Archive for November, 2019

Owner of a Lonely REMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIX

Sunday, November 17th, 2019

Yes
Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Wonderous Mix)
Owner Of A Lonely Heart (2 Close To The Edge Mix)
Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Not Fragile Mix)
Ever buy something that just leaves you confused about how the world works?

These remixes are from a CD single that I found  last week. It has left me with so many questions that will forever remain unanswered that I don’t even know where to begin with writing about it.

Why does this exist?
Who thought the world wanted remixes of “Owner of a Lonely Heart?”
Who thought that the world wanted remixes of “Owner of a Lonely Heart” in 1991?
Was this the part of a larger remix project that fell through?
What Yes fans in 1991 would be interested in dance remixes of Yes?
Who are those people and what drugs were they taking?
Did any club DJ in the world actually play these remixes for a dance audience?
Was said club DJ immediately killed for such a transgression?
Why the hell didn’t they recruit The Orb for this?
Why the hell did they recruit 808 State for this (yes really)?
Why the hell did 808 State say yes (to Yes)?

Those last two questions are the most pressing for me. Two of the three remixes on this single were done by 808 State. Not only that, at the time 808 State were at the absolute peak of their popularity and critical acclaim, coming right off the release of the ex:el album the same year. I assume that Trevor Horn, who produced this single, was responsible for getting  808 State and was able to do so because both he and 808 State were on ZTT Records at the time.

It’s funny how just one person can serve to be a connection between two acts that are so widely disparate in every way possibly imaginable. Trevor Horn is the Kevin Bacon of music, and not just in terms of artists he’s worked with, but in genres he’s crossed as well. You could probably connect a zydeco artist to a breakbeat DJ within six degrees by using Trevor Horn as a connecting point.

But of course, the most important question; are these remixes any good?

And to that I can firmly say; I dunno? Kinda? I guess?

They’re okay. The Wonderous Mix is very ambient and chill. It actually sounds like what I think a remix of Yes by The Orb would sound like. Most of it is original production and instrumentation that uses Anderon’s vocals and the guitar solo from the original tune as an accompaniment. It’s chill. I dig it.

Things radically switch gears for the 2 Close To The Edge Mix, which sounds less like a remix to “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and more like an original 808 State song that has a few samples of “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” If I heard this without knowing it where it was from, I would have never guessed the source material. It’s such a drastic deviation. It’s not terrible. If you dig this era of acid house then you’ll probably dig it. It’s just weird.

The Not Fragile Mix, on the other hand, doesn’t fuck around in letting you know that it’s a remix of “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” It doesn’t have the same structure or flow as the original, but elements from it are all over the thing. When the song’s signature guitar riff isn’t playing, you’re getting snippets of Jon Anderson’s vocals or quick explosions of the song’s notable synthesized sound effects.

Strangely (sadly), this is not the only Yes remix release. In 2002, Yes released the entirely unrelated Yes Remixes album. An even more baffling affair, that album tried to turn classic Yes prog anthems like “Starship Trooper” and “Heart Of The Sunrise” into standard techno bangers. I mean, say what you will about the remixes I’m sharing tonight, they’re not the greatest idea in the world, but at least the source material lends itself to remixes in theory. “Owner of a Lonely Heart” is a synthpop track. Synthpop tracks are remixed all the time into club-ready dance tunes.

Hella complex prog rock is not.

That album is a complete disaster in all the ways you might imagine (and then some). However, I at least I understand how that came into being. The remixes on that album were by The Verge aka Virgil Howe aka the son of Yes guitarist Steve Howe. Good old fashion nepotism giving the world something it never asked for yet again.

I assume that Yes Remixes is long out of print but don’t hold your breath for me to share that here. I like you all way too much to subject you to that.

Posted in 808 State, Yes | No Comments »

Takkyu Ishino’s techno soccer remix

Sunday, November 10th, 2019

Vangelis
Anthem [Orchestra version with choral introduction]
Anthem [Synthesizer Version]
Anthem (JS Radio Edit)
Anthem [Takkyu Ishino Remix]
Anthem [Takkyu Ishino Remix Radio Edit]
I’m a stupid American so I don’t know anything about “football” and the World Cup (aside from it being horribly corrupt, complacent in countless human rights violations, and vehemently anti-LGTBQ), so could someone tell me, are World Cup themes/songs a “thing?” Meaning, do people care about them at all? Are they played at the games? Is it a big deal when an artist announces they are involved in one?

I’m guessing no?

The above track is from the 2002 World Cup, which was co-hosted by Japan and South Korea. You would think that FIFA would’ve wanted South Korean and Japanese musicians to perform the theme to that games. It could have been a powerful moment, two countries with such a contentious relationship, working together to communicate via the international language of music. Or at the very least you would’ve hoped they called Ryuichi Sakamoto because duh.

Instead they got Vangelis.

I hope it was because someone at FIFA was a big Aphrodite’s Child fan and not because of “Chariots of Fire.”

