The 1983 HIDEAWAY 200: The 12"s (Part Four)

The 1983 Hideaway 200 - The 12"s Part Four features four more John "Jellybean" Benitez remixes, including tracks by Talking Heads, Hall & Oates, Freeez, and Irene Cara. Among the records in today's post are three chart-toppers from the Dance charts. If you've missed any of the preceding three parts from the 12" Series because I've simply taken too long to write them, do yourself a solid and click on the links below.

Part One     Part Two     Part Three

click on song titles to listen on YouTube

Speaking In Tongues is a damn fine album. Damn fine. Yet, despite this damn fine-ness, someone up the supply chain thought that maybe people who bought this damn fine album on cassette would enjoy five of the album's songs presented in extended versions otherwise unavailable to folks like me who exclusively purchased albums on vinyl. The five songs:

• "Making Flippy Floppy"
• "Girlfriend is Better"
• "Slippery People"
• "I Get Wild / Wild Gravity"
• "Moon Rocks"

Total extra time enjoyed by dozens of happy cassette buyers? Just shy of six minutes total! A little more than 1:12 on average per song. It wasn't until the late Eighties that I heard these longer versions when they were issued on compact disc. But beware if you try to seek them out - not all Speaking In Tongues US CDs are equal - some of them have the original shorter, as heard on vinyl versions.

Although both "Slippery People" and "Making Flippy Floppy" are among the extended versions found on the Speaking In Tongues cassette, they appear in even longer, remixed form on a twelve-inch single from 1983 and I wish both tracks could be added to any Superduperdeluxe Edition of the album coming down the line. The remixes of both songs are credited to David Byrne and John "Jellybean" Benitez.

Hall & Oates were no strangers to twelve-inch remixes of their tunes. RCA staff producer Robert Wright had remixed "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" and "Your Imagination" for commercial release in 1981, with the former topping Billboard's Top 80 chart for a week. Jellybean's Special Extended Dance Mix of "Say It Isn't So" in 1983 topped the same chart for four weeks. There's a Dub Version on Side B of the big single if you're into those.

Credit on the mix of Freeez's "I.O.U." goes to Arthur Baker, Jellybean, and John Robie. In addition to running the label Street Wise, Baker is known as one of the seminal producers of electro and club music. In addition to writing, producing and remixing hundreds of other records, Arthur Baker would go on to remix several of Hall & Oates post-1984 songs and team up with Jellybean on a few records, like New Order's "Confusion". With the benefit of thirty-five years of hindsight, "I.O.U." has proven to be one of the most influential records in the world of club and dance music. For you dub-heads, here's "Dub. U." form the flip-side of the single.

First when there's nothing But a slow glowing dream... What a feeling What a feeling (I am music now)

I probably enjoy the Flashdance soundtrack album more now than I did more than thirty years ago. (Well, except tracks 3 and 8. They get skipped every time.) Irene Cara's "Flashdance...What A Feeling" is endlessly motivating and sometimes gives me the push or boost I didn't know I needed whether I am working out or doing a particularly taxing chore. There are unsubstantiated reports (i.e. no available audio) that Joe Esposito, who had been recording with Giorgio Moroder around that time and is featured on the soundtrack album with "Lady Lady Lady", had recorded an early version of the title track before the decision was made to let Cara punch up the lyrics and have a go at it. The twelve-inch remix from Jellybean extended the song with several instrumental and percussion passages as well as an extra verse from Cara.

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