Popdose » White Label

The Friday Mixtape: 7/9/10 — White Label Madness!

David Medsker — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:30:36 +0000

It’s White Label Friday, kids! When I say dance, you best dance, muthafucka!

Note: It should be said up front that most of these MP3s were acquired during the Wild West days of Napster, meaning that most of them are vinyl rips and have since been reissued on CD or higher-bit-rate MP3. But hey, free is free, right?

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: Medsker’s 2000 Beat Mix

David Medsker — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:30:19 +0000

First and foremost, I would like to extend a hearty thank you to frequent Popdose reader and commenter King of Grief, who volunteered to take my individual mp3 files for these mixes and stitch them back together so y’all don’t have to download the songs one by one. Take a bow, King.

I totally know that with this week’s mix, I’m going to lose half of the people who were excited about the Retro Beat Mix I posted last week. It’s only natural, really: many of us may have been listening to the same bands in the ’80s, but by the late ’90s and especially today, never mind being in the same ballpark – we’re all in completely different universes. Very little of the music on this mix is sexy or cool, but hey, neither am I. I’m just a pop boy.

This mix is actually mixed better than the Retro Beat Mix, however it’s a tad hot. It’s a bit more prominent on Side II, but still, it kills me to listen to those kick drums rattle. As one of the artists on Side II would say, please forgive me.

Side One

Download Side I

1. Apollo 440 – Heart Go Boom
I honestly don’t remember what led me to buy this album. CMJ Monthly, probably. Or perhaps it was just a by-product of music going to complete and utter shit after Kurt Cobain killed himself. I wanted something new, and this was my idea of cool at the time. This was easily my favorite song on the album. I just loved the idea of hard rock bar chords, reggae riffs, and drum & bass coexisting in the same song. I loved the idea at the time, anyway; I haven’t played this album since 2001.

2. Les Rythmes Digitales – Soft Machine
He now goes by his Christian name of Stuart Price, but in the late ’90s, when France was the epicenter of all things cool and hip, the France-born but England-raised Price had an idea: what if I pretend I’m French? So he came up with an alter ego, Jacques Lu Cont, and actually held press conferences where he spoke French and had someone translate for him. Boom, he has a recording contract, and Les Rythmes Digitales is born. The album is one big mash note to ’80s dance music, delving into house, funk, and synth pop. (He even got Nik Kershaw to sing on a track.) “Soft Machine” was never a single, but it’s easily my favorite song on the album because, for whatever reason, it reminds me of “Let’s Go All the Way” by Sly Fox. And I fucking love that song.

3. Robbie Williams feat. Kylie Minogue – Kids
As a dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile, I understand why some people have a problem with British pop. It’s just different than the stuff that comes out of the American labs. Still, I never understood why this song wasn’t a hit on our side of the pond. The chorus is about a mile wide, and Kylie sets the record straight: she’s been dropping beats since Back in Black.

4. Moby – Porcelain (Clubbed to Death Remix)
By the end of the ’90s and beginning of this decade, I all but stopped buying remixes. The window had closed on what I liked about remix culture, and the new style – rat-tat-tat-tat-taaaaaaaaaaat-boom! – bored the shit out of me. I bought this single on sight, though, solely because of the name of the guy who mixed the A-side. As the title suggests, this track was mixed by Rob D (check your Matrix soundtrack), who adds a whole lotta kick drum and strips Moby’s vocal out of it entirely.

5. Cowboy Mouth – Easy
One of these things is most definitely not like the other. I became a fan of the band from New Orleans after watching them give the almighty Cheap Trick a run for their money at a concert in Chicago, and that intro was just begging to be used in a beat mix, but for one small problem: it’s only eight beats long. So I got an idea. Since I can rewind back to the original starting point with the push of a button, why not just manually loop the beat four times? And so I did. The third one’s a little off, but oh well. And as it turned out, this song proved to be a good jumping point for the next one.

