08/20/2007
Mix Disc Monday Home / Music Home / Bullz-Eye Home
Ah, 1987: the year I learned how to beat mix. I had been buying 12" mixes to my favorite songs for years now, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do with them until I walked into a club in Athens, Ohio, and heard a guy playing the mixes I had in my dorm room, only on top of each other at the same speed. I was mesmerized.
But it wasn’t just dub mixes and sampling for me in 1987. There were a number of fine little pop songs that year, along with some great rock records (the phrase "classic rock" would come a couple years later). 1987, in fact, is arguably one of the greatest years in music history – Appetite for Destruction, Pleased to Meet Me, The Joshua Tree, Kick, the list goes on and on – but this list, to quote a line from another seminal 1987 album, goes out to the ones we left behind. Well, some were more left behind than others.
"I
Don’t Mind at All,"
Bourgeois Tagg (Yo
Yo)
I originally had this slot
filled by Level 42’s "Lessons in Love" but
took it out since I already used that on
my MDM on the One-Hit
Wonder’s Other Hit. Not sure what else
to say. It’s a short, sweet little acoustic ditty,
and it has nothing in common with anything that
follows. Just sayin’, is all.
"Don’t
Disturb This Groove" The
System (Don’t
Disturb This Groove)
I’m thinking that it had
to take no less than 30 minutes for singer
Mic Murphy to do his hair for this video.
Hang a sign up on the door; Mic’s not going
to be ready to shoot for a while.
"Holiday"
The Other Ones (The Other Ones)
Wikipedia and Allmusic tell
me I’m cheating on this one (the album sports
a 1986 release date), but as God is my witness,
the first song I heard from them ("We
Are What We Are"), was promoted
as a brand new song in March 1987 on a station
that was very quick on the draw about promoting
new music. Plus, my copies of Crowded House’s Together
Alone and Enigma’s The Cross of Changes have
a release year of 1993 on them, and I know for
a fact that they didn’t come out in the States
until early 1994, so mleah. Anyway, this is total
throwaway synth-pop, and I love every second of
it (well, the album version, anyway; the radio
remix they use for the video blows). If you liked
this song, hunt down the album, stat. It’s an ‘80s
bubblegum classic. Seriously.
"Tragic
Comedy" Immaculate
Fools (The
Dumb Poet)
Moody guitar pop
song with a singer that’s dressed like Neil
Tennant circa "West End Girls"?
Sign me up. The band had a much, much bigger
hit in 1992 with "Stand Down" at
which point they had left their China Crisis-emulating
days behind them. A decision that had to
be made in order for a pop band to survive
in a grunge world, I suppose. At least they
left me this.
"Sheila
Take a Bow" The
Smiths (Louder
than Bombs)
La, la, la, la,
lala, la, la. I had loved "How
Soon Is Now?" from the moment I heard it in
1987, but my full-blown love of the Smiths had
begun only a year before this song came out. Six
months later, they were finished. Sniff.
"Good
Times" INXS w/
Jimmy Barnes (The
Lost Boys Soundtrack)
If you had told me in 1987 that
Michael Hutchence would kill himself before
Morrissey, I would have laughed you out of
the room. Ten years later, I’m still having
a hard time fathoming Hutchence’s decision
to check out early. Man, could Jimmy Barnes
wail, though. I wonder what he’s up to these days.
Whatever he’s doing with his life, at least he’s
still alive.
"Planet
Ride" Julian Cope
(Saint Julian)
I’ll be honest:
YouTube links went a long way towards dictating
what made this list and what didn’t (my apologies
to "City of Crime" the Dan
Aykroyd/Tom Hanks rap from the "Dragnet" soundtrack.
The video’s there, but it’s a sorry-ass copy).
But I’m taking matters into my own hands with this
one. This song has no video, and no music file
to link to…so I’m creating one. Sinfully out of
print – unless you count the are-you-freaking-kidding-me
$45 import – this song, not to mention the album
that spawned it, deserve a second look.
"Time
Stand Still" Rush
(Hold Your
Fire)
One of the things that I always liked about Rush
is that their tastes changed along with mine. I
was moving away from mainstream rock when Hold
Your Fire came out, and it’s as if they sensed
that because, in order to entice me, they recruited
Aimee Mann, singer of my then-favorite band ‘Til
Tuesday, to sing backing vocals. Rush and I would
stay together until 1993’s Counterparts,
after which we would go our separate ways. I still
think about drunk dialing them from time to time,
though.
"Dirty
Water" Rock & Hyde
(Under
the Volcano)
Rocker dudes might turn their noses
up at this odd little pop song, but before
they do, they should keep in mind that the
Rock in this band is Bob Rock, engineer on
the Aerosmith comeback albums and producer
of the majority of Metallica’s post …And
Justice for All output. And the video holds
up remarkably well in retrospect.
"Heavens
Above" The Style
Council (The
Cost of Loving)
I have an irrational love for this
album. I know it’s not as good as I think
it is, but as the poet laureates GTR once
said, when the heart rules the mind, one
look, and love is blind. Paul Weller + Dee
C. Lee = sweet, sweet musical love, baby.
"Hard
Day (Shep Pettibone Remix)" George
Michael (Faith)
Some people
consider Presidents, or civil rights activists,
their heroes. In the late ‘80s, my hero was
Shep Pettibone. He was, bar none, the best
remixer on the planet, and to have him remix your
latest single was to be touched by the hand of
God himself. "Hard Day" was the first
song of Michael’s that he allowed to be remixed
by anyone other than himself, which should tell
you just how highly regarded Pettibone was at the
time. Now if only I could find the full-length 12" mix,
which is two minutes longer than the version on
the Faith CD…
"Pump
up the Volume" M/A/R/R/S
(Pump
up the Volume)
Put the needle on the record
when the drum beats go like THIS! Let
me guess: you’re shaking your booty, aren’t
you? I thought so.
"Touched
by the Hand of God" New
Order (Salvation
Soundtrack)
Sure, "True Faith" was
cool and all (and also remixed by my boy
Shep Pettibone), but when New Order dropped
this 12" late in the year, and
had my former remix hero Arthur Baker
at the knobs, I couldn’t resist. The video, which
pokes fun at the hair metal poodle cut-sporting
gargoyles, is gravy.
"Join
in the Chant" Nitzer
Ebb (That
Total Age)
Of the dozens
of beat mixes I made in college, there were
only two or three that didn’t include this
song. Simply Put, I thought this was the
Coolest Song Ever. That keyboard riff. Those
drums. That metal-on-metal percussion. Lastly,
singer Douglas McCarthy’s relentless "Fire!
Fire! Fire!" at
the end of each verse…muscle and hate, indeed.
"Kiss"
Age of Chance (Crush Collision EP)
It all started as a joke. "Hey,
let’s record the most raucous version of
Prince’s "Kiss" that we
possibly can, and FAST, so it can chart at the
same time as his version." It took another
year before it was released Stateside, and even
then it still predated the sample-heavy Pop Will
Eat Itself by a good two years. Tom Jones and the
Art of Noise may have been the ones to hit the
charts with their cover, but to anyone who’s heard
this version, there can be only one "Kiss" cover.
Note: this is also a link to an .mp3 file of the
song. Who loves ya, baby.