Greetings and welcome in. This is Mixtape Monday and I am your host, HERC. Since we did tape NN last time out, tape OO should be today's tape but it is MIA so we have tape PP <snicker, snicker>.
Both the jcard and actual tape label are clearly labeled in green ink. No songs or artists are listed so let's pop it in the ol' JVC deck (vibrate the concrete) and hear what we can hear.
- The guitars come fading in... Hey! I know this song! Boston's "More Than A Feeling" gets things started on a literal high note with Tom Scholz's soaring guitars and Brad Delp's equally soaring vocals. It opens the band's 1976 debut and is a perfect opener on any tape anytime.
- Then The Blasters come in on the subdued tip with brother Phil talking about it being "Just Another Sunday" - How in the heck did he know I was listening on a Sunday?
- The original version is on their 1986 album Dirty Work but it is the extended version of "One Hit (To The Body)" from the Rolling Stones follows. For the next seven minutes, it is a what you'd expect a remix of a late Eighties rock track to sound like. Steve Lillywhite dubbed his remix The London Mix and I like it.
- Paul Stanley comes wailing in on the next song, KISS's crunchy "Heaven's On Fire", everybody sing Desmond Child's chorus:
Feel my heat takin' you higher/burn with me/Heaven's on firePaint the sky with desire/angel fly/Heaven's on fire
- Bryan Adams and "Run To You" are next and I'm reminded how well he and collaborator Jim Vallance know their way around a hook but I haven't listened to any new Adams tunes since that Robin Hood song in the early Nineties. Have I missed anything? 1981-1991 was pretty solid for Adams but what about the last 28 years?
- The guitar synthesizer riff that opens "Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy" has been a favorite of mine for something like 40 years now. I dubbed this one off Bad Company's 10 From 6 compilation.
- "Back On My Feet Again" is my third favorite song by The Babys and I'm thinking you might not have even two favorite songs from the group. Like the track above, this one was dubbed from a hits collection, The Babys Anthology, released in 1981.
- Bow Wow Wow have the next song on tape PP and in all likelihood, it is the only song of theirs most people know. I know the I Want Candy album front to back and back to front for reasons I cannot get into on this family-friendly blog. It wasn't recorded as an album but assembled from an EP, some album tracks, a single and a B-side. I knew a girl named Tanya back in 1982 that called the group Anabella's Ants. She was cool.
- If you’ve read the last few Mixtape Mondays, you're probably wondering when I'm gonna start talking about Mediabase numbers. How 'bout now? From January 1, 2019, through June 9, 2019, Journey's "Be Good To Yourself" from 1986 has racked up an average of 1.3 spins per day. It is the band's 14th most played song of the year thus far. It is most popular east of the Mississippi by far.
- For the next track, Mick Jagger returns sans his Stones for another extended version. This time out, he's pleading for "Just Another Night" with "you" featuring Sly & Robbie holding down the riddim and Jeff Beck riffing on guitar. The Extended Remix is by François Kevorkian and Ron St. Germain with additional overdubs by Arthur Baker.
- The Beach Boys "Fun, Fun, Fun" follows but with a twist - the album cut, most likely dubbed from the classic Endless Summer album, is played at 45rpm.
- "Surfin' U.S.A." is up next at the same speed to close out Side A of the tape.
- Side B of PP also gets off to great start with INXS's "What You Need" followed the second, title track from the band's 1985 album Listen Like Thieves. If we get the third track from that album, I'll be a happy, happy boy.
- Good news: Another INXS track. Bad news: It's not the one we had hoped for. "Original Sin" comes in as track 3 and Medibase says it is the 18th most played INXS year-to-date across all monitored stations while "What You Need" in at #2 and "Listen Like Thieves" is #11.
- The fourth track on Side B of tape PP was officially released in its original demo version this past Friday and will soon be available on CD and vinyl. "100 MPH" is thought to have been recorded by Prince around the time that Purple Rain was released in late June 1984 and there are unconfirmed reports that Prince offered it to the band in exchange for "Kiss" after he heard how well they had worked it up and he wanted to release it himself. Prince plays all the instruments while members of Mazarati recorded over his demo vocals. The full-length album version included on this tape is the third cut on PP longer than 7 minutes.
- The familiar rhythm track of
Sly Fox's "Let's Go All The Way"Boogie Boys' "A Fly Girl" comes in as track 5. Boogie Knight, Romeo J.D., and Lil' Rahiem trade verses that both objectify yet strangely kind of praise women over a bang, bang Mudbone beat borrowed from "Let's Go All The Way". - The side-to-side stereo effects that herald the beginning of the Hundred & Thousands Remix of "Why?" from Bronski Beat is up next. Clocking in at 6:19, the remix is handled by Harvey Goldberg who is credited for remixing all six tracks on the original vinyl version of Hundreds & Thousands, released as the final "album" by the original lineup of Bronski Beat when singer Jimmy Sommerville left the duo to form The Communards in 1985.
- Fading in as the next track is Icehouse's haunting "Hey Little Girl" as the seventh track on the second side of tape PP. Sad to say that, according to Mediabase, this little ditty has yet to be monitored in 2019 and received no airplay in 2018. I was too disappointed to look any further back.
- "Take My Breath Away", Berlin's love theme from Top Gun is the next track on the tape. My girl and I adopted it as our own love theme and oooh it just got yucky in here.
- The Beatles swoop in to save the day, rescue the tape and get the girl with "Girl", the 153rd most played Beatles track on the US airwaves.
- Is that the end? NO! The acapella version of Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done For Me Lately?", the final song on the B side of the "What Have You Done For Me Lately?" twelve-inch single, closes out Monday Mixtape PP.
Nothing too far (or even remotely) off the beaten path here although it has been about a hot minute since I've listened to any INXS album (hard to go wrong with the ones released between 1982-1987) so I put that on my to-do list. I had forgotten using sped-up versions of songs to fill-up time at end of Side A. (My first thought after "Fun, Fun, Fun" started was "Oh no, there goes another tape deck!" Wonder if they'll be more of these sped-up songs going forward? I wouldn't put it past me.) No overt message in the song titles as has been my modus operandi but I suppose you could suss one out of the lyrics in the songs here. I was very much attracted to this girl and most definitely still am into her. (Don't tell my wife!) I'd peg the most likely timeframe of dubbing tape PP at around late May or early June 1986 either immediately before or a couple weeks after The Breakup Tape.
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