Madonna for snowy isolation

March 29th, 2020

I wrote half a post earlier this week, but things are changing so fast in Tokyo that it all became instantly irrelevant so I had to start over today. Teach me for procrastinating.

I had no reason for putting off that post, I just didn’t have the motivation I guess. Self-isolation, even with someone (my boyfriend is at my place, riding this out with me) can be draining. I moved to Tokyo because it seemed like a city with endless things to do. Each day brought upon it a new adventure, exploring the various nooks and crannies to find new and exciting places (that hopefully had good record stores). But in the course of the past two weeks, I’ve left my apartment three times. One was for a late night walk alone in a relatively deserted place, another was for an emergency grocery store run with my boyfriend. The third was a short trip across the street to a vending machine, panic buying a mountain of Coca-cola and Dr. Pepper. I try not to drink that much soda, but with everything going on, one unhealthy habit had to resurface, so I chose that one. At least I’m still able to workout at home thanks to my Ring Fit. I don’t know what I would be doing without that – probably getting mad fat. I’m used to walking about 13,000 steps a day. I don’t even want to look at my phone’s pedometer now. My steps are probably in the double digits. My world has shrank to an area about a quarter of the size of a city block. Apartment, supermarket, vending machine. That’s it.

I think this wouldn’t feel so emotionally draining if I thought that I wasn’t in it alone, but the people of Tokyo really haven’t seemed to grasp the severity of the impending situation, and the indescribable importance of isolating oneself. As of this writing, there are less than 250 reported cases in Tokyo. Now, Japan is still not doing the level of testing that is recommended by the WHO, but it’s still apparent that the virus has not really taken hold in this city yet. There just aren’t that many people who are obviously ill, and hospitals seem to be managing the ones who are just fine. That is all the more reason why isolation is important now. Before things get bad, before there is a spike in cases, people need to stay the fuck home so the virus can’t spread among those who appear to be healthy, but are harboring the virus without showing any symptoms.

A mandatory, one-to-two-week lockdown would do so much to flatten the curve and save lives. But for whatever reason, both the Tokyo government and Prime Minister Abe refuse to take that step. Instead, both issued what they called strong recommendations for people to stay home. That was it. No other action was taken. Some shops did follow the advice and have shuttered their doors this weekend, but others remained open. And while some of the most popular cherry blossom viewing spots were closed to the public, Twitter and Instagram were still full of new pics by idiots eager to take photos of the blossoms, rushing to them like moths to the flame.

Even the national news was contributing to the problem, showing a forecast of the cherry blossoms and explaining that this weekend, the weekend of the “strongly recommended” stay-at-home request, was the absolute best time to see them. NHK is owned by the government. The fact that they can’t stay on message is a travesty.

It did snow today, a lot. And it wasn’t a fun light snow that makes the cherry blossoms all the more beautiful, it was some straight-out-of-Ohio nightmare slush shit. That probably did more to keep people indoors than any government request. However, that’s only one day, and the government request was only for the weekend. Starting tomorrow, businesses will be open as usual, people will be going to work. Nothing will change. A weekend is not enough, it was a futile gesture. It’s hard now to look at the terrifying news coming out of New York City and not imagine that Tokyo will be under similar conditions in just two weeks time.

The company I teach for remains open. I am refusing to go in because the danger in doing so is apparent. It’s a private school with one-to-one lessons in confined spaces. It’s the absolute worst place to be right now. But they keep trying to justify it, to rationalize it. They say it’s safe. They’re providing masks and hand sanitizer. They’re making sure students who don’t feel well have to go home. Whatever. It’s not enough. I’m just waiting for the inevitable notice that my school will be forced to shutdown due to an instructor (or 20) getting sick. And my company will say that it was entirely unpreventable. And that will be a lie.

Sorry if all of that was redundant of my last few posts and/or depressing. It’s just where I am right now.

Sigh. Let’s listen to some Madonna.

 

Madonna
Bedtime Story (Junior’s Wet Dream Mix)
Bedtime Story (Junior’s Dreamy Drum Dub)
Bedtime Story (Orbital Mix)
Bedtime Story (Junior’s Sound Factory Mix)
Bedtime Story (Junior’s Single Mix)
Madonna save us in this time of great duress.

All of these are taken from a CD single, part of my massive haul from a few days back. Again, I think I posted these eons ago, but they were vinyl rips and these sound better.

“Bedtime Story” has aged very well, it has that 90s trip-hop alternative-dance thing going on, but in all the right ways, especially when compared to some other tracks on that album. This single also has “Survival,” and that’s some hella generic 90s white girl RnB. This has a vibe to it that was unique at the time and remains unique still. If you’re reading this blog, then you probably know this already, but this song was co-written by Björk, and it still totally sounds like it. I wish mid-90s Björk and mid-90s Madonna would’ve collaborated more. Hell, I wish both of them would’ve collaborated more with other artists at the time. I also wish that Madonna and Orbital did more work together. Their mix here is the real standout, even better than the excellent Junior Vasquez ones. When Madonna hooked up with William Orbit, she chose the wrong Orb-monikered dance act. She should’ve stuck with Orbital, or gone with The Orb (man that would’ve been rad).