6. Fatboy Slim – Gangster Trippin’
That sound you heard was Lord Jefito spewing obscenities. You’ll hear it two more times, as he and the Fatboy aren’t the best of mates. Ah, but I loved You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, so his inclusion here was a given. Plus, it only makes sense to put this song before the next one…

7. Beastie Boys – Body Movin’ (Fatboy Slim Remix)
The definitive version of this song, for my money. I watched Norman do a DJ gig as the opening act for the Chemical Brothers, and I have to say, I’ve never seen someone whip a crowd into a frenzy like he did. He kept raising the tempo until he put on “All Day and All of the Night,” then he did something amazing: he turned down all the drum machines that were playing along to his tracks, and just let the Kinks do the talking. When the song ended, the crowd exploded. But that seemed like a bubble popping compared to when he played this. Then the place became a free-for-all. The poor Chemical Brothers didn’t stand a chance after that, though they certainly brought some noise of their own.

8. The Micronauts – The Jag
Few songs rocked my world quite like this one did. I’m not even sure how I found the soundtrack to Splendor, but once I saw that a) it was distributed by Astralwerks, and b) featured a ton of my favorite bands getting remixed by my other favorite bands, it didn’t matter that I hadn’t heard of the movie it represented. (I still have not even accidentally stumbled upon the movie that inspired this soundtrack.) And funnily enough, it would be “The Jag,” the only song or artist I didn’t know, that would turn out to be my favorite. One thing’s for sure: I will never hear “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” the same way again.

9. Art of Noise – Close (To the Edit)
I hadn’t mixed the song in a while, and it’s one of my favorite songs, ever. I play bass, but I thought about quitting after I saw Trevor Horn play this bass line live on that Slaves to the Rhythm DVD.

Side Two

Download Side II

Much like Side I, only faster.

1. U2 – Lemon (Perfecto Mix)
I usually hate remixes that change the chord sequences to the songs. It feels like the remixer is overstepping his bounds. Your job isn’t to rewrite the song – it’s to remix the song. This is the sole exception to that rule. Paul Oakenfold took the oddest song U2 had recorded at that point in their career and turned it into a dark wave masterpiece.

2. Simply Red – Fairground
Conversely, this mix is the reason why I don’t like it when remixers get involved with the songwriting. They were wise to emphasize the kick drum, since the drum track in the album version to “Fairground” is a bit too soft for beat mixing purposes. But the chords they inserted into the chorus just piss me off. What was wrong with the original chords? Love the song, hate this mix. And isn’t it funny that they’ll make a nine-minute mix of a song, but arrange it in such a way that the DJ will only play two minutes of it? Dude, do you want the people dancing to hear your work or not?

3. Chicane – Saltwater
Another nine-minute track of which just under three minutes is necessary, but I’ll cut this one some slack. This is one of the few electronic albums I bought at the turn of the decade that I play with as much regularity as my day job will allow. It’s just so damn pretty, and thoughtful. And I love Maire Brennan’s voice.

4. Fatboy Slim – Sunset (Bird of Prey)
Here’s how much slack I was willing to give Fatboy Slim at the time: he sampled Jim Morrison and I didn’t mind. Yes, the sameness of his arrangements was starting to reveal itself, but I liked the drum track he put together here. Sure, it’s nothing like the dismantling of “Block Rockin’ Beats” that he did on another track from the same era, but I liked that the snare was a little unpredictable, and that he was interested in other things than four-on-the-floor kick drum.

5. Electronic – Make It Happen
I always descibed this song as the Stone Roses getting remixed by the Chemical Brothers. In fact, it was such a massively awesome opening track that I actually had a hard time getting past it and listening to the rest of the album.

6. Pet Shop Boys – You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk
Nightlife is not the best Pet Shop Boys album, but it has its moments, and this is one of them. Trading out the album version’s “Rent”-like cool for some bleeps and bloops (plus that Mac voice program that Radiohead immortalized on “Fitter, Happier”), the Pet Shop Boys continued their longtime ownership of my soul.

7. David Gray – Please Forgive Me
I always do dry runs of my mixes before recording, and I kept running into a problem. There is a substantial difference in speed between the Pet Shop Boys tune and this, to the point where I would have to speed the former up and the latter down so much that they’d sound ridiculous. So I used the same looping trick that I did with “Easy” – made all the more difficult by having only four beats to work with instead of eight – knowing that “Please Forgive Me’s” drum track by itself wouldn’t sound as bad slowed down as the drum track plus piano would. I looped that drum bit about seven or eight times, then once “Drunk” was gone, slowly sped up “Please Forgive Me” to regular speed and let it loose. There is an official remix of this song, but it doesn’t touch the album version.

