The most anyone has written about “I Can’t Dance” in nearly 20 years.

July 5th, 2019

Genesis
I Can’t Dance (The Other Mix)
I Can’t Dance (The Sex Mix)
In Too Deep (Live)
That’s All (Live)
On The Shoreline
Hearts On Fire
Is there a thinkpiece out there about how all the prog acts went mainstream all at the same time? Let’s make a timeline:

  • 1977 – Genesis, with Steve Hackett out of the picture, release And Then There Were Three, they immediately get the biggest mainstream hit of their career to that date with “Follow You, Follow Me.”
  • 1982 – Prog giants John Wetton, Geoff Downes, Steve Howe, and Carl Palmer combine their progressive rock talents and form…Asia, who score a massive adult-contemporary hit with “Heat Of The Moment.”
  • 1983 – Yes go full synthpop with 90215 and hit it huge with “Owner Of A Lonely Heart.”
  • 1985 – Howe and Hackett join forces to form GTR, the poor man’s Asia. Meanwhile, Peter Gabriel releases mainstream art-pop masterpiece So, which garners him pop uber-hit “Sledgehammer.”
  • 1986 – The Moody Blues release The Other Side Of Life, trading in the flutes and orchestras for a keyboard and scoring the hit single “Your Wildest Dreams” as a result.
  • 1987 – Pink Floyd, free from Roger Waters’ mommy and daddy issues, release A Momentary Lapse of Reason, which gives the world the “Learning To Fly.”

Selling out (a term I am not using derisively here) is hard work, and I think that the different levels of success you find here certainly prove that. Yes and Asia were able to find success by updating their sound for the 80s, but neither could get much further than that, and failed to capitalize off that success with their coming albums. Ditto for The Moody Blues, anyone remember anything they recorded after “Your Wildest Dreams?” And can anyone out there remember anything from GTR?

Pink Floyd managed a little better just by resting on their back catalog. You know what’s a great song? Pink Floyd’s “On The Turning Away.” You know what’s also a great song? “Learning To Fly.” You know what’s a fucking terrible song? Damn near everything else on that album. Pink Floyd would sit out the remainder of the 80s-sound era of rock and not record another album until The Division Bell (which also isn’t great but much more in the vein of classic Floyd). Post-Waters Floyd was a touring machine first, an album-maker second.

Of all these acts, the only one who managed to keep their pop momentum going was Genesis. Hell, not only were they able to score pop hit after pop hit from 1977 to 1991 with nearly all the albums they put out, they also were able to continue that pop streak with incredibly successful solo albums by Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford (Mike + The Mechanics are underrated dammit).

But all good things must come to an end. Even if Phil Collins hadn’t jumped ship after We Can’t Dance, I can’t imagine that the band would’ve been able to keep things going in a post-Nirvana world. At least, not in any respectable way. Let’s be real, if Phil Collins would’ve stuck around with Genesis, then we would’ve ended up with Genesis doing some version of that fucking Tarzan song. Comparatively speaking Calling All Stations is a less embarrassing move.

I’ll be honest, while I own a lot of Genesis, I do not own We Can’t Dance. I’m sure that it still has some remnant of their progressive roots on that album somewhere, that somewhere sure as hell isn’t “I Can’t Dance.”

“I Can’t Dance” is without a doubt Genesis as their most pop. While Genesis had their share of love songs, remember that many previous Genesis pop hits covered topics as heavy as drug addiction (“Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”) nuclear war (“Land of Confusion”) and…whatever the fuck “Mama” is about. Meanwhile, “I Can’t Dance” is a biting satire on…jeans commercials.

Man, the early-90s were a simpler time.

The early-90s were also a bit of a nadir for pop music. This was the era of easy listening, quiet storm, and smooth ballads. Other pop hits from around this time include the Celine Deon “Beauty And The Beast” song (which won a fucking Grammy), “You’re In Love” by Wilson Phillips, and Bette Midler’s “From A Distance.” Compared to those songs, “I Can’t Dance” is punk. Sure, it’s a stupid satire about jeans commercials, but at least its commenting on something. At least it’s not Amy Grant (who also was a mainstream pop star at this time).

Did “I Can’t Dance” need two “dance” remixes? No. Did it need one dance remix? Probably not. Did it need a remix called “Sex Mix?” Absolutely definitely not in a million years. But the remixes aren’t bad. “The Other Mix” was done by remix legend Ben Liebrand, and it has that big 80s sound that he was so good at. But the “Sex Mix” (sigh) is even better and sounds a little ahead of its time. It’s almost a proto-big beat tune, which makes total sense considering the remixers were Apollo 440 (before going by that name). Wonder if they ever drop this one in a DJ set?

