Archive for March, 2016

10 Years Of Being Lost: Berlin’s Information

Monday, March 21st, 2016

berlin

Berlin – Information

“Hey cool, Berlin. I like Berlin and this is cheap I’ll buy this” I thought, as I stumbled upon this LP in a record store nearly a decade ago.

Berlin remains one of my favorite new wave acts, and I’ve always thought they’ve fallen through the cracks of history for no good reason. They’re usually dismissed as a one-hit wonder, but that’s not the case at all. Sure, “Take My Breathe Away” was a mega-hit that made any other success they had seem minute in comparison, but before that Moroder-penned tune launched them to super-stardom, the group scored a few minor hits with awesome tracks like “No More Words,” “Dancing In Berlin,” and the incredible “Metro.”

All those songs are from the group’s 1982 major-label debut Pleasure Victim. And if you check them out on iTunes, any record store, or even on Berlin’s own webpage, that’s usually regarded as their full-length debut. But that was not the case, as I discovered when I bought this record. Turns out that Information was Berlin’s first album, recorded and released in 1980.

Although to be fair, it’s barely a Berlin album. Most notably, Terri Nunn is nowhere to be found here, having left the group for a short time to pursue an acting career. Replacing her is one Virginia Macolino, whose vocal stylings are notably different than Nunn’s. While Nunn dipped her toes in a more detached and robotic vocals to match her band’s all-electronic sound, she was never afraid to let herself go and really belt it out when needed. Macolino, on the other hand, is full new wave, almost punk rock, in her approach. Her style reminds me heavily of Patty Donahue from The Waitresses, detached with an aura of irony throughout.

Macolino isn’t the only change. This early incarnation of the group also features a different bass player by the name of Jo Julian, who also served as the album’s primary songwriter, alongside guitarist Chris Velasco (who did stick around for the band’s more well-known records) and original vocalist Toni Childs (!!!) who is credited as a songwriter for four of the album’s tracks. Keyboardist John Crawford, who served as the primary creative force for the band’s biggest years, only contributes to a handful of tracks here.

The result is a drastically different sounding record when compared to what would come just two years later. While Pleasure Victim is clearly influenced by the poppier side of synthpop that was just beginning to make itself known thanks to acts like The Human League and Flock of Seagulls, the Berlin of Information is far more robotic and futuristic. Again, comparisons to The Waitresses could be made here, as well as Gary Numan and pre-Dare Human League. Pleasure Victim was all about sex and romance, Information is far more of a socially conscious record, touching on themes like nuclear war and the drollness of middle class life, while bouncing back and forth sci-fi themes like robots and mind control as well. The only song on Information that sounds like the Berlin we would come to know is “A Matter Of Time,” which actually was a pre-Macolino track that was originally recorded with Nunn, with that version appearing on their greatest hits album.

Aside from that one track, everything on Information remains woefully out-of-print and hard to track down. It was only released in 1980, and from what I can tell it only got a single pressing. Turns out that I was lucky to score my copy for less than five bucks, good copies online usually go for between $20 and $40. Not a buried treasure by any stretch of the means, but a bit on the pricey side.

Equally hard to come by is information by the band members who left after Information. According to Discogs Jo Julian went on to work with some metal acts, including Alkatrazz and Samson, but that’s a pretty big geographic/style switch, so I suspect that might be another Jo Julian.

As for Virginia Macolino, for someone who never broke through to the mainstream she certainly got around. Before Berlin she fronted the punk act Virginia And The Slims, of which you can find an incredibly in-depth write-up on by a former band member here. After Information she returned to her punk roots with the hardcore act Beast Of Beast. They never made it anywhere either, but they did manage to record one album, 1983’s Sex, Drugs and Noise. It pretty rare now and goes for a mint online and one listen will tell you why – it’s a pretty damn great hardcore punk album, totally revolutionary and ahead of its time. More people need to hear that one.

After that, I can’t find much else. Apparently she dated Joey Ramone for a while in the 90s, so even though she wasn’t recording music professionally she was probably still involved in the scene at that point. Sounds like she’s had one hell of a life.

Information isn’t Berlin’s best, I still think that would go to Pleasure Victim, but it’s a great time capsule showcasing the pre-MTV era of synthpop, a darker, more eccentric sound that was still a couple years away from the shine and polish that acts like Duran Duran would give it. Of all the out of print albums I’ve found by accident while writing this blog, it’s one I treasure the most.