8. Radiohead – Idioteque
Somewhere in my Acid files is an unfinished remix of “Idioteque” where I spliced in bits of Blur’s “MOR,” Radiohead’s “Packd Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box,” and the Chemical Brothers songs “Elektrobank” and “Setting Sun.” It was pretty cool, actually. Not sure why I didn’t finish it.

9. Hooverphonic – Battersea
God, I love this song. It always struck me as the kid sister of Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy.” Lots of strings, busy drum track, and minor chords by the pound. The CD that I ripped this from was chewed up like a dog toy, so if the song sounds suddenly brighter, that’s where King of Grief cut from the beat mix to a CD rip of the album version.

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: Medsker’s Retro Beat Mix

David Medsker — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:30:04 +0000

In the comment section of last week’s White Label Wednesday column on ABC, Ted lamented that I didn’t beat mix the songs together. Today, he gets his wish.

I made roughly 15 to 20 beat mixes during my time as a DJ in college (1987-1991). I didn’t own any gear, so I either made the mixes after hours at the clubs where I worked or I used the gear of a fellow DJ friend, who was brave enough to have his gear in his dorm room. Since the mixes were all recorded on cassette, very few have made the jump to the digital realm. Easy CD Creator had an add-on earlier in the decade that enabled people to input analog sources into their computer, and it would record the tracks and break them down. The program was clearly designed for vinyl, thinking that it would create a new file whenever a song ended or faded out. With beat mixes, this was a little more complicated, since the idea is for there to never be a break. I’d end up with one 12-minute file, and then 15 ten-second files. I would then take this .wav file editor and put the songs back together. Wheee.

The worst thing about uploading the tapes was that the digital recording was really quiet, so I would have to amplify the tracks exponentially, which of course amplified the tape hiss as well. You don’t really hear it when things are jumping, but when a song got quiet…whoooooosh! I should just break down and get one of those USB turntables that can convert vinyl and cassettes, but there is just one problem: I have no money, and with two kids, no time. So most of my tapes are still tapes.

Except for this one. Recorded in early 1991, before the whole ’80s nostalgia thing got into full swing, I made the Retro Mix because I had all these older 12″ singles that just didn’t work well with the newer records I was buying, so I made a mix of nothing but older stuff. This mix was recorded on my friend Paul MacDonald’s gear in his dorm room, and his mixing board had one of the coolest things I had ever seen at the time: it could actually record about three or four seconds of music, which you could trigger like a sample! I know, totally not a big deal now, but I had to experiment with it by spinning the intro to the Power Station’s “Some Like It Hot” backwards. Those drums were just asking for it.

As for the beat mixes themselves here, well, some are good, and some aren’t. Just like any of my beat mixes, really. There’s always one colossal train wreck on each mix, and this time it’s the transfer from Arcadia’s “Election Day” to Level 42′s “Something About You.” The problem was that the percussion intro to “Something About You” is not at the same speed as the rest of the song, so as I was matching the Level 42 beats to the Arcadia track, I was using the middle of the song, and then cued the record back to the beginning. Whoops. I did something atypical with this tape in that I started several of the mixes “hot,” going live with the beat mix from the very first beat of the song. (Talk Talk, Chaka Khan and the Human League, to name a few.) Much of that was out of necessity, since “Don’t You Want Me” only has eight beats before the big keyboard riff hits. And if Chaka Khan looks wildly out of place with the other artists on this mix, keep in mind that the song was written by Green Gartside and David Gamson of Scritti Politti, and sounds exactly like a Scritti song. Green even sings backup.

Now, in case I didn’t already make this clear, be advised: this is an eight-year-old, pre-USB turntable transfer of an 18-year-old cassette, where I recorded a bunch of 25-year-old vinyl. And chewed up 25-year-old vinyl at that. Audiophiles might get hives listening to this, and most of Side II is not beat mixed. (There are only two beat mixes on the entire side.) But anyone looking for an ’80s party mix, or an insight into how my college-age mind worked, might get a kick out of this.