Anyways, drown yourself in music, whiskey, video games, or whatever the hell is getting you through this latest chapter in our stupid apocalypse. Hope that it gets better for those in need, and worse for the bastards in charge.

And here’s hoping Abe and Trump are forced to lick Boris Johnson’s infected eyeballs.

Posted in Madonna, remixes | 2 Comments »

Anxiety, anger and Aaliyah

March 21st, 2020

Two posts in two days is what happens when you’re trying to stay (sane) inside your home. Remember when this blog was just as much me ranting and raving about random shit that pissed me off as it was dance remixes of popular music from the 80s and 90s? Well hey, consider this post retro.

Not much has changed since yesterday, at least as far as the public knows and/or cares. There were fifty new confirmed cases in Japan, I don’t know how many in Tokyo. Fifty is a big jump, the biggest in a few days. It just goes to show that Japan has not dodged any bullet and that we are still teetering on the edge of a full-blown outbreak.

You would not know that if you went outside today though.

Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) was in full effect today. The government asked people not to go out. Some of the major viewing spots were partially closed so people could not set up picnics. Neither of these things seemed be much of a deterrent. While crowds were smaller than usual, they were still large and packed enough to make any kind of efficient social distancing impossible. Masses of people everywhere.

Many travel sites and twitter accounts were tweeting out photos of cherry blossoms as well as guides to the best (and most crowded) places. One such account is Japan Travel Advice.

Yes, this person may live in a safe, rural area, but most people in Japan do not. It is irresponsible for them to tweet out guides on cherry blossom viewing without mentioning the virus or that people should maybe just sit this year’s hanami out. I countered their advice with my own.

 

They blocked me.

It’s also worth mentioning that on their website they say the following.

Fucking irresponsible assholes. Is it safe to travel to Japan? ABSOLUTELY NOT. NO. NOT AT ALL. And even if it was (and it’s not) it wouldn’t be safe for the people of Japan for someone from another infected country to come visit them on a damn vacation. There is absolutely zero reason for anyone to come to Japan right now. And there is zero reason for anyone to go out for hanami.

Tomorrow is Sunday. The weather will be perfect. The cherry blossoms of death will be in near full bloom. I expect an entire other group of selfish pricks to go out on picnics in large groups, share drinks, share food, and share a crowded train home with hundreds of others who will do the same.

It’s too bad the people who they’re helping kill aren’t themselves.

Aaliyah
The One I Gave My Heart To (Soul Solution Club Mix)
The One I Gave My Heart To (Soul Solution Dub)
The One I Gave My Heart To (Bonus Beats)
One In A Million (Nitebreed Mongolodic Mix)
One In A Million (Armand’s Drum ‘n’ Bass Mix)
One In A Million (Geoffrey’s House Mix)
One In A Million (Wolf-D’s Big Bass Mix)
Long time back, I would always check the US iTunes store before I shared something here. I try to stick pretty hard to my “nothing in print” rule. I’ve only purposely broken it a handful of times. More recently though, I’ve also gotten in the habit of checking streaming services, since that’s how most people consume music in the year of our apocalypse, 2020.

It turns out that there’s not much of any Aaliyah on Spotify, or any streaming service, or even the US iTunes store for that matter. You can get Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number (ew) but not much else. Wonder why that is? Is there some clusterfuck regarding Aaliyah’s estate that I’m not aware of? Is this R. Kelly’s fault? Can we just blame R. Kelly regardless?

I’ll be real and say that I wasn’t a big of Aaliyah when she first burst on the scene. I was never into R. Kelly’s production style, even as a teenager. Although as a white boy teenage grunge fan in the suburbs, I really wasn’t their target audience.

I did, however, get more into her music once she split from pissface and started working with Missy and Timbaland. “One In a Million” is an classic of the era. No doubt. And it has aged very well, just like a lot of the prime R&B from that era has. While the unfortunately named “Nitebreed Mongolodic” mix of the track ain’t all that hot, “Armand’s Drum ‘n’ Bass Mix” is rad. I like it more than the original. I’m not always big on Armand Van Helden’s work, but he really nailed it out of the park here. Other mixes are tight too.

While I’ve always dug “One In A Million,” I was definitely not a fan of “The One I Gave My Heart To” when it came out. It sounds like wannabe Whitney Houston to me. I looked it up today and found out that it was written by Diane Warren because of course it was. The original version of this track screams “should be on the soundtrack to a forgettable romantic comedy.” It’s so bland.

The “Soul Solution Club Mix” fixes all the problems of the original. It opens with a fade in of Aaliyah howling, it lets you know right up front that she’s in actual, physical pain over her break-up. It takes the original version three minutes to get to that point. I’m sure the intent was to have a build-up, but by then it’s too late. The overarching blandness of the production has created a vacuum of suck that make any sort of build-up impossible.