I took these remixes from two CD singles, one for “I Can’t Dance” and the other for “Jesus He Knows Me.” Sadly, neither had any remixes for “Jesus He Knows Me,” which is a much better song than I can’t dance (with a far more relevant social message) but they did have some interesting tracks. The live songs are fine, they are what they are, live versions of decent Genesis tunes, performed aptly. But the real highlights here are the B-sides. “On The Shoreline” is coulda-been-a-single good. The simple-but-effective riff drives the song with good momentum, and Collins’ vocals are exceptionally strong. It’s a good, propulsive rock song. Meanwhile, “Hearts On Fire” (which is sadly not a cover of the song from Rocky IV) is a dope as fuck love song with a killer bassline and a downright awesome “check out what our samplers can do” breakdown. Fucking loving this track. Maybe I do need to buy We Can’t Dance? I’m nearly 40 years old now, I assume I’m that album’s intended demographic at this point.

If you found this post interesting and want to hear me ramble on even more about prog, then I’ll have good news for you in the coming weeks! If you didn’t find this post interesting and you don’t want to hear me ramble on even more about prog…um…I’m sure I’ll post some obscure game music soon!

Posted in B-sides, Genesis, live, remixes | No Comments »

Bleachers – Terrible Thrills Vol. 3 #4 (High Quality Vinyl Rips)

June 24th, 2019

Bleachers
Foreign Girls (featuring Ani DiFranco)
And, Nothing Is You
And here we are, the final chapter of Bleachers’ Terrible Thrills Vol. 3. This one brings us a reworking of “Foreign Girls” that features folk rock legend Ani DiFranco, as well as “And, Nothing Is You”  which is a remix of “Nothing Is U” that removes most of the electronic effects from the original and replaces them with more acoustic orchestrations.  Both of these new versions feel like more low-key, intimate versions of the originals. While the album versions both started quiet but then built themselves up to grandiose, bombastic finales, these versions both stay sedate for their entirety. I don’t think either surpass the originals (I like my bombastic pop songs) but they’re still great, and DiFranco’s contributions to the new version of “Foreign Girls” are fantastic.

Like before, I have cleaned these up digitally to remove as many imperfections, scratches and other issues as possible. I also gave both a slight loudness boost. If you load the first track into an audio editor, you’ll notice that the very top of the waveform at the loudest part is clipped off just a little bit, but I can’t imagine that it’s clipped to a degree where anyone could hear a problem with it. If anyone does pick up any audio problems with these though, please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix them. I think they came out pretty great.

As fun and exciting as Terrible Thrills Vol. 3 has been, if Jack decides to do this again for his next album, I hope he forgoes the “record club” format for something a bit more accessible. As I mentioned last time, I had to delay uploading the second volume for nearly a month because my copy came to me completely scratched. That’s not fun. I get the appeal of something like this; it gives the music an emotional value that you don’t get from a stream or digital-only copy. But vinyl is intrinsically an unkind format that is easily damaged and incredibly inconvenient. And while it’s (relatively) easy for me to rip vinyl cuts to a digital format so I can rock them on my MP3 player, not everyone is so lucky. Music should be easy to listen to, don’t you think so? At least the cuts were on standard records that preserved the recording quality relatively well, and Jack didn’t go the Joyful Noise route, saving exclusive cuts for shitty flexi-discs or other novelty formats (seriously, fuck that label).

Anyways Jack, if you’re reading this, maybe for the next series you could try bringing back CDs, the most underrated of formats. It’s only a matter of time before CD nostalgia kicks in, might as well get ahead of the curve!

Just don’t put it on tape. If you put it on tape I swear to god…

So yeah, enjoy the rips everyone! And if you missed the earlier releases in the series, you can find part one here, and parts two and three here!

Posted in B-sides, Bleachers, Complete Albums, remixes | No Comments »

Game Music for Depression

June 21st, 2019

Sorry for the prolonged absence this month. You see, what had happened was, after I put up three posts in one week, I was planning on taking a week off from writing. After that, I got ridiculously sick and could barely sit up in front of a computer, let alone compose rational thoughts about obscure music. So there went another week. Then just this week I was planning on getting something together when…well, some bad things happened that made writing a complete impossibility. To be totally honest, said things are still on my brain quite a bit, so tonight’s post is more of a forced attempt to get back into writing something, anything, than it is an attempt to put something cohesive and well-researched together. Sorry about that.

One downside (for me anyways) regarding my blog’s slow shift to even more obscure music is that it requires a hell of a lot more research. Gone are the days of me just throwing a bunch of Depeche Mode remixes up and saying some variation of “yo Depeche Mode is dope so check these out!” Gotta plan this shit out now. I mean, usually I do. Sometimes I can just dig out some random video game remixes from a CD no one has ever even heard of and call it a night. I knew I was holding onto these tracks for a reason!

 

Namco
Xevious (Beat Mix)
Xevious (Tekno Mix)
Namco In The 80’s (You’re The One For Me)
These three mixes are from a remix album that I bought a few months ago called 765 Mega-Mix. Why the numerical designation? I have no idea.