UPDATE: King of Grief to the rescue! He has graciously volunteered to assemble all of the tracks into one mp3 file. And what a marvelous editing job he did, too. Download Side I

Side I
1. Howard Jones – What Is Love?
2. Talk Talk – Life’s What You Make It
3. Thompson Twins – If You Were Here
4. Arcadia – Election Day
5. Level 42 – Something About You
6. Depeche Mode – Everything Counts
7. Chaka Khan – Love of a Lifetime
8. Wham! – Everything She Wants
9. Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls
10. Human League – Don’t You Want Me
11. Eurythmics – Sexcrime (1984)
12 OMD – So in Love

And for reasons that I’ve since forgotten, I added this bit from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon that still stands as my favorite Looney Tunes moment ever.

Side II
1. Power Station – Some Like It Hot
2. After the Fire – Der Kommisar
3. Boomtown Rats – Up All Night
4. General Public – Tenderness
5. The B-52′s – Dance This Mess Around/52 Girls
6. Adam Ant – Friend or Foe
7. A-ha – The Sun Always Shines on TV
8. Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Two Tribes
9. Go West – We Close Our Eyes
10. INXS – The One Thing

Download Side II

Next week: another beat mix, from 2000, using CDs and then-current songs!

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: ABC, “How to Be a…Zillionaire,” the remixes

David Medsker — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:30:29 +0000

Truth be told, How to Be a…Zillionaire! (1985) is probably my fifth favorite album by ABC. The Lexicon of Love (1982) is easily my favorite, followed by 1983′s much-maligned Beauty Stab (that sound you just heard was Mojo Flucke saying “Aww, HELL yeah!”). Their two most recent albums, the import-only Skyscraping (1997) and Traffic (2008), come next. You read that right: ABC released an album last year. And it’s damn good.

But 1985 was the year when remix culture caught up with ABC, so I was perfectly happy to buy the 12″ singles and leave the album to collect dust on the record store shelves. I finally bought it in the early ’90s, when I wanted those 12″ mixes on CD. I’ve still never listened to the album all the way through since then, though. I know it, of course, from listening to my friends’ cassette copies – ooh, does your copy have the version of “A to Z” where Eden says “I want you to kiss my snatch”? – but I would not call Zillionaire essential listening, largely because the 12″ mixes blow the doors off of the album versions.

I should qualify the statement that remix culture caught up with ABC. That’s technically true, but in the case of our first remix, it’s catch-up by means of going way back.

Be Near Me (Munich Disco Mix)
It may not seem like it now, but the decision to go full disco in 1985 was incredibly ballsy. Remember, earlier that summer, John Cusack played a character whose father was trying to talk him into attending a dance because there would be disco music, and “you kids are into that disco thing.” To which Cusack, exhausted by his father’s attempts to relate to him, says, “Disco?! Come on, Dad.” But ABC knew us better than we knew ourselves. The wah-wah percussion, the string hits…they’re completely unlike anything out at the time, which is why they sound so fantastic. This version is about 30 seconds shorter than the version that appeared on the US 12″. Not sure why they felt the need to fade it out so early, but I do know that I gotsta get me a damn USB turntable.

UPDATE: I clearly haven’t played the Zillionaire CD in a while, because the full-length mix of “Be Near Me” is on it. I’ve since replaced the edit with the full-length. I R baboon.

Be Near Me (Ecstasy Mix)
This is the B-side mix of the song, a remix/dub mix hybrid of sorts. It has a lot of the same elements as the Munich mix, but isn’t as, um, fabulous. Still, I love the processed ‘ecstasy’ and ‘next to me’ bits, plus the break where someone, presumably then-bassist David Yarritu, is slappin’ the bass.

How to Be a Millionaire (Bond St. Mix)
This was also a B-side mix, and a marked departure from the merely extended Nickel & Dime Mix that graced Side I of the US 12″. This mix is actually quite groundbreaking, as there are elements here that Phil Harding would go on to use in nearly every mix he had a hand in assembling. The galloping kick drum is the most obvious bit, but the delayed hand claps are not far behind. My favorite part, though, was the guitar solo, if you want to call it that. It’s just a guy running his pick down a string, over and over. How awesome is that?