The beat of the remix fixes this problem. Gone is the literally identical to every other mid-tempo easy-listening ballad beat that was on the radio in the mid-90s. In its place is a standard, yet effective, high-energy beat that makes the song more urgent and emotional. And yeah, the house piano chords aren’t exactly breaking new ground, even for 1998, but they certainly create a better sense of desperation and heartache than the click track beat of the original version.

And the remix has a hell of a build-up and drop that just annihilates the original. Damn.

Good remixes for bad times, enjoy.

Posted in Aaliyah, remixes | 3 Comments »

Madonna in the time of coronavirus

March 20th, 2020

Hi. How you doing.

Yup.

I thought I would use this space to write a bit about what life is like in Tokyo right now, because with the utterly disastrous situations unfolding across most of Europe, America, and, well, pretty much the rest of the world, news about Japan has fallen a bit to the wayside.

Shit here is just weird.

There’s been no massive outbreak here, no pandemic conditions. Very little panic. About a month ago they closed all the schools and theme parks, postponed all the concerts and delayed all the major sporting events. Masks have been very hard to come by, as has toilet paper (Japan was the first country to start that unnecessary bit of hoarding, always the trendsetters). As an English instructor at a major English conversation school, I haven’t been at work all month. Thankfully, I’m still getting paid, and even if I wasn’t, I’m very fortunate financially so I don’t have that issue to really worry about.

But other than that, nothing changed. Stores are all still open. A few have cut down their hours, but most haven’t. Most people still aren’t telecommuting, so the trains are all packed. Restaurants and bars are always crowded. The streets are only less crowded because of the lack of tourists. Life is just going on as normal, seemingly oblivious to the massive human tragedy and economic depression that is gripping what feels like every other person and every other country on the planet.

And the calm here might be completely unfounded! The government still has not ramped up testing to a degree that most experts find satisfactory. No one knows how many people are really sick. As of this writing, there have been only 1,670 confirmed cases of the coronavirus here in Japan, and over 700 of them were from that damn cruise ship. That sound great, and it is when compared to other countries. But only 14,000 people (at most) have been tested since the beginning of February! So who the hell knows how many people have actually gotten sick. Now, a lack of testing can’t hide dead bodies, so Japan obviously isn’t covering up an exceptionally dire situation, but how can anyone know what appropriate actions should be taken when we can’t get a clear number regarding how many people are sick?

Like I said, I haven’t been working for the entirety of March. In the beginning of the month, I treated it mostly as a vacation. There were very few cases in Japan, and the situation in most other countries wasn’t bad either. I went record shopping, had friends over for pizza and movies, drank a lot of whiskey, and so on. But since the explosion of cases in America and Europe, I feel that it’s best to practice everyone’s new favorite pastime of 2020, social distancing. I’m not going to crowded areas. I’m avoiding the train. I even stopped going to record stores.

I. Stopped. Going. To. Record. Stores.

If that doesn’t help explain to you the seriousness in which I am taking this, nothing will.

But while I’ve radically changed my behavior in hopes of keeping myself and others healthy in the ever increasing odds of a full-on explosion of cases here, I seem to be the only one. Again, stores have not closed. People are not telecommuting. Restaurants are still open. We’re in the middle of a three-day weekend now, and it’s also cherry blossom viewing season. While the government has prohibited picnics at several of the most high-profile spots. People can visit those places. And they are. En masse. And there are several other, huge, parks that don’t have any restrictions at all. Over the next two weeks, tens of thousands of people will congregate in these places and spend long periods of time together in close spaces, sharing drinks and food.

And now my employer has said that I’m supposed to return to work next week. Despite the fact that cases have yet to peak, despite the fact social distancing is the best way to reduce outbreaks, despite the fact that the threat is very far from over, they decided that it’s time for me to go back to work. Their messaging has been atrocious every step of the way and they have done nothing to make me feel like my workplace is a safe environment. As an immigrant, I don’t know my options here. I don’t know what happens to my visa if I quit. I don’t know if they can fire me. It’s equally confusing and terrifying.

I don’t have to return right away. In a strange coincidence, I got sick in an entirely unique way. While everyone else is afraid of a potentially deadly viral infection, my body decided by all hipster about it and give me a life-threatening bacterial infection. About a week ago I noticed a lump in my armpit, a few days later it swelled up to the size of a golf ball and hurt like hell, followed by red streaks on my arm. Somehow my lymph node got a bacterial infection. The doctors were so concerned about it when they saw it that they immediately injected me with a round of antibiotics, and had me come back for a second injected dosage before giving me an additional week of pills. That gives me a legit excuse to avoid work, but only for a week at most. I have no idea what I’ll do after that.

As to be expected, this is all giving me quite a bit of anxiety. And, as it should go without saying, I’m also being kept up at night with thoughts of my friends and family back in other countries, where the odds of infection are much higher. I say this should go without saying, but whenever I mention that I actually have worries and concerns about other human beings, a lot people seemed shocked at that. People are selfish sociopaths it seems.

So yeah, I got my own health problems, the possibility of becoming infected with a potentially deadly virus, thoughts of the economic impact of the pandemic, the uncertainty of the future of my job and visa, and the safety of my friends and family all running through my mind. I’m freaking out. I don’t know what to do. I’m losing my mind.

