Hollywood BASIC: BASIC beats sampler

If you're not familiar with Hollywood BASIC, lets take a moment to discuss this anomaly of the early nineties hip-hop scene. Generally recognized as the brainchild of Dave "Funken" Klein, a writer and purveyor of hip-hop culture, the label was home to Organized Konfusion, a young DJ Shadow, Digital Underground associates Raw Fusion, African hip-hop duo Zimbabwe Legit, rapper Charizma and his partner Peanut Butter Wolf, real-life convicts the Lifers Group and the South Central soundtrack.

Everyone should know who Organized Konfusion are, as well as DJ Shadow, and Raw Fusion, consisting of Money B and DJ Fuze, had a few moments in the spotlight, though it's understandable you might not be familiar with Lifers Group or Zimbabwe Legit. As for Charizma and Peanut Butter Wolf, their only releases via BASIC were a flexi-disc given away with an issue of Bomb Hip-Hop magazine and a promotional cassette, both featuring a single track, although those tracks and much more eventually gained official releases years later on Stones Throw Records.

Hollywood BASIC was a sister label to Hollywood Records which was distributed by Elektra in the early nineties, so their distribution was pretty good all things considered and a lot of their singles got played on Yo! MTV Raps, but video play never necessarily translates into record sales and a lot of the label's releases slipped into obscurity. Now, if you're wondering how an early nineties hip-hop powerhouse like Elektra, what with it's major label distribution via Warner Bros., could fail at selling artists with easy cred like Organized Konfusion and Raw Fusion, it should be noted who the Hollywood labels owners were, and that would be an entertainment entity that while amazingly successful rarely sold much of anything with an edge, and when they attempted to do generally failed miserably, and that wonderous entity would be...

Disney

The people that signed the Insane Clown Posse without realizing how stupid an idea that was from the start, the people that canceled the Insane Clown Posse album after it had been sent to retail, the people that would sign any group as detestable as the Insane Clown Posse and drop them without at least imagining the amount of money they could have made despite having a track record for doing things of that sort to begin with, that's Hollywood Records and they're owned by Disney. They also signed a lot of interesting acts that had plenty of credibility and talent like the Butthole Surfers, Danzig, Indigo Girls, Sparta, Big Kenny of Big & Rich, The Dead Milkmen, Fishbone and Fastball among many others, although I bet most people had no idea any of these groups and artists had anything to do with this label which seems to be cursed by its association with its parent entity. Their biggest act was arguably Queen, for which they purchased their catalog rights and proceeded to reissue their albums in the US, often with bizarre practices like including vaguely altered remixes of album tracks as bonuses and funding countless producers to create stylistically divergent remixes, most of which have never seen the light of day with only a handful having been issued via promotional releases.

Anyway, Hollywood BASIC, apart from suffering the Disney curse, was dealt a death blow when Dave "Funken" Klein lost his battle with cancer, and the label disappeared completely in the mid nineties with several unreleased records in its archives including the unreleased Queen remix compilation, the hip-hop themed BASIC Bootlegs. The label truly had it's heart in the right place though, as is evident from the amazing BASIC beats sampler. Alongside tracks from all of the artists on the label's roster, barring Charizma and Peanut Butter Wolf, you also get a cross section of bizarre interludes including angry messages from members of Lifers Group, Rick Rubin singing badly, someone getting really pissed off about Milli Vanilli and lots of other oddities. It reminds me of what is generally becoming a lost era of hip-hop, the crazy early nineties when bizarre interludes and general confusion was accepted and encouraged, making things very "interesting"!

If you love hip-hop, you'll love this. Seriously, just grab this and enjoy it, there isn't anything else that needs to be said!


Hollywood BASIC: BASIC beats sampler

01 You've Reached BASIC
02 Organized Konfusion - The Rough Side Of Town (South Side)
03 Niz-Nuts
04 Lifers Group - The Real Deal (Shadow Remix)
05 Women's Bathroom
06 Raw Fusion - Rockin' To The P.M. (Oaktown Homies Remix)
07 Rick Sings
08 Queen - We Will Rock You (Ruined by Rick Rubin)
09 Zimbabwe's In The House
10 Zimbabwe Legit - Rhymin' Wit The African Symphony
11 Bomba Fleur
12 Last Acustic Remains - untitled
13 Hank Love
14 Hello
15 Raw Fusion - Throw Your Hands In The Air
16 Ass Out The Bed
17 Lifers Group - Belly Of The Beast
18 Report The BASICs
19 Queen - Another One Bites The Dust (Long Dusted B-Boy Version)
20 Rockbarry
21 Organized Konfusion - Open Your Eyes
22 Money Back
23 Shadow - BASIC Mega-Mix


