it happened, his initial brace of singles made with hi-NRG maven Bobby Orlando were enough to get him a club following where his notoriety was all of the publicity that his fans needed to give him a second career as a recording artist.
“Love Reaction” was an astonishing lift of the “Blue Monday” sound via what sounded like a slightly pitch-shifted sampling of the New Order record with Divine providing the rudimentary vocals and a cursory synth lead line providing a bolted-on melody to lend it its only differentiation from “Blue Monday.”
Love Reaction is bit of fun, not to be taken seriously in the slightest. I’m only surprised that New Order didn’t sue, but I’m guessing that the Factory bosses all thought it was a fabulous tribute, given what they were trying to do with the Hacienda.
The instrumental b-side is even more of a homage:-
mp3: Divine – Love Reaction (instrumental)
Wiki advises that Love Reaction went Top 30 in the Dutch charts…….
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
“If love is what you seek, you can come to me for … blue Monday…”
Can’t find where this is from, but a suit was apparently threatened against Bobby Orlando for plagiarism but never materialised. Shortly after the suit was dropped, Bernard Sumner apparently sang the lyrics to Love Reaction over Blue Monday at a New Order gig later that year.
In the early 80’s I was a DJ at a football supporters club, went on inbetween a band playing covers of the hits of the time and the bingo. I used to play Blue Monday and then fade this one in the middle and after her vocals, put Blue Monday back in. Nobody seemed to notice or mind.
Divine was brilliant. I was too young to be in clubs when Love Reaction & Blue Monday originally came out, but I picked up ‘The Story So Far’ on CD (catalogue number KNOB 3, naturally) in the early 90s. All great singles and, as you say, not to be taken seriously in the slightest.