How to Be a Millionaire (Wall St. Mix)
My favorite ABC mix, right here. This is from a 1984 UK 12″ single, and as you’ll quickly see, it bears little resemblance to its American counterpart. The instrumentation is nothing but a couple keyboard parts and a heavy kick-driven drum track. There is also a chorus of vocal samples in the ‘billions, billions, billions, billions, billions of pounds’ segment, along with some wild EQ trickery. We learn that this mix was the birth of the pick-on-string guitar solo, and they EQ’d the bejeezus out of that, too.

Vanity Kills (USA Remix)
This 12″ came several months after “Millionaire,” and the generic sleeve suggests that its release was an afterthought. Which is a shame, because they did a magnificent job stripping out everything that was overdone on the original track and making this sound as Lexicon-y as possible. They even put a beefy sax bit before the instrumental break, to suggest Steven Singleton was back in the band. (He wasn’t.) Even better, the B-side contained a really nice ABC Megamix, featuring four songs from Zillionaire, and ending with, of all things, “15 Storey Halo.” Go figure.

Tower of London (Extended Mix)
Also on the B-side to the US “Millionaire” 12″ single, this mix is nothing extraordinary, just an extended instrumental of sorts. But it has yet to appear on any official releases that I’m aware of, so if you’ve been looking for it, here ya go.

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: This Is Halloween

David Medsker — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:30:32 +0000

While Mr. Dunphy’s upcoming Friday Mixtape is one of the most esoteric tributes to All Hallow’s Eve that you will ever see, I chose a more commercial (read: lazier) path to celebrating my second-favorite holiday of the year. Now dance, you fuckers.

Ministry – Everyday Is Halloween
I hope your dancing shoes are comfortable, because this puppy is ten and a half minutes long. I couldn’t believe it when I moved to Chicago and people told me that “Halloween” was used locally to promote Miller Lite or something else anathema to everything Alain Jourgenson later stood for. Jourgenson has since dismissed this song, along with everything that came before Twitch, but I’m sure he doesn’t dismiss it enough to send back the royalty checks.

Dead or Alive – Something in My House
The remixers had their work cut out for them on this one, considering the album version acts like an extended mix. (That guitarist in Dead or Alive could shred, dude.) In fact, I prefer the album version to the mix included here – there is another mix that had dialogue from “The Exorcist,” but I can’t seem to find it – but this is the White Label column. Gotta use the remix.

Concrete Blonde – Bloodletting (The Vampire’s Song) (Extended Version)
Yep, even Johnette Napolitano played the 12″ game. The mix isn’t anything fancy, but what did you want from Concrete Blonde? Shep Pettibone with the Latin Rascals handling edits?

Squirrel Nut Zippers – Hell (Springfield Mix)
Of all the things I found on Napster in its heyday, this is one of my favorites. Some genius out there found the common ground between “Hell” and the many religious references on “The Simpsons.” A word of warning, though: once you hear this, you’ll never hear the song the same way again. But then again, once you’ve heard this, you won’t want to hear it any other way.

Cameo – Candy
Gotta have a little treat to go with the trick. (*Imitates Larry Blackmon*) Yesss I doooooo!

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: Simple Minds Six-Pack

David Medsker — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:30:03 +0000

A girl on whom I held a massive crush in high school gave me one of her senior year photos, and on the back she wrote, “I will never hear Simple Minds without thinking of you.” And even then I thought, “Um, thanks?” Which is no disrespect to one of Scotland’s finest, but rather that if you remove the upper case in that band name, it goes from compliment to slam in a nanosecond. Still, I knew she wasn’t calling me a simple mind; I played the daylights out of those guys for anyone who’d listen, beginning with 1984′s drumtastic Sparkle in the Rain. My rocker friends caught on the following year when the band released their breakthrough hit Once Upon a Time, but by then, I was going back and discovering the New Romantic beauty of New Gold Dream. Today’s WLW will highlight mixes of two songs from these three albums, hopefully without dredging up any painful high school memories in the process.

Promised You a Miracle
The one that started it all for many American Anglophiles, and arguably the last time Simple Minds did anything that didn’t fall in the shadow of something U2 had already done. Listen to that bass playing. The whole album is filled with that stuff. It’s wonderful.