So, now that you've got this, anyone got a copy of that Queen BASIC Bootlegs album? From what I understand, it is circulating among Queen fans but is generally looked at as heresy since there are a lot of rappers making guest appearances. It's got production from DJ Muggs, Dave "Rave" Ogilvie, Trent Reznor, Rick Rubin, Mr. Mixx and appearances from Ice Cube and Money B. Apparently a David Cohen and Femi Jiya remix of The Miracle was also made for it but wouldn't have made the cut. You can see a little more about it here. So, anyone wanna have pity on me so I can share it with everyone else?



On a final note, there was yet another short-lived sister label of Hollywood Records, Hollywood METAL, their rock and, uh, metal label. Apart from promotional appearances by a few of that label's artists, there were no releases by the METAL label. Once again, how are you supposed to do business as a respectable label when the mouse is clearly holding the reigns?

Resident Alien - Suckas Revisited

I'm not in the habit of doing reposts but I noticed Bust The Facts posted two Resident Alien singles here and here so I figured, what with my mentioning that Prince Paul is on my interview wishlist, this was as good a time as any to mention that you can download RA's unreleased It Takes A Nation Of Suckas To Let Us In here and you can read the original post, actually the very first Unheard Music post, right here! Just in case you want the quick and dirty though...

Resident Alien were a hip-hop group consisting of actual resident aliens that Prince Paul knew and he intended for them to put an album out on Dew Doo Man Records, his short-lived subsidiary of Def Jam. They recorded the album between the first and second De La Soul records and it sounds like it, making it an interesting bridge between the other Native Tongues groups of the late eighties and early nineties. They had videos released for the songs Mr. Boops and Ooh The Dew Doo Man, both of which can be seen here and here, and a 12" with both tracks on it. Everyone was taken by RA but Russell Simmons who decided to terminate the deal with Dew Doo Man and Def Jam prematurely. Maybe that's because Paul holds nothing sacred and made big fun or "Russell Rush" on RA's album. A few tracks have surfaced since but the album is still otherwise unreleased. Def Jam should just give Paul the rights to issue this because it does no one any good to let it just sit in a vault somewhere. Seriously, how much money could this have cost to produce? How much would Def Jam lose after twenty years?

That's the abbreviated version of the story, for which you can read a longer and more detailed account here, but I couldn't help but share this again after Bust The Facts shared those singles and videos! So grab this and party like it's 1991 all over again! Native Tongues forever!


Resident Alien - It Takes A Nation Of Suckas To Let Us In

01 Intro
02 The Resident Alien
03 I Yam What I Yam
04 The Ox Tail, The Burger & Chicken Wing
05 Miss Lee
06 Shakey Ground (feat. Maceo and Dres)
07 Ardicle Don
08 Horrorscope
09 Midtro
10 Ooh The Dew Doo Man
11 Mr. Boops
12 Alone
13 State Of Emergency
14 Are You Ready
15 We Na Play
16 Wanna Be (Russell)
17 Mother's Day
18 Third World
19 Extro
20 Welcome To America

Eric Leeds - Times Squared

This is the last of the lossless side-project posts I'm going to be doing here at The Unheard Music, although there will be others at There Are No Kings as that site gets rolling. In fact, I'm hoping to post a little something next week there to start the machines a little early. There will also be an announcement regarding the complete content of the Ridiculously Deluxe Edition of Sign O' The Times sometime next week. It'll probably appear at T.A.N.K. but it'll be here for certain. That post will also contain details as to what I have and some assistance I may be asking regarding the Homemade Deluxe Editions. For now though, Eric Leeds' first solo album, which is really anything but.

Times Squared started life as another Madhouse album. Prince requested that Eric assemble tracks from the vault for a third Madhouse album, one that would be released in place of the already finished 1988 version of 24, and so Eric entered that dimly lit recess of audio secrecy on a mission of recovery! (I'm aiming for dramatic in that last sentence, just in case you didn't notice! :) ) The album Eric assembled was to be named 26 although it may have featured eleven tracks. Prince liked the album and intended to release it, though he felt it seemed more like an Eric Leeds solo album so he told Eric to give the album and tracks proper names for a first solo release.