But, hey, before shit really hit the fan I managed to buy 33 Madonna CD singles and some 7″ singles too. So…yay?

Madonna
Angel (7″ Version)
Angel (Dance Remix)
Angel (Dance Remix Edit)
I’m trying to avoid using the trains right now because, well, duh. But as I said before, before things really started to get real, I was still going out a bit. I was just walking. It wasn’t that big a change for me actually, I try to walk about 13,000 steps a day. One day I decided to trek up to Coconuts Disk in Ekoda. It’s one of my top five record stores in Tokyo. Every time I go there I end up buying some weird prog LP, an awesome Japanese pop record on CD, and even the occasional tape. This trip was no different, in addition to snagging that rad Star Trek cover I shared a while back, I also managed to find the Japanese 7″ single for “Angel.”

While I’ve been an avid Madonna collector for nearly 20 years now (hi I’m gay), I only recently starting diving into 7″ collecting. They don’t always interest me, to be honest. I mostly collect singles for the remixes. That’s why I’m so into 12″ singles, they almost always have the most and best remixes, with CD singles often a close runner-up. Seven inch singles usually don’t have anything all that different aside from the radio remix, which, let’s be real, usually aren’t that different. But for those of you who really dig 7″ remixes, here you go. Enjoy the minute differences!

But the 7″ for “Angel” does have one rarity of note, an edit of the dance remix. While the full-length dance remix made its way to a few different formats over the years, I think that the 7″ edit of said remix was exclusive to the 7″ single. I could be wrong. I’m wrong a lot.

I know that the proper full-length dance remix was on CDs because the rip I’m sharing right now is from one of those CDs. If you got the dance remix from my blog eons ago, redownload it now. The CD rip sounds better, as CD rips are want to do. I found this CD at Recofan in Shibuya, another amazing store. When I saw on Twitter that they were having a sale on Madonna CD singles, I made the decision to walk all the way there and back, nearly 20,000 steps. Not gonna let something like social distancing stop my gay ass from getting my Madonna, motherfuckers.

I’m very stressed and recently bought a boatload of Madonna. Listening to Madonna makes me feel better. Expect more Madonna next week.

Stay safe out here. If your boss wants you to go to work in a pandemic kick them in the groin.

Posted in Madonna, remixes | 1 Comment »

From the turntables of Lesbos

March 17th, 2020

 

Nights Of Love In Lesbos
Side 1
Side 2
This is a stupid record and I own it because I’m a stupid person who buys stupid things stupidly.

Released in 1962 by Fax Records, Nights Of Love In Lesbos, promises “a frankly intimate description of a sensuous young girl’s lesbian desires.” In actuality, it is little more than a very abridged and slightly more ribald reading of Pierre Louÿs’ Songs of Bilitis, a rather well-known piece of lesbian erotica from the 1890s that Louÿs attempted to pass off as legit historical texts that he discovered and translated. He later was exposed as a fraud, but people still held the works in high regard because I guess French people of the late 1800s were really into reading about lesbians.

I have not read Songs of Bilitis in its entirety. My gay ass is not the target market I suppose. But in glancing over it, I found that this record took several extreme liberties with the source material. Male characters from the poem are excised entirely, with entire sections not related to lesbian lovemaking are torn out as well because, well, why bother with them I suppose. The erotic aspects are changed also. Whoever wrote this abridged version was very much a boob man. Boobs abound here. The narrator talks about her own breasts, the breasts of her lovers, how men are inferior because they don’t have breasts, and so on. It feels like it was written buy a guy who assumes lesbians just look in a mirror all day and get turned on by their own tits. However, while this record is all about the boobs, anything below the waist is strictly off limits. Even words like “loins” are removed. I guess they wanted to be better safe than sorry in case the law came after them.

When the time comes for the record to get down and dirty with tales of sapphic deeds, descriptions are so flowery and peppered with metaphor that a casual listener might pass over them without actually understanding what’s going on. The most explicit sexual act I could find on this album was this line: “sometimes she makes me kneel and place my hands on the bed…then she slips her little head underneath and imitates the trembling kid which sucks from the belly of its mother.” That has to be the most unerotic description of oral sex I’ve ever heard. There’s also a reference to lips opening but that might just be my pervy ass reading too much into things.

The only credit on this record is for the narrator, performing under the mononymous pseudonym “Ilona.” No one is credited with adapting the original text, and all production work is left uncredited as well. Obviously, the people who worked on the record were either too ashamed to be named, or too worried that they might face charges for obscenity.

As stupid as this record is, I think it’s an interesting historical document that showcases what passed for “scandalous” before the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and it’s a real shame that the stories behind it, and the countless records like it, are lost to time. If there is any information about the production of these records online, it’s very hard to find. Most searches for “fax records” turn up auction listings, blogs like this, or pages by dudes who collect pin-up art. If anyone out there does know any actual information about how records like this were produced and/or sold, hit me up in the comments!