The album features six remixes of game music from Namco titles. About half of them are from games I’ve never heard of (if you’re curious as to what those titles are, click here). I bought it for the two remixes to the Xevious theme. Game music fanatics reading this probably know that Xevious is an important title in the history of game music, as a remix of the game’s theme by Hosono Haruomi of YMO was one of the first prominent game music releases in Japan.

These are not additional mixes by Hosono. Instead they are done by one Koji Orihara, who is best known for…well…nothing. Absolutely nothing. Dude’s Discogs page is a near-blank. He’s on a couple of other compilations and that’s it. I dunno, maybe his uncle worked at Namco or something. His mixes are good though, Orihara knew that it was best to leave well-enough along, so on both of his takes on the track he lets that memorable melody play over and over, and instead of replacing it, augments it with game effects and some good beats. Gimme more remixes to the theme from Xevious, gimme 2 LPs worth. I want them all.

Even more fun is “Namco In The 80’s.” As the title suggests, this track is a medley of music from 80s Namco titles. Specifically, it features (in order) Galaga, Pac-Man, Rally-X, Dig Dug, Mappy, and Galpus. Sometimes the remixes are bare-bones (the Galaga remix is literally just the game’s music with a beat tacked on behind it) but others rework and remake the songs more. The Pac-Man section is pretty rad. It’s not “Pac-Man Fever” rad, but hey, what is?

Again, apologies for the bare-bones slap-dash post tonight. Hopefully I’ll be up to writing more soon. And even if I’m not, I’ll be sharing the final volume of that Bleachers set the millisecond I get it. So I guess that’ll motivate me if nothing else will. Yinz take care of each other and hug your loved ones if you haven’t already, okay?

Posted in Game Music, remixes | No Comments »

A Rare Zelda Theme Remix (and more)

May 31st, 2019

It must be said that 1986 was a hell of a year for video game music. According to the VGMdb, only one game music album came out the year prior; The Return of Video Game Music. In 1986, nearly 40 records and singles with some connection to video games were released. That’s nearly one a week.

Some stone-cold game music classics came out that year. The first GMO releases with music by companies like Capcom, Namco, Sega, and Nintendo all went to shelves in 1986. Same for the Dragon Quest Suite, the first commercially released LP featuring a symphonic arrangement of a game music soundtrack.

Those are in-demand titles by game music collectors, but at least most of them have been re-issued at some point. For example, you can pick up CD copies of Famicom Music relatively affordably online (and I suggest you do, that’s a fantastic album).

But a lot of key titles from 1986 remain out-of-print and command insane prices online. One such title is this.

Heroes 21
ゼルダの伝説 (The Legend Of Zelda)
謎の村雨城 (The Mysterious Murasame Castle)

This is a two-track 12″ single. The A-side, as you can guess from the image above, features an extended remix of the theme to The Legend Of Zelda. The B-side features a mix of music from The Mysterious Murasame Castle. There is also a 7″ single with the same cover art and tracklisting, but that does not have the same music. The versions on that sound absolutely nothing like the ones here. The 7″ arrangements are more traditional, while these are wacky sample-heavy and much more experimental. They sound like Art of Noise by the way of Koji Kondo.

Speaking of Koji Kondo….

Every source I could about this record credited Koji Kondo as the performer on the album. Even on Discogs and the VGMdb. This is not true. Yes, the two tracks on this album are both based on music by Koji Kondo, but it would appear that he had absolutely nothing to do with this release. The actual performers are someone or something called Heroes 21. Their name is right there on the Obi strip, with the kanji for “performed by” (演奏) right under them. But that fact was somehow lost to time.

So, that begs the question, who the hell is/are Heroes 21?

At first, I thought that they might be the same people who were behind Bonus 21, the group credited on the the equally hard-to-find Mario Syndrome release that also came out in 1986. The title treatment of both artists is identical, and both releases are from King Records.

However, when I compared the credits on each release, I saw that only two people appear on both, and they’re both engineers. The arrangers on both albums are different. Mario Syndrome was arranged by Shunji Inoue (currently the VP of Bandai Namco). This single was arranged by Hiro Yanagida, the keyboardist for the influential Japanese rock group The Apryl Fool who went on to a mildly successful solo career as a prog rock musician.

Doing further research (again, thanks largely to the amazing resource that is the VGMdb) I found that King Records also released a Solomon’s Key/Mighty Bomb Jack single in 1986. That release is credited to Replica 21. The arranger on that is Yoichiro Yoshikawa, a composer who put out a few albums and also worked with Togawa Jun, writing the music on her signature classic, “Suki Suki Daisuki.”

So all the artists are completely unrelated. Perhaps “_____ 21” was some kind of branding effort by King Records to lump all of their game music artists together? There’s so little information out there about these records, even less so in English, that it’s hard to say. I don’t think King Records kept the “21” formatting going in future releases either, so who knows what the deal was.