Posted in Berlin, Complete Albums | 1 Comment »

10 Years Of Being Lost: Fish Story Will (Still) Save The World

Friday, March 18th, 2016

A lot of these posts to celebrate my 10th anniversary cover genres, themes and other overarching threads that have been present on my blog for the past 10 years. But tonight’s post is just one song, one that’s really important to me.

Gekirin
Fish Story
Fish Story (Silence 1975 Version)
No movie has ever moved me as much as Fish Story. I think I’ve seen it over 10 times now, and each time a scene near the beginning of the film nearly brings me to tears.

The world is doomed. A comet is due to smash into Earth in mere hours, destroying all life on the planet. Tokyo is deserted save for three souls inside a record store. One man is a fatalist who is eagerly awaiting the planet’s demise. Another is a customer still in denial. But the clerk is still convinced that earth will be spared because, “Music will save the world.”

I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

It’s hard to stay optimistic these days, isn’t it? Seems like in the 10 years since I started this blog the world’s been nothing but bad news peppered with false hopes and dashed expectations. We stand on the verge of America’s most terrifying general election to date, and the world is still on the cusp of utter destruction, as serial killers disguised as CEOs pump millions of dollars into misinformation campaigns to delay action on climate change.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep your head in the light. Things get dark. Things got so dark for me a couple years back that my anxiety went into overdrive and fear of the unknown nearly crippled me into a soul-crushing depression on the eve of my move to Japan. I managed to get myself out of that funk (thanks to Yes) but I still sometimes come dangerously close to sliding back into it. I read the news, I think about the future, and I just want to crawl into a hole and bury myself inside.

But then I remember, music will save the world.

How?

Yeah, so that’s the thing. I don’t know. But I believe it with every fiber of my being. Music has the power not to just change the world, but to literally save the fucking planet. It has the power to save the environment, stop terrorism, cure cancer, eradicate crime and make puppies even cuter. You name it. Music is life. Music can save the planet and music can save you.

“Fish Story,” and now I’m talking about the song, not the actual movie, is in Japanese. But the lyrics honestly don’t matter. As the movie explains, they’re pretty much gibberish. But the song saves the world. And when I listen to the song, I reminded how it saves the world, and that gives me hope for my world. No matter how silly that sounds.

Fish Story will save the world.

If you want to watch Fish Story, I highly recommend skipping the horrendous Region 1 DVD and instead grabbing a UK copy. The Region 1 edition by Pathfinder Pictures is not anamorphic (meaning there are vertical and horizontal black bars on the screen at all times) and the subtitles are burned in, making them hard to read. Additionally, from what I’ve read they’re also occasionally inaccurate and omit some key details during the film’s amazing conclusion.

If you can’t get that, then look for a torrent or check Netflix, it occasionally pops up there. Just don’t give Pathfinder Pictures your money, they’re idiots who bought the film off a Korean distributor instead of going the right (aka more expensive) route and getting their hands on a proper master.

I believe that music will save the world from most disasters currently facing us, but sometimes theft and public shaming are the only ways to save the world from bad media distribution.

And for more songs from Fish Story and more information on the song and its composer, check out this post.

And don’t forget, Fish Story will save the world.

Posted in Gekirin, Kazuyoshi Saito, soundtrack | 4 Comments »

10 Years Of Being Lost: I Like Bad Music

Tuesday, March 15th, 2016

If there is one thing this blog has taught me, it’s that  I have bad taste in, well, just about everything.

I guess that’s not entirely true, but in my search to find weird and hard-to-find records, I’ve discovered that I’m more likely to enjoy a substandard piece of entertainment that does one unique thing than I will a by-the-numbers, well-executed work that everyone falls head over heels for. Why else would I own the complete discography of Fireballet?

And it goes well beyond music. For example, one of my favorite movies of all time is Pretty Maids All In A Row. It’s a comedy about a womanizing high school guidance counselor; his favorite student’s affair with a hot teacher; and a series of grizzly murders taking place on campus. It stars Rock Hudson, Telly Savalas and Roddy McDowell, and was written by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

It’s great.