I hope this softcore tale of lesbian lust helps you during these trying times. And a reminder, if you need further distractions from our virus-enduced hellscape, I have a new podcast where I talk about prog with Jeremy Parish and Elliot Long. You can check that out here.

Take care of yourselves and stay safe.

Posted in Complete Albums | 3 Comments »

Obscure covers of obscure songs (one by Jim O’Rourke!)

March 13th, 2020

So the world is on fire in like every way imaginable but the need for shameless self-promotion lives on!

I have a podcast now! I’ve teamed up with Retronaut Jeremy Parish and fellow music geek Elliot Long to work on Alexander’s Ragtime Band – a podcast all about prog rock (the one true music genre). You can listen to the first episode for free over at our Patreon page and if you like it, toss a few bucks our way so we make even more episodes about songs that have 20 minute keyboard solos.

But if you don’t like prog (for some strange reason) and would rather me ramble on about lubriciously obscure music, don’t worry this blog isn’t going anywhere.

Transmission
Telstar
Happy Holland
This is the second version of “Telstar” that I’ve shared on this blog. The first was by Japanese prog/jazz keyboardist Yutaka Mogi. That was quite an obscure track. This one even moreso. I don’t think that this has ever been shared online ever. Damn shame. It’s dope.

This is by the Dutch artist Transmission, also known as Martin Agterberg. This is his only release as Transmission, and was a single that he put out in 1977. I bought it because I recently discovered the first two solo albums that Agterberg put out under his own name, Flyer and Synshine, and dug them quite a bit. The dude has a vibe to his work, sometimes reminiscent of the Berlin School but other times really bombastic and over-the-top. I’ll probably end up sharing some of it in the future.

I really, really love this version of “Telstar.” It’s probably my favorite to date aside from the original by The Tornados. “Telstar” is a song that screams “give me a drum machine and a sequencer so I can truly come alive” and Agterberg obliges, delivering one of the most purely electronic versions of the song that had been released to date (the drumming might be acoustic, hard to say). Aside from the nearly 100% electronic production, it doesn’t vary all that much from the classic original, because why fuck with something that doesn’t need to be fucked with?

The b-side, “Happy Holland,” is…well…less good. It feels like the theme song to a 1970s Dutch game show, or the background music to a particularly unfunny Benny Hill sketch or something. Music shouldn’t be allowed to be this bouncy. This is criminal bounciness. I kind of hate it and I kind of love it.

 

Jim O’Rourke
Thanks But No Thanks (Sparks Cover)
I recently picked up an obscure compilation from 1999 called Drive From 2000. On the obi strip it advertises itself as a collection of Japanese electric pop music – so of course it opens with American Jim O’Rourke covering fellow Americans Sparks’ glam rock classic “Thanks, But No Thanks.”

At least the liner notes by the album’s producer explain the odd inclusion. Apparently the producer saw O’Rourke DJing in Japan (O’Rourke has lived here since 2000 or so), found out that he loved Japanese new wave music, and asked him to contribute a track. When he found out that O’Rourke loved Sparks, he asked him to perform a Sparks cover because he liked Sparks too. Kind of a cute story.

I wanted to see if this cover by Jim had made its way to other compilations or releases, and it seems that it’s still exclusive to this release. However, in doing my research, I found that Jim has, on multiple occasions, made his love for this track abundantly clear. Here’s a 2011 Tumblr post where he declares that “Thanks But No Thanks” might have one of the best guitar breaks ever written, and here’s a video of him performing the track on stage kind of half-live/half-karaoke style.

 

I get a big Jack White in High Fidelity vibe there. Love it. Anyways, this cover is FUCKING RAD. He absolutely nails the frantic energy of the original and it’s clear that the dude is having just as much of a blast singing it in the studio as he was on stage in that clip.

I haven’t fully digested the rest of this album yet, but I hope to share more of it in the future.

Posted in B-sides, Jim O'Rourke, Martin Agterberg | 2 Comments »

The best disco version of Star Trek you’ll ever hear

March 6th, 2020

Frank Serafine
Star Trek Main Title
Dig It
Frank Serafine is a name you have most likely never heard, and a man whose music you’ve probably never heard. However, you have without a doubt heard sounds created by this man. He worked as a sound designer and sound effect man for several huge movies from the 1980s. You know the dope sounds of the bikes in Tron? That was him. He also created sound effects for Pumpkinhead, Short Circuit, and Manhunter. He even won an Emmy for his work on The Day After.

Frank was also the sound effects designer for the first Star Trek film, which came out in 1979. A year later, he released his discofied version of the show’s main title music on a single that came out only in Japan.

It is far better than any disco version of the Star Trek Main Title music has any right to be.

This is an insanely well-produced piece of music with a fantastic sound. The b-side, “Dig It,” is also rad as hell. It’s a groovy, flute-driven piece, with a tight guitar riff, solid bass line, and fantastic accompaniment by an excellent horns section. It’s a shame that this came out as a b-side to a disco version of the Star Trek theme in 1980. Turn the dial back a few years, put this aside “The Hustle” or some other instrumental disco jam, and it could’ve easily been a hit with the same crowd.