Even without the mysterious branding, these are must-have mixes for any game music aficionado. As I said, they’re really out-there, very indicative of what was happening with electronic pop music at the time. Samplers were a big deal when they came out, so there were a lot of tracks like this at the time, stuff composed almost entirely of samples. If you dig this, I recommend checking out Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Technodelic and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Furturista, both are great albums built almost entirely out of samples.

And keep checking here to see if I ever score a copy of the 7″ version! Like I said, it’s totally different!

Posted in Complete Albums, Game Music, remixes | No Comments »

Bleachers – Terrible Thrills Vol. 3 #2 & #3 (High Quality Vinyl Rips)

May 30th, 2019

Terrible Thrills Vol. 3 #2
I Miss The Last Days of Disco
Don’t Take The Money (Demo)
All My Heroes/Hate That You Slow Me Down (with Muna)

Terrible Thrills Vol. 3 #3
Everybody Lost Somebody (with Julien Baker)
Good Morning After a Breakup/Vietnam Documentary

Better late than never.

After receiving a copy of Terrible Thrills Vol. 2 #2 that looked like it was used as a sharpening tool by Freddy Kruger, I got my replacement copy in the mail yesterday, alongside a copy of the third volume in the series. Thanks to Jack for personally responding and helping me get a replacement!

Neither copy look like they were sanding with a brillo pad this time around, so here you go.

Quick note regarding the audio quality though; even with pristine copies of these singles, they were pretty difficult for me to rip. These have a lot of quiet spots, odd intentional distortion effects, and sudden (also intentional) popping and clicking sounds. All of those things make removing things like (unintentional) pops, crackles and other surface noise very difficult.

I have a program called ClickRepair that I’ve been using for probably over a decade. It’s usually very good at scrubbing out any unwanted rice krispie-esque distractions from a record, but these proved difficult even for that powerhouse. Each time I tried to run it through that program, no matter what settings I chose, it would pick up the intentional distortion effects as clicks. The end result sounded like digitally scrambled garbage.

Thankfully, I have another program that also does this task called MAGIX. I mostly use that for EQ adjustments and surface rumble removal (it’s absolutely impeccable at that and makes it worth the price alone). I usually don’t use the click removal features on that because it alternates between too strong and not strong enough, but I was able to tweak it to knock out most of the more obnoxious crackles on each record. Some tiny imperfections remain, but vinyl is an imperfect format (as this entire ordeal clearly demonstrates) so they’re the kind of thing you just have to live with.

Most of the tracks sounds fine, but there are a few minor pops in the beginning of “Everybody Lost Somebody” that I just wasn’t able to scrub out. Sorry about that. However, other distortions in the recording, including some odd vocal clipping that come near the end of the song, are part of the recording so they’re not on me.

I do realize that 90% of the people who listen to these tracks won’t even notice these things, but I also realize the 10% who do will be the ones to leave comments, so I felt the need to elaborate.

Audio and shipping issues aside, these tracks are great. Julien Baker’s cover of “Everybody Lost Somebody” is fantastic. Like Mitski’s take on “Let’s Get Married” it strips the song down letting the lyrics speak for themselves more. I never noticed the lyrics “I think pain is sitting alone in the corner” before, great line. Muna’s “All My Heroes” feels like an amalgamation of modern-day autotuned pop and vintage 80s pop, also fantastic.

Of the “new” Bleachers tracks, which remix/rework album cuts, my favorite is “I Miss The Last Days of Disco,” which is a rejiggering on “I Miss Those Days” with added “disco” beats and vocal effects. It reminds me Antonoff’s other group Fun and “Some Nights.” Very anthemic.

Again, Jack has said that these tracks can be freely shared and copies, so please do with these as you wish and come back after part four comes out, as I’ll be sure to share them too. Just remember that it takes a bit longer for me to post them as I live in Japan and international shipping can be a real asshole. And if you’re looking for part one in the series, I got them here.

I also put all of these up on my YouTube channel so be sure to check that out too!

Posted in B-sides, Bleachers, remixes | 6 Comments »

YMO and Moog Inanity

May 28th, 2019

Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sandii & The Suntsetz and Sheena & The Rockets
Tighten Up/Idol Era/Baby Maybe
Haven’t found a YMO rarity in a while. I literally thought I bought all of them. According to Discogs, I currently have 80 releases that feature YMO as an artist, and I think that’s a conservative estimate thank to some Japanese-only releases that I have yet to add to that website.

Currently, YMO is celebrating their 40th anniversary with a re-issue campaign. While that would usually be a call for celebration, the YMO re-releases so far have been a complete travesty. Instead of focusing on collecting rarities, live material or unreleased material, they’re instead repackaging the albums as they were, just in overpriced “prestige audiophile” formats. Many of these releases cost upwards of $100, despite the fact that they lack anything in the way of bonus tracks. You’re buying a nice box and (allegedly) a nice-sounding record with some posters and other extraneous goods thrown in. Complete rip-off for sure. You know how inessential a YMO release has to be for me not to buy it? That’s really saying something.