Just kidding, it’s a fucking mess. But it’s fascinating mess! And it’s filled with situations, sub-plots and characters that you just don’t see in more polished work. I love it because its rough around the edges. Ambition, originality and just plain eccentricity goes a long way with me I suppose.

And I think that shows with tonight’s music, a selection of some of the…lesser tracks I’ve shared over the years that I still unapologetically love, no guilt with these pleasures.

Okay, maybe a little guilt.

Billy Idol
Heroin (Durga Trance Dub)
Heroin (Durga Death Dub)
Heroin (Don’t Touch That Needle Mix)
Heroin (Smack Attack)
Heroin (VR Mix)
Heroin (Needle Park Mix)
Heroin (Overlords Mix)
Heroin (Nosebleed Mix)
Heroin (A Drug Called Horse Mix)
Heroin (Ionizer mix)
Was this in the soundtrack to Hackers? I feel as if it should’ve been in the soundtrack to Hackers. Or at least The Net.

I actually just re-watched the video of this and to “Shock To The System,” the other single from Idol’s Cyberpunk, his failed 1993 album that all but completely destroyed his career. I like a few tracks on that record and I think it’s underrated, but even I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a lost classic. Reading about its release sure is interesting though. Did you know that this album was controversial? Apparently, many of those involved in early online communities, such as the the WELL, thought of it to be bullshit and Idol to be poseur. This was even though Idol went out of his way to seek advice and guidance from those in that community during the production of the album. It seems that some just couldn’t get behind the idea of a celebrity using the Internet as a means promotion.

I bet none of those people are among the 40+ million who follow Kim Kardashian on Twitter.

Dolby’s Cube
Hunger City
Howard The Duck
It Don’t Come Cheap
Don’t Turn Away (Lea Thompson Vocal)
Howard The Duck (Mega Mix)
I’m On My Way
Vinyl re-issues of movie soundtracks are hot shit at the moment. I blame/credit Death Waltz for starting the trend. And while I think it’s really starting to get out of hand (I just bought a glow-in-the-dark re-issue of the Fright Night soundtrack), I don’t think we’ve reached maximum saturation yet, mainly because the soundtrack to Howard The Duck hasn’t been re-released yet. And that’s a fucking shame.

BECAUSE THE SOUNDTRACK TO HOWARD THE DUCK IS FUCKING GREAT.

Thomas Dolby. George Clinton, Stevie Wonder. Joe Walsh. They all perform on this album, and they’re fronted by Lea Thompson, who is a shockingly good rock singer. I want to hear her sing “Cherry Bomb,” I bet it would sound incredible.

My favorite of the Thompson-fronted tracks from Howard The Duck isn’t the theme song (although it’s rad), instead it’s “Hunger City,” an intense, 80s pop rocker that really channels the anger and energy of pop-rock like Pat Benatar or even some early Joan Jett. There’s a desperation to the lyrics, and to Thompson’s powerful delivery, that have a surprising aura of honesty to them. This song feels like it was written about someone’s real struggles, and not the struggles of a duck trapped in a world he never made.

The other songs are good fun, but “Hunger City” is a lost classic.

Bell & James
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (12″ Remix)
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (Instrumental)
I love this song so much that I almost typed this entire section in all caps with every sentence ending in exclamation points. THAT’S HOW GOOD THIS SONG IS!!

This is the title track to the film of the same name, and it more or less just tells the story of the film. So not only is this song a funky masterpiece of 70s soul, it also does you the service of saving you from having to watch The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, because that is a bad movie that’s not good. I know I said that I like a lot of things that other people consider to be bad, but this is one instance where I share the critical consensus: that movie is a pile of dog shit.

The song is dope though, some might say it is the second-best song ever written with the word “fish” in the title.

Posted in Bell & James, Billy Idol, soundtrack, Thomas Dolby | 3 Comments »

10 Years Of Being Lost: Gone But Forgotten

Monday, March 7th, 2016

When I started Lost Turntable my goal was to shed light on lost music, but I was primarily concerned about lost songs by well-established bands.  But over the years some of the most fun I’ve had writing has been when I’ve covered acts that have fallen through the cracks completely. Sometimes they were acts that were big for a minute in their native countries and then vanished. Other times they were cult acts with a few minor hits before calling it quits. But every once in a while I’d find an act that seemed completely lost in time, having never scored a hit when they first formed and never found any sort of following since.