This record sounds so amazing that I wanted to find out more about the people who worked on it. Frank is only credited as the flutist and keyboardist here, who else made this sound so good?

The single was produced by Miki Curtis, a big name in Japanese music going all the way back to the 1950s. He’s had a diverse career that includes everything from rockabilly to prog rock, with a notable career in acting as well. I would imagine that by 1980, the dude knew his way around a studio. He’s a solid producer here, that’s for sure.

Credited as an arranger as well as a keyboardist is Ken Shima, a workhorse studio guy who’s appeared on countless albums by Japanese idols, and more internationally-acclaimed acts like DJ Krush, Towa Tei and Pizzacato Five.

But the surprises don’t stop there. As I mentioned before, the guitar on this album is tight as hell, and that makes since considering the guitarist on this record is Robben Ford (credited here as Robin Ford). Another name you probably haven’t heard but whose music you have, Ford’s worked with damn near everyone. He played guitar in the studio for Steely Dan and Kiss. He worked with Miles Davis. He played guitar on motherfucking “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield. He played with George Harrison and Bonnie Raitt. He’s on a damn Tiffany record. He was even on an album of jazz fusion covers of music from the video game F-Zero, which is a really weird CD. Pee Wee Hill, who plays bass on this single, played on that album as well.

But who plays horns here? They’re so good, I just had to know. Well, according to the liner notes, someone named Don Myyk handled trumpet, while the trombone was played by one Louise Sutherfield. Those people don’t exist. I scoured Discogs and several other music sites, and couldn’t come up with a damn thing.

But you know who does exist? Donald Myrick and Louis Satterfield, both of which played with Earth, Wind & Fire throughout the second half of the 70s and into the 80s. No wonder the horns on this record sound so damn good. So why the false names? That probably has to do more with Japanese pronunciation woes than any attempt at keeping false identities. Translate those names to katakana and then back to English and you’ll end up with butchered spellings like those.

I bought this record as a joke. I figured with would be a lame attempt to capitalize off of the success of Meco’s Star Wars disco cover. Never have I been more surprised. I’ve listened to this cover so much that it’s lost all meaning as a piece of Star Trek music, and has instead taken on a life of its own as a damn fine piece of music in its own right. I’ve also fallen head over heels in love with “Dig It.” What a great melody! Again, a damn shame it never got the audience it deserved.

I don’t know how Frank was able to assemble such a great crew of international talent for such a goofy one-off release, but good for him. The results speak for themselves.

Frank’s only other music release that I can find is a new age album that came out in 2000, although he did do some work with Ravi Shankar as well. Aside from that, he mostly stuck to sound effects and film work. Sadly, the world lost Frank in 2018 in a car accident. He is missed.

The next time you watch Tron and hear those rad bike sounds, think of him.

Posted in Complete Albums, Frank Serafine | 2 Comments »

Blue Monday ’95 for 2020

February 24th, 2020

In news that will upset nearly no one, here’s another quick and dirty New Order post.

New Order
Blue Monday (Hardfloor Remix)
Blue Monday (Manuella mix)
Blue Monday (Andrea mix)
Blue Monday (Plutone mix)
The original 12″ version of “Blue Monday” is a perfect song and no attempts to remix, remake, rework, or re-imagine it will ever come close to even matching the original. I feel that this is not a bold statement. There are plenty of New Order tracks that have benefited from remixes or re-workings. “Temptation” comes to mind, as does “Fine Time” and even “Touched By The Hand of God.” Hell, the entirety of Music Complete was remixed with extended versions and I prefer all of those to the originals. And some of the mixes to “Tutti Frutti” were just rad as hell.

But you can’t fuck with “Blue Monday.” Shit’s perfect. Still, New Order sure has tried. There was the ’88 remix, which achieved some degree of success, and these ’95 remixes, which did not. Most of them aren’t bad mixes, save for the “Andrea Mix” which reworks the song in a reggae dub track (yikes). But as soon as I’m done listening to them, all I want to do is listen to the original version once more. It ain’t broke.

Still, there’s a lot of good to be had here. While none are my first choice, I do return to a few of them. I dig the “Hardfloor” mix quite a lot. It has a hint of an acid vibe to it. Not too much, just enough to give it that edge. And the “Plutone” mix is great too. It has this high, almost ringing, synth line through it that gives it an urgent feeling that I really get into. If my knees still let me jog, I would slam this sucker on a jogging mix right away.

Maybe more New Order next week? I don’t know. I got some weird shit I want to share, but like I’ve said multiple times over, the weird shit posts take time. And since so few people actually seem to like them, sometimes motivation is hard. But if I don’t upload obscure late-70s Japanese experimental electronic music, who will?!

Posted in New Order, remixes | 5 Comments »

The Return Of New Order (to this blog)

February 11th, 2020

I haven’t posted a New Order track in nearly five years. What the fuck happened to me, man? I used to be cool.

New Order
True Faith-94
True Faith-94 (Radio Edit)
True Faith-94 (Perfecto Mix)
True Faith-94 (Perfecto Radio Edit)
True Faith-94 (The TWA Grim Up North Mix)
I bought 23 new wave and synth-pop CD singles this weekend.