Despite the album receiving a solo performer credit, it was anything but the work of one man. Prince received writing credits on nine of the songs, Eric on eight, with Levi Seacer Jr. and Sheila E. also receiving credits for tracks two through four. Sheila played drums on several of the tracks and Levi played bass, while Prince played guitars, drums, keyboards and anything else that fancied him. On paper it definitely looked like a Madhouse album, albeit with far more honest credits. It didn't sound like Madhouse though, at least not in the general way that the three Madhouse albums from the eighties did. The grooves were a bit more relaxed and there was a more varied sound throughout, including Sheila's Latin percussion and Prince's synth-heavy production.

Times Squared went nowhere of course, just like most Paisley Park releases despite some push from Warners. It's understandable that Warner Bros. weren't necessarily interested in the "enfant terrible" and his releases, but whatever they did for Eric it would never have been enough. Soft instrumental jazz is simply not big enough in the US to propel a record to the top of the charts, not unless your name is Kenny G. Eric did release one more solo album via Paisley Park, the ironically named Things Left Unsaid. It's worth noting that despite it being released on Paisley Park, Prince only wrote one song for it, making it more of a solo effort on Eric's part than his actual first solo album ever was.


Eric Leeds - Times Squared

FLAC Part 1

FLAC Part 2

V0 MP3

01 Lines
02 Andorra
03 Night Owl
04 Overnight, Every Night
05 Cape Horn
06 Little Rock
07 Easy Does It
08 The Dopamine Rush
09 Kenya
10 Times Squared
11 Once Upon A Time

Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion Roughs

I am not embarrassed to admit that I'm a fan of Chinese Democracy and what Axl is doing now, although I definitely don't think of it as proper GNR. Unfortunately, that album is a bit of a laugh now due to it's sales and ridiculous marketing plan with Best Buy. For crying out loud, you can go in to just about any Best Buy and find STACKS of that CD and it's vinyl counterpart for sale at full price. I kinda feel bad for Best Buy, but not that bad because they were in bed with Irving Azoff and nobody really did their job. Axl has to suffer some of the blame too for taking so long to finish the album, but honestly that part didn't surprise me, especially after the Use Your Illusion and "The Spaghetti Incident?" delays.

In case you don't know the details, the two Use Your Illusion albums were delayed over the course of several years prior to their releases in 1991. Everyone seems to blame Axl for being a perfectionist, but it really seems like it was a perfect storm of bullshit from all parties involved, save Izzy. Stories circulate that Axl or Slash would approve a mix only to have the other reject it, and this occured on a regular basis. Add to that the firing of Steven Adler and search for his replacement which led to the hiring of Matt Sorum and about seven months of mixing sessions by Bill Price, the legend who mixed the Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks, much of which involved him flying all over the US to play new mixes to the band for their approval and to collect multitracks for unfinished songs. They went on tour months before the album was even done!

It's really amazing that GNR got anything done with all that chaos around them, although the Use Your Illusion albums were the nail in the coffin for the band, at least as they were, as Axl intended for those albums to erase the memory of Appetite For Destruction, same as Chinese Democracy was supposed to erase the memory of Use Your Illusion. Still, the Use Your Illusion albums meant a lot more to me than Appetite ever did, and I have fond memories of the insane amount of vitriol all over the first Illusion album. The second Illusion album never did as much for me, but I've always heard that it was meant to be the "friendly" record. Personally, if I never hear Estranged again it won't affect me one way or another, but Civil War, Shotgun Blues and You Could Be Mine are still killers.

Anyway, back in March I received an e-mail from a very friendly fellow named Mark who pointed me in the direction of a site filled with lossless GNR boots, mostly live recordings although there were several studio collections too. There were three collections of Use Your Illusion roughs there, all of which I grabbed with much glee and abandon. I thought about posting all of them but I decided that was simply too much GNR to share, so I've made a collection of highlights for all to examine. As for the lossless files, they are still up if you want to grab them. The name of the site is Guns N' Roses Bootlegs and the links for the individual boots are below as well as the highlights collection for download. Enjoy!

Use Your Illusion Outtakes
This is apparently a bootleg comp someone pressed and sold a while back. Much of the content is from other boots but there is some unique stuff on it too like session excerpts and instrumentals.

Axl's Advanced Copy
Who knows if this set of tracks were really ever in Axl's possession, but this is a great boot regardless. Apparently it's collected from two CDs of rough mixes from the Illusion sessions. Not all the tracks are hugely different and the quality is lacking, but it features the unreleased Ain't Goin' Down and a rather odd version of Don't Damn Me where Axl ad libs the end of the song. This is one to grab!