I found this oddball remix/medley (which I doubt will ever see inclusion on any YMO re-issue) on the 1980 Alfa Special Disco Sampler, one of a series of records that Alfa Records sent to record stores in the late 70s to early 80s.

Of that bunch, this one is special because it’s the only one that features a unique mix, this medley of YMO and their two sister acts, Sandii & The Sunsetz and Sheena & The Rockets. If you don’t know anything about them, I suggest you read the “associated acts” section of my multi-part guide to YMO, where I cover both of these acts and many more!

 

Gil Trythall
Folsom Prison Blues
Harper Valley PTA
Yakety Moog
A Johnny Cash song sung through a vocoder is the kind of things that you didn’t know you wanted until you hear it.

These three tracks are from Country Moog, AKA Switched-On Nashville, which first came out in 1972. It’s one of the many, many (many many many) “Switched-On” knock-off records to be rushed to the market after the success of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach. It’s not the first “Switched-On” album I’ve featured here, and it will no doubt be the last, as I buy these things the instant any of them cross my path.

Of the Switched-On knock-offs in my possession, this is certainly…one of them. I was going to say that it’s unique, thanks to its blending of country pop and moog electronics, but I don’t even think that’s the case. I’m fairly certain that I own another country-themed moog record somewhere. If not, I’m sure such records exist. Hell, this isn’t even the only country-themed moog record by Gil Trythall, he followed it up with Nashville Gold a year later. That record has a cover of “Wichita Lineman” that I’m sure is just dope as fuck.

I don’t know much about ol’ Gil, other than the fact that he’s prolific enough to have his own Wikipedia page and is still kicking it at 88 years old. Go Gil! Hope you’re still plugging away with oddball covers of obscure country tracks when you’re not apparently working as a well-regarded avant-garde electronic music composer and educator.

Posted in Gil Trythall, Yellow Magic Orchestra | No Comments »

This post is brought to you by flying gnomes

May 19th, 2019

Four posts in a row of marital that one might deem commercial, I’ve earned myself a prog freakout.

 

Gong
Flying Teapot – Live ’72
Blues For Findlay – Live ’72

Continental Circus is a strange album, and not the way that most other Gong albums are strange. It’s strange because it’s really hard to track down. The album is a soundtrack to a forgotten film of the same name. It was first released in 1971. It wasn’t re-issued on CD until 1994, and that re-issue was only available officially in France. Ditto for the album’s 2010 vinyl re-issue, another France exclusive.

And, of course, if countless knock-off Kraftwerk and Neu! bootlegs have taught me anything, if a label refuses to release an album by a cult act, then the fans will end up doing it for them. Lots of bootleg releases of Continental Circus are out there. Discogs lists at least three different versions. Like a lot of other bootleg editions of out-of-print albums, many of the counterfeit CD pressings of Continental Circus also feature various bonus tracks, also taken from hard-to-find or out-of-print sources.

One version includes several tracks taken from various French TV performances of the early 70s. The version I have, released by the one-off Giacomo Records label in 1994, includes two live tracks, which are what I’m sharing tonight. These live tracks were recorded in Lyons back in 1972, and were only released officially a decade later on the Live A Lyons Part Two album. That was a cassette-only release. I did not know that there were tape-only Gong-related releases. Turns out there are quite a few of them. Thank god most of them are not for sale on Discogs. My Gong habit is bad enough, I don’t need to be the asshole who digitizes out-of-print Gong concerts from tape.

(Let’s be honest with each other, I’m eventually going to be that asshole.)

Thankfully, the asshole who duped these two live tracks were from a tape did a good job with it. It’s a bit muddled, but it’s hard to say that if that’s because it was taken from a tape or if the source material itself was less than ideal. Sounds good enough for my old man ears.

Both these songs are bangers, especially the live version of “Flying Teapot,” which cracks it at nearly 30 damn minutes. I don’t smoke weed. And in the past I’ve said that I’ve never felt the inclination to smoke weed. But if I lived in a country where legal weed was readily available, I’d light up to this motherfucker in no time. They didn’t call themselves the pot-head pixies for nothing.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Emergency Prince Remixes

May 12th, 2019

So I promised several people that the second I got the new Bleachers EP, I would rip it and share it here (Bleachers’ have given permission to anyone who has the vinyl-only release to do as such). However, when it finally arrived in the mail last week, I opened it up to see a gigantic gouge of a scratch on side two that made it literally unplayable. Yay me.

After reaching out the customer support at Bleachers’ store, I was told that they offered no refunds or exchanges for opened good.