I’ve always been most interested in these acts. We all know what life for mega-huge rock stars is like, that’s been covered to death in film, TV and even in songs by mega-famous rock stars (thanks Joe Walsh). We also have some idea as to what life is like for the has-beens and one-hit wonders of the pop world. If it wasn’t for them, the entirety of the British reality TV landscape would dry up overnight.

But we never hear about the never-wases. Makes sense I guess, no one wanted to hear about them when they were attempting to be around, why on earth would anyone care about what they had to say now?

Well, I care! I want to know. I wonder how many people from failed bands manage to parlay their broken dreams into something at least tangentally related to the music biz. A lot of one-hit wonders and cult acts end up working as song-writers. The dude from Semisonic helped write Adele’s 21, y’know. But what about the guys in Radioactive Goldfish or anyone who was in a group like Spizz or Fischer-Z? Maybe they have hella interesting stories too. I bet the saga of nearly making it, while not as personally fulfilling for those involved, is probably more interesting than a lot of the rags-to-riches stories we usually here.

Here are songs by people and bands who never made it, or made it for about five minutes. May they one day be well-known enough to be forgotten.

Apollo Smile
Let’s Rock
When I first posted this track back in 2009, I wondered aloud, “What ever happened to Apollo Smile?” The “real life anime girl” was a mainstay of my teenage years, I frequently would see her name on the guest lists of comic-cons, and she would occasionally pop up on Sci-Fi Channel to host some random anime show. In the late-90s she even made her way to video games, lending her voice to Ulala, the groovy protagonist of Sega’s Space Channel 5 games.

And then she seemingly vanished without a trace. No more anime specials, no more comic cons and no more video games. The scene that she helped to cultivate had seemingly outgrown its need for her. But I wanted to know what the hell actually happened to her. So much so that I even tried to track her down for an interview a few years back.

Thanks to her Wikipedia page, that was actually shockingly easy, as it listed her last-known place of employment as a dance teacher for a small private school. Emboldened with a sense of journalistic desire to share the world the story of what happened to Apollo Smile (I mean, c’mon, this could totally get on A.V. Club today) I sent out a few emails inquiring about the chance of an interview.

Never before had I been shot down as hard for an interview as I was for that one. I’m not going to go into details. But for anyone out there wondering, Apollo Smile does not want to be found.

If she had agreed to that interview, I definitely would’ve asked her if she got clearance to use the Led Zeppelin sample that’s in this song. I bet the answer would’ve been no.

Lisa Dal Bello
Bad Timing
I’m kind of cheating here, because Lisa Dal Bello was moderately famous in her native Canada, but for the rest of the world she’s probably a complete unknown. Fucking shame.

When I wrote about Dal Bello back in 2011, I focused on her 1984 powerhouse whomanfoursays, which was produced and co-written/performed by Mick Ronson of Ziggy Stardust fame. I still stand by that record. It’s great, and now that you can get it digitally on Amazon and iTunes, I suggest you do. It’s an amazingly unique record. And while parts of it sound dated, some of it still sounds remarkably ahead of its time. Her voice is really off the charts, and the songwriting is top-notch.

Whomanfoursays was a bit of a re-invention for Dal Bello. In the late-70s Dal Bello was a pop star with a disco/dance bent, kind of like a Canadian proto-Madonna. She had some success with that formula, got a Juno Award (Canadian Grammy) for her first record, but didn’t have much success in terms of sales. And by the early-80s I suspect that she was getting fed up with the pop world, letting her dissatisfaction manifest itself in this blistering track that takes aim on the facets of the music industry that screwed her over hardest. I hope someone sends this track to Kesha.

As I said before, Dalbello managed to salvage her career with whomanfoursays. It wasn’t a massive smash, but songs from it got covered by Queensryche and Heart, and she went onto record two more very well-regarded albums before moving on to what is no doubt the much more lucrative commercial jingle market. Utterly fascinating, and anything of hers you can find is totally worth checking out.

Havana 3 A.M.
Blue Gene Vincent (Live)
The big Clash side-project/off-shoot is of course Big Audio Dynamite, and I’ll be writing about them sometime this month. But there was also Havana 3 A.M., the oddly-named project featuring Paul Simonon, bassist for The Clash. Havanna 3 A.M. only released one album, and I’m going to level with you right here, it’s not particularly good. It’s not bad, but it sure as hell ain’t memorable.