There was a sale. I’m a weak man.

Sadly, much of what I purchased cannot be shared here because its all shockingly in print now. It amazes me still how much obscure and formerly hard-to-find stuff is being re-released now compared to when I started this blog 14 goddamn years ago. Remember how I could just go to a record store, snag a shitload of Depeche Mode 12″ singles (on the cheap) and end up posting a dozen or so remixes that had all fallen out-of-print? Those days are long gone. I bought several Depeche Mode singles at that sale. I have to double-check to be sure, but it would appear that all of the remixes on all of them are now easy to find on iTunes, special edition re-issues, and even on streaming services. The same goes for the Erasure stuff I picked up. I grabbed the first four EBX singles collections that the band put out several years back. Now all of those are available for listening online, as well as several digital-only sequels to the series (Boo to digital only!).

But you know what prominent new wave/synth-pop band continues to fuck up their legacy by keeping a large swath of their 12″ singles and CD single exclusive tracks out-of-print? That’s right, New Order. They’ve certainly gotten better. Pretty much all the remixes from their past few albums are online now, as are prominent remixes for more popular tracks like “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “Confusion.” But songs like these, the 1994 remixes “True Faith” are still MIA (the main ’94 remix was included on The Best Of New Order but that album is now out-of-print in most territories). For some reason, most of the remixes to “World In Motion” are online though, so who the hell knows why which tracks make it online and which don’t, its certainly not an issue of quality.

And these are really good remixes! Of a really good track! None of them are too drastic, they’re not pure dancefloor mixes that take away the vocals or hooks. They’re all really recognizable as remixes of “True Faith,” an all-time banger of a track if you ask me. I could get that hook stuck in my head for days and I wouldn’t complain. If I had anything negative to say about these cuts, it’s that they don’t do enough to deviate from the source material. But hey, I guess if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

I wonder how many discs it would take to properly re-release every New Order remix. How big would that box set be? It would have to be dozens of discs, right? I guess that’s why it’ll never happen. They’re far happier dishing this shit out piecemeal (with plenty of overlap so we end up buying a lot of the same music multiple times over). Oh well, a guy can dream.

Probably more New Order next week. Or a batshit stupid synthesizer album. I guess it depends on my mood that day.

Posted in New Order, remixes | 3 Comments »

Forgotten Techno Clapton

February 2nd, 2020

TDF
Rip Stop (DJ Pulse 12″Mix)
Rip Stop (DJ Pulse Beatz Mix)
Rip Stop (Shed Science ‘Angelic Uplift’ Remix)
Rip Stop (Shed Science ‘Hard Left’ Remix)
Rip Stop (Rabbit in the Moon’s Creamy, Funkshunal Mix)
I’m not a Clapton guy. I’ve never been. Sure, I dig me “Layla” (the real version, not that acoustic slog) and I can respect “Tears In Heaven” for its intent and meaning even if the song itself is kind of wallpaper to me. And, of course, Cream was a juggernaut of a band. But the whole “Clapton is God” thing? I just never got that.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a world that already had Jimi Hendrix so I knew what god on guitar actually sounded like. Or maybe it’s just because the Clapton that existed in my formative years was the Clapton that put out adult-contemporary snoozefests like the aforementioned acoustic version of “Layla” or the absolutely hideous “My Father’s Eyes.”

“My Father’s Eyes” is off the album Pilgrim, which was produced by Clapton and Simon Climie, who was best known in the UK for his group Climie Fisher as well as his production and songwriting work for artists like George Michael and Westlife. But Pilgrim was not the first project that Clapton and Climie worked on, but the other kind of flew under the radar at the time unless you were on the look out for it.

In 1997, Clapton teamed up with Climie to form the group T.D.F. and release the album Retail Therapy, a collection of electronic/ambient tunes based around jam sessions by the two.

Strangely, Clapton is entirely uncredited in the album’s liner notes. Instead he goes by the name “X-Sample.” Furthermore, all photos of the group in the liner notes featured them hidden behind motorcycle helmets.

Clapton wasn’t the only 60s rock icon to try and re-invent himself in a somewhat anonymous way in the 1990s to earn hipster points. Before this, Paul McCartney collaborated with Youth on the Fireman project, which was also more electronic and experimental in nature than his previous work. Bowie also briefly toyed with the idea of adopting a pseudonym for his electronic music, releasing one single and performing a secret show as the Tao Jones Index (which is a great name).

But while Bowie and McCartney at least went through the motions of pretending they weren’t involved with their pseudonymous releases, Clapton apparently made no such effort. Every contemporaneous review and news item of the album I can dig up clearly know that X-Sample is Clapton. Here’s an MTV News item announcing the album’s release as Clapton’s “techno album.”

