Anyone care to recommend a good direct-drive turntable? I’m finding more and more problems with my Audio Techinca. Any advice would be appreciated.
Madonna
The Power of Good-Bye (Fabian’s Good God Mix)
The Power of Good-Bye (Slater’s Filtered Mix)
The Power of Good-Bye (Slater’s Super Luper Mix)
The Power of Good-Bye (Dallas Austin Low End Mix)
Of the 12″ Madonna singles I picked up in San Francisco last month, this one was my favorite and remains the only one I regularly listen to still.  It’s a great example as to why I love 12″ singles so much. One song. Four remixes. Each drastically different.
“Fabian’s Good God Mix” is a beat-heavy dance mix made for the dance floor, as is “Slater’s Filtered Mix” but while the “Good God” mix is a pretty straightforward 12″ mix, the “Filtered” mix changes the song radically. It transforms it into a crazy hardcore rave track with distorted vocals and a non-stop throbbing beat. But it’s not even the weirdest mix on the record. That would be “Slater’s Super Luper Mix,” which is nothing more than the lyric “freedom come” looped over and over again until it looses all meaning and devolves into unintelligible noise. It’s over eight minutes long though, and that one trick really wears thin after the first four minutes or so. Finally, there’s the “Dallas Austin Low End Mix” which is a sparse mix that is, not surprisingly, heavy on the bass. I enjoy that one as well.
Janet Jackson
Together Again (Tony Moran 12″ Club Mix)
Together Again (Tony Humphries Club Mix)
Together Again (Jimmy Jam Extended Deep Club Mix)
Together Again (DJ Premier Just Tha Bass)
According to Wikipedia, “Together Again” is one of the best-selling singles of all time, an ironic feat considering that the album it came off of, The Velvet Rope, was considered to be something of a commercial disappointment. I haven’t heard that album in its entirety in ages, but it does have two of my favorite Janet Jackson singles on it, this track and the excellent Joni Mitchell-sampling ” Got ’til It’s Gone.” For the record, my favorite Janet Jackson single is “Black Cat.” I need to re-record that 12″ single and put it back up here sometime.
The Tony Moran and and Tony Humphries mixes are good, but relatively standard as dance mixes go. The other two mixes are more interesting, especially since they feature entirely different vocals by Janet that slow the song down tremendously. I don’t know if I like them as much as the more upbeat dance versions, but they certainly match the bittersweet theme of the song better than the poppy, happy, delivery on the original version.
Search far and wide for used Technics turntables. There’s really no substitute.
DB
Yeah, that’s what I figured.
Black Cat is my favorite as well. It came out when I was in High School, and the local Classic Rock station (which played the typical Zeppelin, Eagles, etc. fare) said it had a new song, didn’t say who the singer was, and played the song. Everyone (and I mean everyone) that called in afterwards said it was awesome and wanted to know who it was…then the station said it was a new Janet Jackson song…I can only imagine the reaction from all of the 17 yr old white boys wearing Zeppelin shirts that just found out they had liked a Janet Jackson song.