After reaching out to Jack Antonoff’s (the man behind Bleachers) Twitter, he informed me that he felt “that was fucked up” and promised to send a replacement copy my way! So, I got to learn that Jack Antonoff is a pretty stand-up dude who likes to treat his fans right, and that’s cool to know, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s probably going to be at least another week or so before those tracks make their way to my blog. Sorry about that.

I can’t wait until the kids who grew up in the late-90s get influential enough to make CD nostalgia a thing so we don’t have to worry about the fragile nature of these vinyl-only re-releases so much.

So yeah, no Bleachers this week. But hey, Prince!

 

 

Prince
Letitgo [Caviar Radio Edit]
Letitgo [Cavi’ Street Edit]
Letitgo [Instrumental]
Letitgo [On The Cool-Out Tip Radio Edit]
Letitgo [Sherm Stick Edit]
Letitgo [(-)Sherm Stick Edit (J. Swift #3 Instrumental)]
Only Prince could write a song about a label dispute and make it sound like it’s about his dick.

Okay, maybe not his literal dick, but from a musical standpoint this track sounds very dick-centric. You can’t have a bassline like that, sing a falsetto and make me think you’re really penning a lament about the complexities of the recording industry. But yet, “Letitgo” is exactly that, a “fuck you” to Warner Bros. A musical sigh of a track where Prince literally waxes poetic about how his record label is stifling him.

I’m not entirely fond of Prince’s more R&B-titled tracks from this era, but that might be more to do with the sound of mid-90s R&B than Prince’s R&B sound in particular. In the mid-90s I was a grunge rocker metalhead, and the new jack swing style of R&B really drove me up the wall. Looking back, I think it’s a Pavlovian response. My brother was way into that stuff and my brother was also way into being an asshole to me. Maybe I can’t hear a Terry Riley-influenced beat without thinking of getting a beatdown from my big brother.

In the years since, (thanks to therapy) I’ve grown to appreciate the genre more. “Poison” is an all-time classic of course, and there are some other tunes I like from a nostalgic viewpoint, but something about the production of it still grates me. It’s just all beats and grooves, not enough hooks or melodies. And I’ve never come to Prince for beat-driven R&B (remember, “When Doves Cry” has no bass). I want to hear that guitar, his horny howls, amazing live instrumentation. Things that new jack swing ain’t exactly known for.

Still, the album version of “Letitgo” is a good amalgamation of the new jack sound and classic Prince. It has the funky, hip-hop influenced beats for sure, but the entire thing still has the organic vibe that made great Prince songs great. The drums sound like live drums, not a computerized backbeat. The guitar solo is short-but-rad. Even the little things like the tambourine jangle and the backing synths over the chorus, it has one foot in the past and one foot in the (then) present.

For me, the remixes of “Letitgo” while still good and worth listening to, are all inferior to the original album version. They all strip out the more organic and natural elements of the original. The “Caviar” edits transform the track into almost an entirely new jack swing piece, with a much heavier bassline and most of the instrumentation removed. It sounds like Prince singing over a rap beat. And it also has a completely extraneous added rap, by someone calling himself Young Soldier Of Time. This moron squawking that he has “to be real in ’94” is just embarrassing.

The other remixes also inject some hip-hop motifs into the tune, but they work a hell of a lot better. The dope “Sherm Stick” versions include a sampled guitar hook (that I know I recognize, but I can’t place) and this really cool yet hard-to-define bass drum beat that gives the song a good oomph.  The “On The Cool-Out’ edit is also an improvement. Instead of incorporating hip-hop into the track via new jack, it straight-up goes gansta with some effects and beats that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on The Chronic.

As the Prince re-issue and vault releases start to ramp up, it’ll be interesting to see what the estate does with this era of Prince’s music. There’s a lot of it, and a lot that remains officially unheard. But popular opinion of it at the time wasn’t all that great, and I can’t imagine that most people’s views of it have aged all that well. If the estate ever does decide that the remixes of fairly unsuccessful singles are worthy of official re-releases, then I’ll stop posting them. But until then, I got plenty nearly-forgotten (and still damn good) Prince that I’ll keep on sharing.

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least plug a few recent and upcoming Prince releases. Ultimate Rave, a 2CD/DVD set that combines both the underrated Rave albums with a live DVD of Prince’s New Year’s Eve rave is rad as fuck and well worth a purchase. And if you want to go the vinyl route, you can get both the Rave albums on (purple) vinyl now, along with fellow later-era Prince albums 3121, Musicology, and Planet Earth. They even come with download codes! Planet Earth holds up well, and with all that’s going on now, it sounds a hell of a lot less preachy and more (sadly) prophetic. 3121 is still good too. Musicology…eh…the single is good (Prince put out 37 albums, they can’t all be home runs).

Also, next month Warner Bros. will release Originals which features Prince’s original versions of songs that he gave to other artists, including his never-before-heard versions of “Glamorous Life” and “Manic Monday.” Words cannot express how stoked beyond stoked I am for that one.