Except for this track, a tribute to the late-great Gene Vincent, which is about as perfect an amalgamation of rock, country and rock-a-billy you’re likely to hear.  The album version is good, but this live rendition is even better, and injects an intensity and energy that the studio version is lacking. I found this on an I.R.S. Records promo cassette tape, a find so incredible that it single-handedly made buying that cassette deck worth it.

And it’s sure as fuck better than The Good The Bad and The Queen.

Slow Bongo Floyd
More Than Jesus (SBF Mix)
More Than Jesus (Irresistible Force Mix)
Open Up Your Heart (11 O’Clock Mix)
Open Up Your Heart (Piano Mix)
So far the acts I’ve featured tonight have some sort of following. Apollo Smile may be nearly forgotten today, but there’s a “nearly” there. Someone out there still cares about her. Lisa Dal Bello had a live album come out last year, so however small, there’s still a market for her work somewhere. And sure, Havana 3 A.M. might be the lesser of Clash off-shoots, but they’re still a Clash off-shoot, a fact that will forever grant them at least the curious Google search from time to time.

But Slow Bongo Floyd? No one gives a shit about Slow Bongo Floyd. They have a poorly-managed Facebook page, and it has a single, solitary “like” that was no doubt given by the person who created it. Slow Bongo Floyd is about as forgotten as a band can get.

And that’s a real bummer. While their album isn’t great, their singles sure as hell should’ve been more popular than they were. “More Than Jesus” is an especially awesome tune, and how it didn’t manage to at least be a minor hit during the time of The Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays is anyone’s guess. It’s a great psychedelic dance/rock tune, madchester all the way. It’s groovy as fuck, and “I Love you more than I love Jesus” is a hell of a line to build a track off of.

From what I can gather, Slow Bongo Floyd was really just one guy by the name of Michael Patrick Jones. As that’s about one step away from “John Smith” in terms of name popularity, I can’t find a single thing on the Internet about his post Slow Bongo Floyd work, so if anyone would like to enlighten me I’d be forever grateful.

Posted in Apollo Smile, B-sides, Dalbello, Havanna 3 A.M., remixes, Slow Bongo Floyd | 4 Comments »

10 Years Of Being Lost: The 12″ Single Remix

Friday, March 4th, 2016

I thought long and hard about what I would do for the 10th anniversary of this blog. While I’ve never been a big fan of self-congratulatory retrospectives, I am unabashedly proud that I’ve managed to keep this site going for 10 damn years. As I mentioned a few weeks back, nearly every single MP3 blog that inspired me to create this site no longer exist. A few of them, like Lost Bands Of the New Wave Era are still up in some sort of archival form so you can at least read about the bands in question, but most have been scrubbed entirely from the Internet. I can’t even remember the names of most of them.

But it’s not just the Internet that’s changed in 10 years, my life has been crazy. When I started this site I was working for a crummy online DVD retailer and living in a junk apartment in Pittsburgh. Since then I went back to college to get a second degree, went through about a billion other jobs (freelance and permanent), saw myself printed in a major international music magazine, bought a house, sold a house, MOVED TO FUCKING JAPAN, begin a new career as a teacher (which I love) and meet a wonderful man who I am so happy to call my boyfriend. Life’s been crazy.

Makes me wonder what the hell I’ll be doing ten years from now! But no matter what that is, I suspect I’ll still keep this blog going. I like writing it too much to quit.

Maybe one day I’ll even update the layout.

Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Anyways, tonight I thought I’d kick off the celebratory flashbacks by looking at what I’ve probably dedicated more time to on this site than anything else, the obscure 12″ remix. It’s safe to say that Lost Turntable would not exist if it was not for the 12″ single. Actually, a more accurate statement would be that it’s fair to say that Lost Turntable would not exist if it wasn’t for the continued neglect of songs that were exclusive to 12″ singles. In the late 70s and up to the 90s, many great acts saved their best B-sides and remixes for the 12 incher. But in the 2000s, when many artists had their catalogs re-issued for inclusion on iTunes and other digital music storefronts, a lot of those remixes, B-sides and other tracks got lost in the shuffle.