Someone Somewhere in Summertime
I didn’t come upon this mix until a few years ago – and as much as I love the song, it doesn’t exactly scream ‘dance floor filler’ – but better late than never.

Waterfront
This was one of those great moments for me when a remix began exactly the way I imagined it would, with a four-bar repeat of the song’s first big drum fill. Steve Lillywhite didn’t really make remixes with the club goer in mind; the idea of the 12″ mix was still uncharted territory, so many of these mixes were done in the wee hours of the morning as a lark. Works for me.

Up on the Catwalk
I’m going to be honest – I was terribly disappointed when I first heard this mix. The thunderous drum intro this song has on Sparkle in the Rain is positively flattened here. In fact, the entire mix job strips the song of all its energy. Damn.

Sanctify Yourself
This was the first real Simple Minds mix (official one, that is) to dabble in editing. (The dub mix is much more cut up than the 12″ mix included here.) At the time, I remember being sorely disappointed whenever a mix didn’t sound like something Arthur Baker would have done. In retrospect, keeping the knives away from this rather pure song about salvation was the right call.

All the Things She Said
I was only 17 was this came out, and had no real idea of how the music business works (and still don’t), but even then, I had a sneaking suspicion that this mix was proof that the label was not putting much effort into this single. Then again, they did pony up for one of those Zbigniew RybczyÅ„ski-directed layered rinse/repeat videos (think Pet Shop Boys’ “Opportunities,” Missing Persons’ “I Can’t Think about Dancing”), which couldn’t have been cheap. Ooh, money pants! (Click for video, embedding disabled)

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: Summer 1986 Mixtape

David Medsker — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:30:01 +0000

From a personal standpoint, the summer of 1986 was, well, awful. I just graduated from high school, and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do from there. (Man, were we lucky in that regard; the kids today do not have that option.) My musical life was undergoing a similar transformation. I had always been a pop boy who dabbled in off-the-radar bands — which, in the early ’80s, meant Simple Minds and Icehouse — but after two seminal modern rock albums and a game-changing soundtrack appeared in the spring (Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration, the Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead, and the soundtrack to Pretty in Pink, for those keeping score at home), I could tell that a change was a-coming.

But a leopard doesn’t change his spots; while I was eagerly devouring this strange new music coming out of the UK, I was also still buying albums like Glass Tiger’s The Thin Red Line. Hey, like I said, I’m a pop boy, and today’s six-pack is a somewhat fond look back at when Pop Boy met Alterna-Boy.

Pet Shop Boys – Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)
Never mind being one of the greatest singles acts of all time – the Pet Shop Boys are one of the best BANDS of all time. This single marks the first of many PSB songs to be mixed by the once-ubiquitous Shep Pettibone, and he’s not subtle about his intentions, taking the original version’s syncopated, slightly industrial drum track and replacing it with a fat-ass kick and snare, with an actual bass guitar playing the bass line. True story: I used the contact information on the back of this 12″ single to try and score an interview with Shep for a college paper. His manager told me Shep was too busy…but would I be interested in talking with Junior Vasquez? Yes. Yes, I would.

The Models – Out of Mind, Out of Sight
Nick Launay is a fabulous producer, but as a remixer, he seems fond of doing the one thing that you should never do with a dance track: strip out the bottom end. Listen to the album version of INXS’ “What You Need,” then listen to Launay’s interesting but punchless remix of the song. Not even playing the same sport, is it? The same goes here. The album version for the Models’ lone US hit sports a monster rhythm section. Not so, the remix. But man, did I love all that vocal sampling, even though it sounds pretty silly now. And it’s completely rhythmless.

Level 42 – Hot Water
Are you up for an endurance test? This puppy clocks in at just under ten and a half minutes. Was man meant to hear Mark King and his Lloyds of London-insured hands slappin’ the bass for ten minutes straight? That, dear readers, is for you to decide, though I’ll confess that whenever I put this song on a mix tape for people, I would edit it down to a more digestible length.

Love and Money – Candybar Express
Everybody say yeah, say thanks, that songs like this exist. Of course, I quote that line despite the fact that I can’t stand it when songs refer to themselves. The timing of this record was quite convenient, as it arrived weeks after the above mix for “Opportunities,” so when I saw Shep Pettibone had remixed this as well, it was a no-brainer purchase. It appears that Shep had gotten a new toy to play with too, as he goes absolutely bonkers with the vocal sampling.