With Clapton’s involvement well-known by the time of the album’s release, reviewers perhaps were a bit pre-judgemental in their assessment, hoping for something a bit more guitar driven and rock in nature, and instead getting a collection of ambient electronic pieces with an occasional drum and bass bent. Retail Therapy was not a well-received record, although most of the reviews tended to fall along the lines of ambivalence than outright disgust,  One article I read referred the album as “not uninteresting,” which is praise that’s so faint it’s transparent. AllMusic retroactively gave the album a sad one-and-a-half star review, but the review itself treats the album more as something that’s forgettable rather than outright terrible, dishing out adjectives like “meandering” and “misguiding.” A review from the Hartford Courant is probably the most negative of the bunch, calling it “middling techno ambient stuff that takes a turn toward sleepy time New Age” but it still seems to lean more on the side of boring than awful.

I think I enjoy T.D.F. more than most of the critics, but even I have to admit that their album is, at best, an uneven piece that’s hard to entirely recommend. The first half of the record is actually pretty good, if you’re like me and dig instrumental rock and/or light electronic music. And there’s the fantastic track “Seven” which mixes drum and bass beats and a B.B. King sample with some honest-to-goodness great guitar playing by Clapton.

But on the second half of the record things really take a dive, with much more meandering, bland guitar work by Clapton. There’s also the absolutely horrendous “What She Wants,” an ear-splittingly atrocious piece mid-90s adult contemporary elephant dung that sounds like something that Savage Garden would’ve tossed int the trash for being too bland. This was the track from the album that was released as a single with a radio edit, so they probably had some degree of hope that it might’ve broken through. It’s a garbage track, for sure, but it’s garbage in the same way that a lot of Top 40 radio was in the mid-to-late 90s music was, so I’m actually surprised it wasn’t a hit.

However, one album highlight does manage to sneak in near the end, the stand-out track “Rip Stop,” which mixes drum and bass beats, vocal samples, and light guitar playing by Clapton. While “What She Wants” was a single for radio play, “Rip Stop” was picked as a single for the clubs, with various 12″ releases seeing the light of day with various remixes. I suspect not a single club DJ even bothered with it, however.

The tracks I’m sharing tonight are from the Japanese CD Single for “Rip Stop.” As you can see from the remix titles, they were able to finagle some relatively big names into remixing the tracks, with two mixes by early drum and bass producer DJ Pulse as well as a one by remix giants Rabbit In The Moon (I have no idea who Shed Science is though).

As a whole, the remixes are good and work to the song’s strengths, mainly the dope beats and overall vibe. Some downplay Clapton’s guitar work to an almost comical effect, with others bring it to the forefront. Of the bunch, I enjoy Rabbit In The Moon’s take on the track the most. It’s hella long, and incorporates a lot of interesting new elements. It also is slow to bring in Clapton’s guitar. The riff doesn’t even make a prominent appearance until about halfway through the song’s 12-minute run time. It’s a good build.

And it’s certainly better than anything else Clapton put out since that song for that pool movie with Tom Cruise.

 

Posted in Eric Clapton, remixes | 3 Comments »

Terri Nunn’s Lost Berlin Song

January 31st, 2020

Just a single song this week, sorry. I have some good posts ready to go but I want to work on cleaning up the recordings a bit more, so hopefully you’ll be hearing stupid video game remixes and a bizarre version of “Telstar” soon.

Berlin
Overload (Terri Nunn Version)
I’m apparently a reputable source of information regarding the synth-pop band Berlin. I’m listed as a source on the band’s surprisingly in-depth Wikipedia page, which is hilarious to me.

Anyways, as a reputable source of information regarding the synth-pop band Berlin, I’m qualified to discuss this song in great detail. “Overload” is the B-side to Berlin’s very first single “Matter Of Time,” which was released on Renegade Records as a 7-inch single in 1979. Shortly thereafter, Berlin’s lead singer Terri Nunn would quit the group to pursue a career in acting. She would return to the group a short time later, but while she was gone the group recruited Virginia Macolino to replace her as the lead singer. With Macolino behind the mic, the band would re-record their first single, which was re-released by I.R.S. Records in 1980. The group also recorded a sole album with Macolino, the fabulous 1980 synth-punk classic Information. That album also included “Overload” and “Matter of Time,” of course with their current lead singer Virginia Macolino performing the vocals.

Nunn rejoined the band shortly after all of this and the group seemingly forgot their time with Macolino entirely, Information hasn’t been in print since it’s first release in 1980. When the time came for Berlin to release a greatest hits compilation in 1988, they included the then-rarity of “Matter Of Time” with Nunn’s vocals. But this B-side didn’t make the cut. To date, its only release has been on that very first pressing of the “Matter Of Time” single before they re-recorded it with Macolino (and the Macolino version is only on the second pressing of the single and the Information album, so it isn’t that much more common).

Synthpop in the late-70s was still wearing its punk/new wave influences on its sleeve and “Overload” is no exception thanks to its propulsive beat and sense of urgency. It’s must less polished than how Berlin would sound just a few years later on Pleasure Victim, and light years away from “Take My Breath Away.” Dope track for sure, and I’m surprised that it still hasn’t seen a proper re-release some 41 (holy shit) years later. 2020 is a garbage fire world, Berlin, please re-release Information sometime soon and make me feel happiness again.

 

Posted in B-sides, Berlin | 1 Comment »

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