Side 1 of a 1980s 12" mix cassette compilation, recorded 24th April 2000. According to my sleevenotes on the reverse, "these 12" singles kept me going even when my hairstyle just couldn't keep pace". It's fair to say that in the mid to late 1980s, I went through an environmentally unfriendly amount of hairspray and gel, rarely to impressive effect.
The selection starts off with Act, who featured here in their own right last year. A short-lived but oh-so-wonderful collaboration between Claudia Brücken and Thomas Leer. Unfortunately for them, Act was launched just as label ZTT experienced a dip in popularity, post-Frankie Goes to Hollywood and pre-808 State and Seal. A shame as Brücken and Leer looked and sounded great, with satirical lyrics and none-more-80s production.
Snobbery & Decay was Act's opening statement and deserved a far better UK chart placing than #60, which would sadly prove to be their biggest 'hit'. As with most ZTT releases, there were multiple formats and remixes. As this mix title suggests, this limited edition 12" was housed in a beautiful sleeve with a photo of Quentin Crisp by Anton Corbijn on the reverse. What's less obvious is that the remix heavily samples Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis from US TV series Moonlighting, which was hugely popular at the time. In fact, the song proper doesn't kick in until five and a half minutes into a remix just shy of nine minutes. All good fun, but you had to buy the other formats to get more Claudia and Thomas.
Visage arguably made one good album (their debut) and it was all downhill from there. Personally, I also have a lot of love for second album The Anvil and, singles-wise, everything up to Pleasure Boys. Night Train is one of their best and the record-buying public seemed largely to agree as it proved to be their fourth UK Top 20 hit, pipping Mind Of A Toy by one place to peak at #12. I first got the dance mix of Night Train on vinyl courtesy of the Old Gold series, which would usually slap two extended mixes on a 12" single in a hideously generic sleeve for a bargain price. I tracked down the original 12" single years later in Replay Records in Bristol. I still love it.
What can I say about Associates? Well, other than whether to use the definite article in their name or not. Billy MacKenzie and Alan Rankine created some of the finest pop music of the 1980s, managing both perfect and off-kilter often in the same song. Club Country had a tough gig, being the follow up to Party Fears Two, but it managed #13 in the UK and matched it's predecessor's 10-week run in the charts. I love the song, whether the 7" single, slightly longer album cut or here in it's extended version. And, for my money, the best phrasing of the word 'pseudonym' in a song, ever.
It's only occurred to me whilst writing this that there's a Scottish theme running though this selection: Thomas Leer, Midge Ure, Billy MacKenzie and Alan Rankine. Zeke Manyika was born in Zimbabwe, but moved to (and I think still lives in) Scotland, joining Orange Juice in 1982, so that's good enough for me.
Runaway Freedom Train was released in 1989 as the follow up to Bible Belt and sadly also seems to have had little impact on the charts. It carries a similar political heft to Bible Belt, albeit with a slightly more oblique comment on apartheid in South Africa:
"No matter how hard you try
To break this motion,
It's a one way ticket,
Only one destination,
You can't break the wheels of history"
I still have the 12" single of Runaway Freedom Train, but I haven't digitised the songs or currently have the means to do so. The original 12" version is about eight minutes long and a fairly straightforward extended mix by Keith Cohen. The only version available online is the "U.S.A. Extended Club Version", which appears to be a re-edit of the Cohen mix, initially by The Latin Rascals and re-edited in 2009 by Mixmaster DJ Heavy M aka Malik Jefferson. The tracks runs to nearly ten minutes and is a veritable frenzy of scratches and edits. I tried cutting it down for use in this selection, but it just sounded way out of place with the rest of the tracks. I also didn't want to use different mixes of any of the other tracks to maintain the original running time.
So, what you've got here is my own re-edit of the re-edit of the, er, re-edit. Largely the album version from Zeke's second album Mastercrime, I've spliced a chunk of edits a little way into the intro and dropped in a further slab of edits at the end. It still runs a little short at just over seven and a half minutes, but (I think) it just about works. As ever, you'll be the judge of that. The mix title says it all.
Grace Jones next, with Living My Life. I first heard the song in 1983 on The Master Tape, a freebie compilation with Record Mirror which I think was a sampler of forthcoming releases. The irony with Living My Life was that it didn't appear on either her album of the same name or as a single in the UK, although a limited 12" was released in Portugal. I could have used the Long Version from the latter to solve the issue with Runaway Freedom Train, but true to the original mixtape, I've stuck with the 1986 remix by Steven Stanley, which is much closer to the version that I originally heard on the Record Mirror compilation. Neither Grace Jones nor Steven Stanley were born in Scotland and regretfully, I can't find any evidence that either have lived there, so my Scottish theme ends there.
But only briefly, as Aberdeen's own Annie Lennox leaps to the rescue with, er, Sunderland native David A. Stewart as Eurythmics. Would I lie to you? No, siree. This was the lead mix (of two) from the 12" single, with Eric 'ET' Thorngren bringing his customary BIG drums in and pushing everything bar Annie's vocals back in the mix. He likes his drums, does ET. I did buy the accompanying album, Be Yourself Tonight, but this was pretty much the point that I started checking out on Eurythmics. I like this single but it was all getting a bit slick and aimed squarely at global domination for my liking. Fair play to Eurythmics, they achieved it, but it's the first three albums that I return to time and again.
And blowing the Scottish theme once and for all (well, it was good while it lasted), Side 1 ends with Scarlet Fantastic, who both hail from the West Midlands, and are remixed here by Australian Karen Hewitt. The wonderfully named Maggie De Monde and Rick Phylip-Jones were previously in Swans Way, who had a Top 20 hit with the avant-garde pop of Soul Train. Scarlet Fantastic were more out-and-out pop and No Memory is a fantastic example, although it sadly didn't quite find an audience, reaching #24 in 1987. The pick of the bunch is the Extra Sensory Mix but the Ecstacy Mix is also a corker. The version here was ripped several years ago from my copy of the limited edition 12" single in - what else? - "scarlet fantastic" red vinyl.
Have a fun Saturday, everyone!
1) (The Naked Civil) Snobbery & Decay (Remix By Stephen Lipson): Act (1987)
2) Night Train (Dance Mix By Visage & John Luongo): Visage (1982)
3) Club Country (Extended Version By Associates & Mike Hedges): Associates (1982)
4) Runaway Freedom Train ('All This Scratching Is Making Me Itch' Re-Edit By Khayem): Zeke Manyika (1989/2022)
5) Living My Life (Remix By Steven Stanley): Grace Jones (1986)
6) Would I Lie To You? (An Eric 'ET' Thorngren Mix): Eurythmics (1985)
7) No Memory (Ecstacy Mix By Karen Hewitt): Scarlet Fantastic (1987)