I really want to commend the Prince estate with their work so far. They’ve done a good job of re-issuing stuff at a solid pace, starting with what was commercially available at some point and slowly branching out to the legendary “vault” material. Did you know that you can get nearly ever Prince album on iTunes now?! It used to be that if you wanted a legally-obtained copy of Crystal Ball you had to chuck out over $100 for a CD version. Now you can buy the sucker digitally for $20.

I know that a lot of people out there want Dream Factory, Camille and other legendary unreleased, allegedly completed, albums released. But, and I know I’ve written about this before, I hope they get to more out-of-print stuff first. Yo, The Family album is still out-of-print. All of Mazarati’s material is locked away somewhere, and that’s just prime for a deluxe re-issue that could include their version of “Kiss.”

And there’s Madhouse, and the (two) third Madhouse records! And so much live material that hasn’t seen the light of day since VHS or the early days of DVD. Give me that stuff first, then start digging more into the truly unreleased stuff.

Just don’t go the Bowie estate path and shit out a vinyl-only demos collection and charge seventy bucks for it.

Seriously, fuck that shit.

Posted in Prince, remixes | 1 Comment »

Who is that playing the guitar?

May 6th, 2019

The first week in May in Japan is usually “golden week,” a period where a number of national holidays are in a row to allow for a four to six day holiday. This year, with the abdication of the emperor and the ascension of a new one, extra holidays have been added, effectively giving the people of Japan a motherfucking 10 day holiday.

When I say “people of Japan” that’s a bit of a stretch. I sure as fuck didn’t get a ten day holiday, as I’m in the service industry. Ditto for just about anyone working retail. But a lot of office workers are enjoying an extended break, and good for them, they all work too hard and they deserve a break. But the post office also has a fucking ten day holiday. That means that, in a post office not 2km away from my home, my Bleachers EP is sitting in a box of packages somewhere. So, sorry to the new followers I’ve gotten who are checking up on my blog for those rips. It’s not my fault they haven’t shown up yet. Blame the monarchy.

They Might Be Giants
The Guitar (the Lion Sleeps Tonight) [Williamsburgh Mix]
The Guitar (the Lion Sleeps Tonight) [Outer Planet Mix]
Welcome to the Jungle
I Blame You
Moving to the Sun
The Guitar (the Lion Sleeps Tonight) [Even Further Outer Planet Mix]
I almost never, ever seen They Might Be Giants records or CDs here. I would imagine that the group’s lyric-focused college-rock doesn’t translate. But I got lucky yesterday when I happened to find the maxi-single for The Guitar just sitting out at Coconuts Disk in Ikebukuro for a steal of a price at 500 yen (about five bucks). Not only that, it was sealed.

Often I wish I could find out how these oddball and random releases make their way to Japan. Did a college rock DJ bring his collection to Japan and unload it one day? Did a wholesaler buy a shitload of random CDs cheap with the intention of dumping them off at various stores to make a quick buck? Did someone buy two by accident and decided to offload their extra? The world will never know.

In the 13 years I’ve been writing this blog, I believe that this is only the third time that I’ve shared They Might Be Giants tracks. This speaks to how well the group works to make sure their “rarities” don’t stay rare for very long. Nearly ever bonus track, B-side or remix that TMBG have ever released have eventually made their way to a compilation of some sort or another. The only fault I would give the band is that their compilations seems to have no rhyme nor reason to them. They really need a proper re-issue campaign with the rarities included all together. Who knows if we’ll ever get that though, considering that the band seems to still be putting out new music as a lightning pace. Did you know that they put out three damn albums last year?

I didn’t. Sadly TMBG are one of the bands that I’ve lost touch with sine moving to Tokyo. As you can imagine, the group doesn’t have much of a following here in Japan, this EP is the very first CD by the group that I’ve ever come across in the country, and the only vinyl I’ve ever seen are some 12″ singles for Flood-era tracks. A large part of my TMBG-fandom was seeing them live, and since I can’t do that anymore, I guess I just stopped thinking about them. Also, let’s be honest here, I love the group but their output a while ago wasn’t all that great. Nanobots was goofy, but completely forgettable, ditto for The Else and Join Us. Their albums for the past decade or so have just been hovering in three-star limbo. The last album by the group that I listened to with any regularity after its immediate release was The Spine, and the last album by the group that I absolutely fell in love with Mink Car (CYCLOPS ROCK FOR LIFE). Without the dangling carrot of their (still) amazing live shows, I just haven’t been able to keep interest in them. But hey, anyone know if those three albums that they put out last year are any good? I’d love to jump back on board the TMBG fandom if the tunes are there.

