DJ

Work consumed too much of my day today. So here’s Heart with “Who Will You Run To?”

By the way, I don’t enjoy the way they try to hide Ann Wilson in these videos. She has an awesome voice and deserves to be front and center.

When I worked in radio in the 1990s and 2000s, I’d occasionally re-edit popular tracks to mix them up a little bit. I usually did this using four-track reel-to-reels, mixing it down to a two track reel-to-reel, and then cutting the tape with a razor blade and taping it back together. It was very rudimentary and I could only do one or two mix downs before the whole thing started sounding muddy. Then, in the late 1990s, a program called “Cool Edit” came along and made this whole process digital, and subsequently much easier to accomplish. Cool Edit is now known as Adobe Audition.

The first track I edited in Cool Edit was Madonna’s hit single from 1984, “Borderline”. I took elements from the extended 12-inch single and rearranged them to “punch up” the track into a radio edit, since the 12-inch single was too long (and actually too boring for radio consumption) to play in regular radio rotation. Madonna also occasionally had the habit of never “shutting up” during her early singles, sometimes making it tricky to beat mix in and out of her tracks during an instrumental break, because there was no instrumental break. “Into The Groove” is an example of this. Ironically, I replaced some of the 12-inch single instrumentation with more lyrics in my re-edit.

So, here’s “Borderline (DJ SuperCub Cub Sliced Re-Edit)”. I didn’t embellish the track with modern beats or instrumentation, it’s simply a re-arrangement.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was enjoying music by Basia from the late 1980s and early 1990s again. From 1987, here she is with “A New Day For You”. I noticed on Wikipedia it didn’t reach the U.S. Top 40. I remember it being more popular than that.

Edit: it turns out this was the second video clip and recorded for American audiences. While it only reached #53 on the Hot 100, the track did reach #5 on the Adult Contemporary charts.

One of the very first songs I ever played as a club DJ was from Lisa Stansfield’s album “Affection”. This particular track wasn’t as well known as “All Around The World”, as it’s a bit more uptempo and dance floor friendly. The track was never officially released in the United States, but that never stopped me from playing tracks as a DJ.

From 1989 (but released in 1990 in the UK), here’s Lisa Stansfield “What Did I Do To You”?

Don’t be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts, don’t give into the Twilight World.
I miss real music.

This song has been going through my head a lot lately. It’s one of those songs I associate with being a kid and riding with the rest of the family in Dad’s ’71 Chevrolet Heavy Chevy, usually headed north on Interstate 81 on a summer evening. He always listened to 62 WHEN.

From 1973, here’s Albert Hammond with his only top 20 hit, “It Never Rains In Southern California”. Interestingly, while Albert Hammond had only one hit on the Billboard charts, he wrote plenty of songs for lots of well known acts.

I’m digging his sideburns.

I don’t want “Stranger Things”, but apparently this song was featured in the show and is climbing the charts again, nearly 40 years later from its original release.

From 1985 here’s Kate Bush with “Running Up That Hill”.

In the late 1980s Donna Summer teamed up with producers Stock, Aiken, and Waterman to record her album “Another Place, Another Time”. SAW was responsible for many hits of the era, including bringing Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue to the masses. One of the leading singles from Donna’s album was “This Time I Know It’s For Real”.

Here’s a live performance of the track from over a decade later, from the “VH1 Presents Live & More Encore! with Donna Summer”. Ms. Summer’s voice was always top notch and she sounded fantastic when performing live.

Even though I spent more than decade spinning club music in various bars and worked in Top 40 radio for a good share of my life, I’ve found myself drifting toward Yacht Rock Radio during what I hope area my “middle aged years”. One of my favorite songs from the 1970s played a LOT during most of 1976. Here’s a 2013 live performance from Starbuck with their top five hit, “Moonlight Feels Right”.

The marimba solo sounds almost identical to the original back in the mid 1970s. The backing “whoo ooos” during the second half of each verse, which isn’t in the original track (that I can tell), is identical to what I would sing when jamming to this track in the car on a wonderful summer day.

This performance is quite impressive for a band performing the track nearly 40 years after the original release.

I first heard this song on the “93Q Clubbeat”, which played Saturday nights on WNTQ when I was teenager. I was thinking of this specific version of this song the other day and realized that when it was released in 1985, we were closer in time to an Elvis track than today in 2022 is to this song in 1985.

Someone around here is getting old.

From 1985, here’s “Point of No Return” by Exposé, when the group had its original lineup (before the ladies we know as Exposé today). There’s something about this version that sounds quite nostalgic to me.