I first started this blog, you could barely find any vintage New Order, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys or Erasure remixes on CD, let alone digitally. Those oversights gave me plenty of content in the early years of Lost Turntable, which nearly became a purely 80s-focused blog because of it. Things are better now, and you can at least find most of the best remixes and such by these artists on CD and digitally, thanks to box sets and deluxe re-issue campaigns.

But not every band can be New Order or Depeche Mode, and aren’t even lucky enough to get their entire album discography remastered and put up for sale online, let alone their non-album cuts. And others just don’t seem to care. So here are some of my favorite 12″ remixes that have yet to be re-released.

XC-NN
Lifted (Industrial Mix)
Lifted (Industrial Mix Instrumental)
Lifted (Alternalift Mix)
Lifted (Alternalift Mix Instrumental)
Lifted (Funk Mix)
Early in my collecting days, I basically bought any 12″ single I could find that had any name on it that I found the lest bit recognizable. That name in question was rarely the artist, more often than not it was the remixer or producer associated with the track. That was certainly the case with this single, which I bought only because it featured remixes by The Dust Brothers.

The Dust Brothers aren’t very prolific as performers, but they’re studio gods, working behind the scenes as remixers, producers and engineers with some of the greatest acts of the 80s, 90s and 2000s. They produced Paul’s Boutique, Odelay and the soundtrack to Spawn (underrated). They also produced Hanson’s breaktrhough record which, say what you will about, certainly sounds quite good from a technical and production standpoint.

They’ve toned down their output as of late, I don’t see many new credits by them on Discogs, but I’m still a fan and will buy any remix I see them credited on. They really have a knack for layering effects and instruments, almost like a modern-day Wall Of Sound. I’ve always been impressed with how they can stack so many samples, effects, vocals and instruments together without making it all sound like indecipherable garbage. I think more modern-day producers could learn from their work.

Their remixes of “Lifted” serve as a good example of their remix work that I’ve discovered, mixing together the big beats and crisp production of mid-90s electronic music (think Fatboy Slim) with the dirty, scuzzy guitars of the then dying alt-rock scene. They know how to mix a sequencer and a distrotion pedal better than anyone.

But who are XC-NN?

Yeah. that’s a good question. I guess.

I knew nothing about them when I bought this record nearly a decade ago, and still don’t know much about them now. I know they formed in the mid-90s as CNN but had to change their name when the network CNN was like “yo dudes that’s not going to fly.” They released an album no one cared about, followed that up with a sophomore effort even less people cared about, and then broke up. After that, Tim Bricheno, formerly of Sisters of Mercy, then formed Tin Star with fellow XC-NN member David Tomlinson. They apparently had one hit single in the states by the name of “Head.” I’ve never heard of it, let me check YouTube. I’m usually good with my forgotten 90s acts. I’m sure I’ve probably heard this tune.

Nope. I got nothing.

Anyway, they couldn’t follow up that track’s limited success I guess, they broke up again and that was it for that. No idea what they’re up to now, although Tim got together with another old group of his, All About Eve, for a reunion stint in the mid-2000s.

I tried to get into other XC-NN tracks after listening to “Lifted,” but I couldn’t do it. Sadly, they’re entirely deserving of their (lack of) reputation. Their blend of industrial electronica and rock music sounded fresh for about 10 minutes in the mid-90s, but that sound has not aged well, and became saturated not soon after. The people may had developed a taste of industrial rock in the wake of Ministry’s and Nine Inch Nail’s success, but that taste didn’t last long. And if there wasn’t enough of an appetite for angry electro-rock to keep acts like Filter and Stabbing Westward (underrated!) on the charts, there sure as hell wasn’t enough to sustain XC-NN. That being said, I’m going to stand by “Lifted.” Dust Brothers remix or not, this should’ve at least been a minor hit single. If the pop charts had room for Gravity Kill’s “Guilty” then I don’t see why they couldn’t have fit “Lifted” in there as well, at least for a short time.

If I would’ve heard “Lifted” when it first came out in 1995 I would’ve certainly loved it, and not just for it’s of-the-moment electronic/rock style. its vague angry lyrics would’ve fit my particular brand of teen angst perfectly.