Usually naming a song “Anthem” is a sign that a musician has their head up their ass (looking at you, Good Charlotte) but since this was literally an anthem to an actual event, it gets a pass. It also sounds anthemic as fuck. It earns the name. Those soaring riffs, that chorus, this is a song custom-made to be rousing like a motherfucker. I close my eyes, listen to this and I can imagine a highlight reel of…I dunno, whatever soccer players do to earn themselves on highlight reels. (Successful flops? Ignored penalties? Abiding the poorly implemented offside rule?) Even without the techno remixes, I would dig this tune. It goes on my workout playlist for sure, right next to “No Easy Way Out” from Rocky IV.

Of course, my interest in this track has absolutely zero to do with any interest in soccer (again, stupid American) or the World Cup (again, horribly corrupt to the point of being cartoonishly evil). I bought it because of Takkyu Ishino’s remix. Ishino is a member of Denki Groove, a Japanese dance/techno act that I love. He also did a great remix of New Order’s fantastic track “Tutti Frutti” a few years back, and in the 90s he contributed a fantastic song to the dope-as-fuck soundtrack to the shitty-as-hell PS1 Ghost In The Shell video game. Ishino is old-school techno, and I mean techno as an actual genre of music not as a blanket word for “electronic music.” If you like your dance music robotic and high-energy, give his stuff a listen. His remix here is fantastic. I liked it so much that, after buying one single that only included a radio edit of the remix, I did a Discogs impulse buy and bought another single that included the full remix, which is even better than the edit. Them techno beats always get me.

And don’t forget that FIFA aided in the murder of thousands of people.

Posted in remixes, Takkyu Ishino, Vangelis | 4 Comments »

Live Tracks, brought to you by Grizzly Beer

Monday, November 4th, 2019

Live Tracks #2
In the above zip, you get live performances of:
Duran Duran – Rio
Fleetwood Mac  – Hypnotized
Romantics – Talking In Your Sleep
The Who – Behind Blue Eyes
Yes – I’ve Seen All Good People
Steve Miller Band – Fly Like An Eagle

Plus beer commercials! Let me explain.

Syndicated radio shows pressed to vinyl for national distribution are something that I sadly do not know much about. They aren’t the kind of records that one tends to easily find in used record stores (especially in Japan). That’s because they were never intended for any kind of commercial release, especially on the second-hand market. When one of these makes it to a used record store or online, I always wonder how it got out into the wild. Maybe a radio station unloaded its vinyl library without bothering to sort out the promos? Or perhaps a DJ snagged a personal copy for their own private collection, and they ended up selling it years later? Or maybe someone just stole it and sold it for cash. Who knows? And who knows how this one made its way to a tiny store outside of Ikebukuro in Japan?

Live Tracks was a syndicated radio program produced by DIR Broadcasting, perhaps most famous for their King Biscuit Flower Hour show. While King Biscuit featured complete (or near-complete) live concerts, Live Tracks was more of a sampler, a bite-sized one-song radio program with a single cut from a live concert. I suspect that a lot of the performances on Live Tracks were just repackaged performances taken from DIR’s substantial back catalog of King Biscuit shows. The radio host on these episodes doesn’t really go exactly when and where the recordings were taken from. Sometimes he gives rough dates (the Duran Duran show was recorded in Madison Square Garden in 1984), but other times he just says something like “here’s an old one…” so pinning down exact information on the songs is tricky. Pinning down much of anything on this show was hard, this episode wasn’t even on Discogs until I added it.

The live tracks of Live Tracks are quite good, recorded professionally and mixed well. Some sound a bit raw, but they capture the energy of a concert well. Just as interesting to me, however, is the wrapping that each episode comes in. The Live Tracks records were complete radio shows on disc. The DJ didn’t have to do anything other than drop the needle and let the show play. The band introductions are handled by DIR’s own emcee, and the LP even has its own commercials included.

For the episodes included on this LP, the sponsor is Grizzly Beer, a long-gone Canadian beer brand who apparently had a penchant for horribly inappropriate commercials. One features comments about college kids drinking beer, another drops in some absolutely cringe-inducing Asian stereotypes, and one even makes jokes about minors getting drunk on Grizzly. Holy shit that wouldn’t fly today.

Since an episode of Live Tracks is really just one song, radio stations got a lot of bang for their buck with each LP. This one features six episodes, each with an intro by the emcee followed by a Grizzly Beer commercial, another bit by the emcee, a complete song performance, and an outro by the host.

Given the format of the show, I had a hard time figuring out how to share it here tonight. I thought about just feature the live cuts, but then you’d lose a lot of the flavor of the beer commercials (which are seriously great). Also, the live cuts often fade in and out with the host, so it would be jarring to not to include them. So, I just went ahead and made the entire thing one zip file, cutting up each episode into separate tracks. I figured y’all would be just as interested in the historical wrappings of the episodes as I was. For the most part, the recordings sound good. There are few crackles here and there, a tiny bit of distortion at the very end of the Steve Miller track, but as a whole, these are well-recorded performances on a damn clean slab of wax.

Enjoy, and if you find a bottle of Grizzly Beer, for God’s sake don’t drink it, that thing is probably 30 years old.

 

Posted in Complete Albums, Duran Duran, Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller Band, The Romantics, The Who, Yes | 6 Comments »