Use Your Illusion Sessions: Rough Mixes and Q Sound Mixes
This is another really interesting collection. The first part is from a DAT tape labeled Rough Mixes with new Slash Guitars, which is just what it says it is. Axl is nowhere to be found on those tracks so you get to hear the band sans overdubs as well as early instrumentals of some of the covers that ended up on "The Spaghetti Incident?". The second part is labeled Mixes And Q-Sound and contains a number of rough mixes but also features QSound variants. QSound was a "positional three-dimensional sound processing algorithm" that was supposed to make you feel like you were in the middle of the music if you placed your head just right between the speakers or were wearing good headphones. I don't remember it working AT ALL, but apparently people in the video game industry believed in it enough to use it in arcades and some console games for a while. You can read a lot more about it at the QSound wikipedia reference which also contains a list of the albums that were mixed in QSound. It's a pretty short list.

One other note about this particular bootleg, while the mixes are high quality recordings and when ran through a spectral analyzer it's apparent they fill the full frequency range of a CD quality recording, whomever transferred them did so at ridiculously HOT levels. The instrumental roughs with new Slash guitars sound alright, but the rough mixes and their QSound counterparts are totally brickwalled. So, if you're listening to these and wondering why they sound distorted as hell, there's your answer. I give credit to whomever leaked/shared them but if you load 'em up in Audacity you're gonna cry at how badly damaged they are.


And now, a collection of highlights from the above bootlegs for your listening pleasure!


Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion Roughs

01 Ain't Goin' Down
From Axl's Advanced Copy, this leftover was apparently used in a Guns N' Roses pinball machine, although I've never seen one. Decent track.

02 Civil War
The third version of the track on the Use Your Illusion Outtakes boot, this one features vocals but not the intro from Cool Hand Luke.

03 The Garden
Rough instrumental track from the Rough Mixes with new Slash Guitars DAT. Pretty cool.

04 Get In The Ring
This is a mostly instrumental mix but there are some vocals on it. Get In The Ring was one of the last songs to be finished for the albums as Axl was still working on the lyrics.

05 Double Talkin' Jive
Rough Mix

06 New Rose
Instrumental from the Slash Guitars DAT.

07 Coma
From Axl's Advanced Copy, this isn't much different from the released version but it is missing a lot of the extra sounds from the emergency room and, as the record credits them, the "bitches".

08 November Rain
A December 1990 rough mix.

09 Locomotive
Slash Guitar Instrumental

10 Pretty Tied Up
Rough Mix

11 Don't Damn Me
This is the version where Axl ad libs the very end of the recording. Funny.

12 You Could Be Mine
Rough Mix

13 I Don't Care About You
Slash Guitar Instrumental

14 My World
This one is very suspicious. Load this up in your favorite audio editor and you'll see that the right and left channels mirror each other, making me wonder if this is really someone's attempt at tweaking the track. It also sounds strange, like it's out of phase. Regardless, even though I'm pretty sure EVERYONE hates this track (except me) I thought I'd include this since it's mostly instrumental and gives one a better chance to examine the backing track. I have no idea what possessed Axl to record this or why no one else in the band knew about it until the CD was pressed, but this ridiculously over-the-top abuse track is for me a lot of fun. I can't take the lyrics seriously, but I get the impression that Axl was trying to be Nine Inch Nails or Skinny Puppy. It's not great, but I gotta give the guy a lot of credit for trying.


PS - No offense intended with this photo Axl, I just thought it was cute and worth sharing. Get the next album out man! I know I'm not the only one that will buy it!

U2 - Lady With The Spinning Head / Salomé

Most people close to me know of my strong distaste for U2. It's not because of their music, at least not their older works, although I do feel most of their best known songs from earlier in their career are severely over-praised, but rather it's because of Bono's big mouth. I'm sure he thinks he's doing good for the world but I genuinely detest his image as a guy who wants to be cool while saving the world in his mind. He has a beautiful voice and is a talented songwriter, but he's his own biggest hype machine and it's really annoying.

The funniest part about Bono's need to hype himself is when he gets caught in his own fuck-ups, like saying how we should erase the world debt and pay our taxes while he moves his band legally out of their home country of Ireland for tax purposes. Remember when he pushed for additional hype for Pop only to have it be a flop when compared to the money spent on it's release, causing a mid-nineties melt-down for Island Records and requiring them to fire a good chunk of their promotions staff, which probably helped Universal with their takeover of the label a few years later. There is also the meeting presidents and world leaders, writing articles for newspapers and thinking the American Idol casts must be blown away when they meet him. He'd be interesting to meet, that's for certain, but more for the anecdotes or goofy stories than for the celebrity.