Anyways, about these tracks; the “Outer Planet” and “Further Outer Planet” mixes are a lot of fun, and make the trippy song even trippier. To be honest though, I can’t figure out how the Williamsburgh mix is any different than the album version. At first I thought it was just the album version, or a single edit, but it’s a bit longer than the album version. So hey, beats me. The B-sides are cute, 90s-style TMBG tracks with very witty and clever lyrics, “Welcome To The Jungle” is a hilarious-slight-of-hand, taking the title of the GnR classic and nothing else to create an entirely different song that is 100% literal about its titular jungle. “I Blame You” is a bit of a forgettable yet pretty mostly acoustic tune, while “I’m Moving To The Sun” is silly bit of hilarity about a man so fed up with someone that he’s packing his bags and quite literally moving to the sun. Maybe they met my brother.

Posted in B-sides, Complete Albums, remixes, They Might Be Giants | 2 Comments »

Madonna – You Can Dance Single Edits

April 25th, 2019

Madonna – You Can Dance Single Edits
Spotlight
Holiday
Everybody
Physical Attraction
Over and Over
Into The Groove
Where’s The Party
I’ve been obsessed with hunting down Madonna remixes for about as long as I’ve been collecting vinyl, so for about 15 years now. Learning that there were exclusive (and often very good) remixes of Madonna songs that were on vinyl were one of the reasons why I got into the format in the first place. According to Discogs, I own 101 releases that feature Madonna, and I assume that a good chunk of those are 12″ singles. I think that the only artists for whom I own more 12″ singles are probably Depeche Mode and Erasure, but to be honest I like Madonna more than both of those artists.

And while both those artists have some remixes or edits that are pretty hard to find, neither can hold a candle to level of rarity that some Madonna remixes hold. For example, did you know that there’s a mix of “This Used To Be My Playground” that’s only on a special Olympics-themed compilation called Barcelona Gold? Or that there’s a unique mix of “Human Nature” that was only included on a promo CDr that was never intended for commercial release? Madonna remixes are the Pokemon of music; there’s a million of them and I want to catch them all, regardless of quality.

If I knew the slightest about Pokemon, I would continue that metaphor to express the rarity/demand of these particular remixes. Instead I’ll just fall back on a crutch of a comparison and call them my holy grails. These mixes are from the You Can Dance promo LP, which was released solely to radio stations to promote the 1987 remix compilation You Can Dance.

You Can Dance is a bit of a footnote in Madonna’s discography, but the album was something of a big deal when it came out. It was one of the first remix albums released by a major artist, and featured mixes of many of her biggest dance-friendly hits, as well as an exclusive track, “Spotlight.” One thing that made the album stand out even among current remix compilations is that most of the songs are mixed together to create the feeling of a live DJ set. The only concrete break in the album is halfway through, as it was still primarily an LP release and such a break was needed to flip sides.

It’s a great concept and works great at parties, but didn’t lend itself to radio play. Hence, the creation of this special radio-only promo. It served as as a way for listeners to hear the newly remixed versions, while at the same time fitting them to into a more radio-friendly format.

The songs on You Can Dance weren’t the first Madonna songs to get radio-friendly single remixes. Hell, most of her singles from the era have separate, often radically different, single remixes. However, it’s the only album that locked those mixes behind a promo release (and an obscenely rare one at that). While many rarer Madonna 7″ singles would be released on commercially available singles, or make their way to a greatest hits compilation, all of the single edits for You Can Dance remain ultra-obscure rarities secluded to this release to this very day.

Some of the remixes aren’t very different to ones that are more widely available, to be honest. The version of “Spotlight” that was included on Celebration is pretty similar to this mix, with only a slightly different opening. Most of them, though feature some pretty notable deviations, especially in the breakdowns and instrumental sections, which are often heavily re-worked to be more dance friendly and use a lot of techniques that were common at the time, like vocal looping and reverb.

Discovering this record has re-kindled my interest in tracking down the remaining Madonna rarities I have yet to acquire. As such, I will hopefully update/finish my Guide To Madonna Remixes that I started on my other site eons ago. While a lot of people seemed to like that, to be honest I mostly did it for myself so I would know which remixes I still needed to get!

One final quick note about these rips; this record is absolutely flawless, with nary a scratch on it. I also gave it a good clean just to be sure before I played it. The resulting rip was nearly perfect, and once I ran it through my digital scrubbing I think I was able to remove damn near any imperfections, save for some incredibly minor sibilance. When “mastering” the recording, I made these tracks just a smidge louder than usual. If you ran them through a visualizer, you’d probably notice some slight clipping. However, you probably won’t actually hear said clipping, I didn’t. And making them just a tiny bit louder than usual gave them a much brighter sound in my opinion. They’re still far quieter and less compressed than the album versions, trust me.

Now that I got this one properly ripped and secured in my stacks, I don’t know what else I need to find in terms of obscenely rare Madonna remixes. Maybe the It’s That Girl cassette tape? Although the prospect of spending over $100 on a tape kind of makes me wanna throw up.

Tape is the devil’s format.

Posted in Complete Albums, Madonna, remixes | 4 Comments »

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