You didn’t raise him
He just grew
You should have known him back then
Before he knew you

Those four lines are the best lines of the song, even better than the chorus, which works more on attitude than anything else. As a whole, the song is pretty obtuse, but I think these lines in particular read them as an attack on an absentee dad. My own father was certainly not absentee, and I think he’s usually tried his best. But in the mid-90s I sure as fuck had plenty to be angry about with him, so when I hear songs touching on that topic I sometimes find myself transplanted back to my pseduo-negelected teenage self and really identify with the track more than I actually have any right too.

“Lifted” isn’t a lost classic. But it’s certainly a lost also-ran, and a prime example of why I started Lost Turntable.

Now for some lost 12″ single remixes from bands you’ve actually heard of. Sorry if the audio is a little hit and miss, I recorded some of these years ago on old equipment.

Dan Hartman
I Can Dream About You (Extended Remix)
Dan Hartman’s lone hit came from the soundtrack to an absolute bomb of a flick, Walter Hill’s epic rock ‘n’ roll fable Streets Of Fire. I fucking love that movie. I love it’s insane alternate reality that combines a post-apocalyptic cityscape with the greatest stylistic hits of the 50s and 80s. I love its over-the-top performances by everyone from Michael Pare to Rick Moranis. I love the fact that it ends with a fucking steel sledgehammer fight. But most of all I love its epic soundtrack.

Strangely, Dan Hartman’s version isn’t in the movie proper. Instead it features a version by a made-up Motwon-style vocals group (which features Robert Townshend and the dude who played Bubba in Forrest Gump). This extended version isn’t as good as that one (damn I wish they’d release that somewhere) but it’s a pretty great version of a pretty great piece of 80s pop.

Don Henley
All She Wants To Do Is Dance (Extended Dance Remix)
I hate The Eagles but I love a lot of solo work by Eagles members, from Joe Walsh’s lovely “Life’s Been Good” to Glenn Fry’s “Smuggler’s Blues” to a hell of a lot of Don Henley’s solo work. You say you don’t like “Boys Of Summer?” I say you’re better at denying utterly catchy pop tunes than I ever hope to be. This track is no “Boys Of Summer,” an honest-to-goodness classic, but it’s great in its own right. Again, I’m shocked this remix hasn’t been re-issued anywhere recently.

Madness
Yesterday’s Men (Demo)
I usually hate it when demos are included as B-sides, it always feels like filler to me, and I’m rarely curious as to how an unfinished version of a song sounded. A rare exception to this rule would be this beautiful version of one of Madness’ best tunes, which strips what was already a pretty sparse song until it sounds less like a demo and more like a purposely lo-fi home recording that was recorded in someone’s closet with a cheap microphone and a store bought Casio. It’s like if Lou Barlow went ska. It’s almost intimate, and it really makes the lyrics hit even harder. Just beautiful.

Ready For The World
Oh Shelia (Extended Remix)
You can go to iTunes right now, do a search for the 12″ remix of this song and something comes up. But don’t believe the lies. That version is not the real 12″ remix. It’s a re-recorded version.

Re-recorded versions are blights on digital storefronts, and need to be wiped from this planet. They usually exist as a means for the artist to get royalties without having to pay the original record companies. And I get that, but they really do the fans a disservice, as they never ever sound as good as the originals. And even if they are technically better in some way or another, it doesn’t really matter, because people don’t want a technically better version of the song they know and love, they want the version they know and love! At least the original album version is on there.

Elect me for president and I will make it my first executive action to strip all re-recorded versions off digital storefronts and replace them with the originals. First on the plate, Def Leppard.

Yeah, it’s a stupid political platform, but it is any stupider than Trump?

Sade
Smooth Operator (12″ Version)
There’s this weird mall in Tokyo called Nakano Broadway that mostly focuses on geek culture stuff like figures, manga and old video games. Tucked away in a far off corner on the third or fourth floor of the mall is a really tiny movie store that focuses on weird cult flicks and art-house films. If you want to score Criterion blu-rays in Japan, that store is your best bet.

Whenever I go in there that dude is rocking out to a Sade blu-ray. So he knows what’s up.

Expect a few more posts like this for the rest of the month, with some regular posts with new rips interspersed. Thanks again to everyone who’s kept up with me over the years.

Posted in 10 Years Of Being Lost, B-sides, Dan Hartman, Don Henley, Madness, Ready For The World, remixes, Sade, XC-NN | 12 Comments »