And then there is the band, a good rhythm section and a guitarist who is playing a variation on the same riff in EVERY SONG THEY RELEASE TO RADIO! What the hell?

All my bitching aside, there was a time when U2 were genuinely creative and working toward making original and inspired music. That part of their career essentially ended after their label didn't promote their album with Brian Eno as Passengers, as they begged them not to release it under their own name due to it's uncommercial sound. Yes, they've had a few really good songs on every album they've done since then, with Beautiful Day being utterly joyous and one of their greatest singles ever, but they haven't recorded a solid album since Zooropa, although I believe more people would be impressed by that Passengers album if they gave it a chance.

Take a step back to 1991's Achtung Baby, and U2 are making joyous, beautiful music that even when flawed is fascinating and enjoyable. Mysterious Ways becomes a classic hit, Even Better Than The Real Thing confounds yet entices with it's great hooks, strange lyrics and video as a miniature representation of their Zoo TV tour, and The Fly still sounds bizarre and futuristic today. They also fucked over Negativland by letting their label push them around and then steal aspects of their "revolutionary" Zoo TV tour from them and the Tape Beatles, but they got away with it because they were taking it to another level previously unseen. What's funny is what they left off from that era or didn't even bother finishing, as some of that material is among the best they ever recorded.

Consider this post a preview of something that may be dug into later this summer, as I hope to go over the best of the Achtung Baby outtakes and sessions with a fine toothed comb, but for now I want to focus on two of the best songs that never got their moment in the sun, Lady With The Spinning Head and Salomé both of which were b-sides from that album's era.

Lady With The Spinning Head (UVI) started life as a rather funky number that eventually grew into Ultraviolet (Light My Way), which appeared on the finished album (the UVI stands for Ultraviolet 1). The lyrics are pretty non-sensical but the percussion is truly funky, sounding more like a human drum machine than anything the band had tried prior. There are also interesting sounds abounding throughout the song, with what might be an Indian influenced keyboard solo in the middle and what sounds like a twisted music box in the intro. It's a hell of a song, especially since it ended up as a b-side, making many wonder why something this good would be rejected for the album. It's rejection is clearly because it sounds far more polished than anything else on the album, but it's still amazing that Ultraviolet would get chosen over Head's twisted brilliance.

When a significant chunk of the early Achtung Baby sessions were bootlegged in April of 1991, six months before the album's release, many fans were introduced to an early version of Head with a track labeled Wake Up on the bootleg packaging, now generally referred to as Take You Down. The backing track remained practically identical to the released song, although it sounds like Bono is singing at least two different songs at the same time. This isn't an exaggeration, it sounds as though whomever prepared the mix left both vocal tracks in the song, but who knows, it could have been intentional. Whatever the cause, Head would see it's initial official release as the b-side of One and then a second issue, as an Extended Dance Remix, on the single for Even Better Than The Real Thing. The Extended version added back a lot of the musical elements left over from the Take You Down version of the song, making it live up to it's Extended label. The Take You Down version remains unreleased.

Salomé is often considered the best non-album track from the Achtung Baby era, if not one of U2's best b-sides ever. It's quite different from most anything they had recorded before and after, with it's emphasis on a funky but subdued bass and drum combo driving the song. Bono sings about the biblical Salomé and her seductive dance while someone samples his voice and uses his calls as backup vocals and distorted textures. The earlier versions, much like the version of Lady With The Spinning Head, are rather similar to the finished one, although they all feature significantly different lyrics, although these follow the same rhythmic patterns as the finished ones. Salomé was released as the normal b-side for Even Better Than The Real Thing although it also appeared as a trance remix on the Melon compilation released to members of U2's magazine/fan club, Propaganda. That trance version, the Zooromancer Remix, was created by Pete Heller and Terry Farley, renown for their participation in the Madchester scene.

If you asked me to listen to anything new related to U2 and Bono, you'd have a hard time convincing me not to walk away. Their output is simply not of the same quality as it was well over a decade ago, and Bono's incessant yapping makes me consider carrying a loaded weapon, but the wonders of songs like these is a great reminder that Bono used to let his talent do the talking. Maybe if they decided to take a few years off and sort the best songs they'd write during that period they might issue something as great as the classics in their catalog, or maybe if they let Eno rule them in the studio as he knows how to get results, but when you're the "biggest band in the world" general rules don't often apply. Too bad, because I'm sure they've still got a little left in 'em. For now though, enjoy these gems, with the aforementioned standard release versions, early versions and remixes.


