Further Adventures In Success / mass Music For The Masses

Down another rabbit hole, all started by recently revisiting Adventures In Success by Will Powers. 

 

The single version/video featured in my #SynthPopSeptember pick of 30 songs over at Musk's Megalomania Media (or X, if that's a bit of a mouthful) last month. The absorbing dub version also closed out my Dub '83 selection a few weeks ago (and still available a little while longer for download). I originally posted about the song in May 2021, having discovered a re-edit by mass Thomas, which I'll come back to shortly.

 

Looking for the Adventures In Success video to include with my tweet, I discovered an additional "testimonials" video also produced in 1983 which I had never seen before. It's simultaneously hammy and a hoot. Introduced by "Famous Ligger" Lynn Goldsmith (aka Will Powers), the testimonials include

Tom Bailey ("Famous Twin")

Eric Clapton ("Famous Domino")

Brinsley Forde ("Famous Rasta")

Holly Johnson ("Famous Singer")

Meat Loaf (not uncredited)

David Joseph ("Famous Singer")

Tony Woodcock & Graham Rix ("Famous Arsenal & England Footballers")

Steve Winwood ("Famous Recluse" and "Famous Record Producer") 

Jack Lynch ("Not A Famous Person...Yet!") (I recognise the face but can't for the life of me remember who this person really is. Any ideas?)

Brinsley (Forde), Tony (Robinson), Drummie (Zeb) ("Famous As Aswad")

There's also an interesting interview with Lynn Goldsmith from 2015 available online at The Vinyl Factory, although the link to obtaining the Dancing For Mental Health album is long since dead.

Back in December 2020, when the Dubhed blog was just starting out, I was also exploring Bandcamp which is where I subsequently chanced upon mass Thomas and his epic re-edit of Adventures In Success. Splicing together the vocal and dub mixes from the 12" singles, it's a (nearly) 13 minute monster of a song. 

In my May 2021 post, I also referenced a shorter re-rub which was under 4 minutes. Sadly, that one no longer seems available and I didn't purchase it at the time. The full length re-edit however is still available as a name your price/free download.

 

And this is where I re-entered the rabbit hole for today's post. This probably should be a separate post in it's own right but what the heck.

 

Discovering that the original link/mass Thomas Bandcamp page no longer existed, I re-discovered that it had re-located. Not the only re-location, it turns out: in December 2020, mass gave his location as Belarus; now it's Ukraine which I'm hazarding a guess is mass Thomas' birthplace.

 

I cannot begin to imagine what a "typical day" for mass currently looks like but his output of re-edits has been eye wateringly prolific. Many of these, including Adventures In Success, have been uploaded on the re-established Bandcamp site in the past 18 months. When I started writing this post, the tally stood at 702 tracks; when I finished, it had already bumped up to 705.

 

Some are name your price/free, others are priced anything between 1.20 and 2.10 Euros, though I can't work out the reasoning for the difference. Genre- and artist-wise, there are clearly some favourites, but it's also pretty broad: Donna Summer rubs shoulders with The Beatles; Primal Scream sits with Ben E. King and Grace Jones; It's Immaterial share notes with Kid Creole & The Coconuts; Malcolm X stands with Sade and Warren Zevon.

Not all of them work, some have great ideas that don't quite pay off across the entire track, others sound inspired and provide a fresh perspective on a familiar song.

Here's a half dozen that probably cover all of the above bases, though I think they all edge into the 'like' category for me. In no particular order, I present Zero 7 ft. Sophie Barker, The La's, Bah Samba, Marti Caine and - brace yourself - Cliff Richard. Relax, the last one is a dub edit with very little trace of Sir Cliff's vocals remaining.

 

All available (at the time of this post) as a name your price download or you can click on the links below to try before you buy.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Been Tryin' Hard Not To Get Into Trouble

Listening to 4 Hero's remix of Nuyorican Soul sidestepped me into Photek's remix of 4 Hero and so to today's selection. Rupert Parkes began releasing music under numerous aliases in the early 1990s, Photek emerging in 1994 and being the most enduring of these, still in use today. Part of the hideously named genre, intelligent drum and bass, like his contemporaries Roni Size, LTJ Bukem and Goldie, what really appealed to me was the complex rhythms and jazz inflections. As a nod to the latter, a track on Photek's debut album, KJZ, was an acronym for Kirk's Jazz. By the start of the 21st Century, Photek's sound had taken a turn into house and techno, though as this selection highlights, there is an identity and character linking all of Photek's music. I've lost track in the last few years, and I have read that Parkes has subsequently produced music for films, TV and games, his last album release being the soundtrack to EA Games' Need For Speed in 2016.

 

For this selection, I've focused solely on Photek's remixes for other artists. It's great to listen to these in one go, personal favourites being Loose by Therapy?, Destiny by Zero 7, I Miss You by Björk and the one that started this all, Star Chasers by 4 Hero. The remix of Paul Simon was a welcome return in 2018 and one of the few redeeming tracks on the otherwise questionable Graceland: The Remixes album. I hadn't heard Photek's remix of The Faint in 5 years and it struck how well it would sit in a mixtape next to songs from John Grant's latest album, Boy From Michigan, particularly The Rusty Bull or Your Portfolio. And how else to end but with Single by Everything But The Girl? The original version is sublime; Photek's remix provides a similar shiver down the spine. Twenty five years old and still sounding like it could be out right now.

1) The Lonely Night (Photek Remix): Moby ft. Mark Lanegan & Mindy Jones (2013)

2) Destiny (Photek Remix): Zero 7 ft. Sia & Sophie Barker (2001)

3) Alien (Photek Remix): Lamb (1999)

4) Total Job (Remixed By Photek): The Faint (2003)

5) Loose (Photek Remix): Therapy? (1995)

6) Ride (Photek B21 Edit): Lana Del Rey (2012)

7) Lie Down In Darkness (Photek Remix): Moby (2011)

8) All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints (Photek Remix): Paul Simon (2018)

9) I Miss You (Photek Mix): Björk (1996)

10) Star Chasers (Photek Remix): 4 Hero (1998)

11) Single (Photek Remix): Everything But The Girl (1996)

Been Tryin' Hard Not To Get Into Trouble (57:51)