Depeche Mode – Stripped (Highland Mix)
Truth be told, as much as I love Black Celebration – and man, do I love this record – I did not run out to buy the 12″ singles. Maybe it was because I had no money. Maybe it was because there were so many of them, I didn’t know where to start. But I do know that when Napster came along, these were some of the first tracks I sought. Even better is “Breathing in Fumes,” the sped-up dub mix of sorts to “Stripped” that has a vertigo-inducing train horn.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Love Missile F1-11
This must be the UK 12″ mix (got this from Napster too), because the vocal phrases are the same as my US 12″, but the recordings are different. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the phrases are pieces of dialogue from “Blade Runner” (“Let me tell you about my mother,” “It’s a test, designed to provoke an emotional response”), thereby beating Rob Zombie to the punch by nearly ten years and also serving as, to the best of my knowledge, the first remix that had trouble clearing samples. As for the song itself, it’s pretty awesome in its boneheaded simplicity. And I love that it was produced by disco king Giorgio Moroder.

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: 9/16/09 Remix Six

David Medsker — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:30:02 +0000

All right, so maybe silence wasn’t the best approach to this column. You have to understand that I approached remixes more as a fan of the art of the remix, rather than as a fan of the band. This has left me a bit short when it comes to talking up certan songs or artists, but I think I’ve found a compromise: I’ll do it “Mix Six”-style, offering what tidbits about said song or remix that may still be bouncing around in my booze-addled cranium.

ABC – Be Near Me (Ecstasy Mix)
This was the dub mix, as it were, from the American 12″ single, but in many ways I liked it more than the Munich Disco Mix. The bass licks in the late break, combined with the processed “Ecstasyyyyyyy” vocals, were just too much for my teenaged brain to handle. I knew it was amped-up disco – which was still terribly uncool in late 1985 – but that is what made it so awesome.

Climie Fisher – Love Changes Everything (House Mix)
If I hadn’t been working in a record store when the song was released, I would have thought that this was Rod Stewart too, except that this came out at the same time as Stu’s (awful) Out of Order album. There is no mistaking this mix of the song for Rod the Mod, however, as the songwriting duo of Simon Climie and the late Rob Fisher hands themselves over to Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s remix slave Phil Harding, who proceeds to house the ever-loving shit out of them. Read into that statement however you like.

Hipsway – The Honeythief (Galus Mix)
However right or wrong this may be, I’m giving all credit for this mix’s awesomeness to Gary Langan, because he has done what I consider to be great work (early Art of Noise, Billy Idol’s “Flesh for Fantasy” remix, ABC’s Beauty Stab). The other producer Paul Stavely O’Duffy, however, I have generally written off as a guy that succeeded in spite of the bands that he’s produced, not because of them. Then again, our good friend Mark S. Berry loves Paul, so maybe I’m being too hard on the guy. Whoever was in charge of this mix, I like the occasional forays into crazy.

Kool Moe Dee – Wild Wild West (Extended Mix)
Imagine my surprise when Bryan “Chuck” New, the man that mixed this record, popped up on the remix credits for “Pictures of You” by the Cure. Never saw that coming.

Roxette – The Look (Head Drum Mix)
An import 12″ from the Netherlands, this is amusing in retrospect only because it’s the kind of mix that any of us could probably assemble from home today, but at the time was a cutting-edge piece of work, blending the “Ashley’s Roachclip” drum beat (known as the Milli Vanilli beat to the unenlightened) with the then-ubiquitous “Aww yeah!” vocal sample. I never did find out where that “Aww yeah!” came from. I heard it sampled in a million other records (“Bring Me Edelweiss,” to name but one), but never heard the original. Anyone? Bueller?

Scritti Politti – The Turntable Mix
This is EXTREMELY rare, so if you thought for even a nanosecond about downloading this, do it now, now, now. This was a B-side to the import 12″ mix to “The World Girl,” but not every pressing of “The World Girl” contained this mix, which segues “Hypnotize,” “Wood Beez,” and “Absolute.” Cabaret time, fuckers!

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: ’80s Dance Mixtape!

David Medsker — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:30:43 +0000

Since talking about 12″ mixes is like dancing about architecture, I’m just posting tunes going forward. So for all you fly mothers, get on out there and dance. Dance, I said!

Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation (United Mix)
Neneh Cherry – Buffalo Stance
The System – Don’t Disturb This Groove
The Rolling Stones – One Hit (To the Body)
Sniff ‘n the Tears – Driver’s Seat (Extended Version)

Print PDF

White Label Wednesday: Quincy Jones featuring Ray Charles and Chaka Khan, “I’ll Be Good to You”

David Medsker — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:30:58 +0000

Rare is the cover version that both compliments and improves upon the original. This is one of them.

I will not pretend to have a vast knowledge of either Quincy Jones or the Brothers Johnson. To me, Jones was the guy that produced Michael Jackson and occasionally mined Mellow Gold (am I the only one for whom Jones’ song “Just Once” and the movie “The Last American Virgin” are inseparably linked?), and, well, I had never heard of the Brothers Johnson until Jones covered them. I finally went back to hear the original version at Lord Jefito’s behest, and couldn’t believe how deliberate it was. It has a fantastic melody, but has no business slumming in the slow jam commuter lane. Jones’ version rectifies this. Recruiting Ray Charles and Chaka Khan to sing lead was gravy.

On paper, the remixes for “I’ll Be Good to You” are the kind of thing I would assemble in my wildest dreams. Arthur Baker doing the remix, and Omar Santana doing the edits? (*rubs eyes*) The only way that match-up would have been cooler is if it had been on a New Order record. The actual mixes, however, were not quite as dreamy. The 12″ mix is pretty bad-ass, with Oh-Oh-Omar doing his edit thing towards the end, while Baker uses a couple of Chaka’s vocal hiccups as percussion and slyly inserts a micro-snippet of Bomb the Bass’ “Beat Dis” when no one’s looking. If only more forward-thinking people had prevailed, however, when it came to the rap segment in the break. Yes, it was standard operating procedure to add a rap to any R&B song released in late 1989 and early 1990 (see: Janet Jackson’s “Alright,” Jody Watley’s “Friends”). Now, however, those bits just sound ridiculous. If someone threw that rap out in a duel today – or even ten years ago – their competitor would be well within his rights to literally set them on fire.

As for the other mixes, their names say it all. Good for Your Soul mix? Yep, it’s got a Soul II Soul beat, which sounds really slow compared to the LP version, but is about the same speed as the Brothers Johnson original. Around the House mix? Yep, it’s a house mix. It might sound trendy to make both kinds of mixes for this song – and let’s be honest, it is trendy – but keep in mind that the ability to change the speed of a vocal without changing the pitch was a recent technological innovation when these were made. Before that, slowing down a vocal meant lowering the pitch, as our good friend Chico DeBarge showed us last month. Who can blame Baker for wanting to experiment a little, and who can blame Jones for wanting his song to cross over to as many club scenes as possible? The house mixes were right up Santana’s alley, having done similar mixes with acts like Sweet Sensation, and he even gave New Order’s “Confusion” a similar makeover a few months later. They may be putting a square peg in a round hole when it comes to doing what’s best for the song, but when it comes to how remix culture operated at the time, the house and Soul II Soul mixes make perfect sense.

As for the music video, well, it might be the sweetest, most innocent video MTV has ever shown. A bunch of couples all googly-eyed for each other, and they even had some children playing grown-up, awwwwww. And Chaka’s footage (her hair may have been at an all-time high, but I think she looks damn good here) was clearly shot somewhere else, because she does not share a single scene with either Quincy or Ray. And God, do I love those late ’80s and early ’90s urban clothes. So fancy, and yet so awful. Running man!

Quincy Jones, Chaka Khan, Ray Charles

I’ll Be Good to You (12″ remix)
I’ll Be Good to You (Remix edit)
I’ll Be Good to You (Good for Your Soul mix)
I’ll Be Good to You (Good for Your Soul edit)
I’ll Be Good to You (Good for Your Soul dub)
I’ll Be Good to You (Around the House mix)
I’ll Be Good to You (Around the House dub)

Print PDF