U2 - Lady With The Spinning Head / Salomé

01 Lady With The Spinning Head (UVI)
02 Salomé
03 Take You Down (Lady With The Spinning Head Demo)
04 Salomé (Early Version)
05 Lady With The Spinning Head (Extended Dance Remix)
06 Salomé (Zooromancer Remix)

SERIOUSLY??? Paula Abdul - Vibeology

In digging around my CD collection the other day to do the Deee-Lite post, I happened upon a promo CD I remember hunting long and hard for back in the day. I had to be in my early teens while hunting for this relic and, if my memory serves me correctly, I found it via a mail-order record collecting service, although it might have been via that pre-Internet dial-up dinosaur, Prodigy. The medium for it's discovery doesn't matter much, although it does awaken memories of how hard it was to find rare recordings before the advent of Napster and other P2P services.

What I remember most about this oddball song is listening to Open House Party on Saturday nights, hearing the remix open the show, and constantly replaying this song on a tape of Paula Abdul's Spellbound while walking around the insides of the empty LCCC campus during the summer while my sister took violin lessons. The song I'm going on about is Vibeology, which I'm sure I gave away with the title of this post.

If you haven't heard the song, you've either missed an incredible pop gem or an enormous train wreck on multiple levels, all depending on who you ask. Vibeology was easily the oddest song on Abdul's second album, Spellbound, what with the full-on club bass, brass from the "horny horns", a strange chorus of operatic singers and a seemingly orgasmic Abdul as an occasionally confused golden-age radio performer. For all it's bi-polar fluxuations, it was probably the bravest song she could have put on an album she wrote little of and was considered a sophomoric follow-up by many. That said, it's also an example of the end of her career as an immensely popular star, as it was the least successful single from the album, had a generic video and is often best remembered for a miserable performance at the MTV Video Music Awards where she appeared in a leotard with a giant microphone pack strapped to her back, all the while looking like she might fall over at any given moment.

Regardless of the masses opinions of Vibeology, I was in love with the song and still find it pretty wonderful. Yeah, it's totally unpopular to admit something like that, but I've never tried to seem hip or cool so why would I hide details like these? That said, I was really taken by a pretty basic remix I was hearing regularly on the Open House Party radio show that had a bouncier beat and some new keyboards. I picked up the 12" only to be immensely disappointed upon discovering it contained different remixes in a darker vein by Steve "Silk" Hurley. While those mixes eventually grew on me, my search continued until I found a US promo CD with the remix I had been searching for. It was attributed to Keith "KC" Cohen, a regular studio hired gun of the early nineties and late eighties who worked primarily in the dance community (and also sometimes as the uncredited force for saving Prince's pop sensibilities), and I was in heaven.

Upon listening to the CD for the first time in years the other day, I found that my tastes toward remixes have changed significantly as Cohen's remix is no longer terribly appealing to me. It's rather pedestrian, although I'm sure it would sound great on a dance floor. What's interesting though is that Cohen also mixed the album version of Vibeology, and while he may not be the producer for that version, his touch can be felt and that original version hasn't lost any of it's charm for me as it still sounds oddly fresh today, at least to these ears.

I've seen reports that Cohen's remixes as well as the other tracks on that US promo CD are pretty rare and are no longer available commercially, if they ever were to begin with (there is some information pointing towards an Australian release). There is also evidence of additional remixes that were never made available commercially. I must admit enough of a fascination to hear more of those unreleased remixes, but I'm pretty happy with what I've got and would like to share that with all of you and anyone else interested. So, it is with great pleasure that I present the contents of the US promo CD single for Paula Abdul's Vibeology. And if anyone out there reading this has any of those other unreleased Vibeology remixes, drop me a line, I'd love to check them out!


Paula Abdul - Vibeology (US Promo CD)

01 Vibeology (Jeff & Pete 7" Edit)
Despite the name, this isn't an edit of a remix, but rather the single edit of the album version. Jeff and Pete are V. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Lord, the song's arrangers, producers and co-composers with Sandra St. Victor.

02 Vibeology (7" Keith Cohen Club Edit)
An edit of Cohen's remix, this version actually follows the pacing of the album version almost exactly, albeit with the remix's additional flourishes of course.

03 Vibeology (Humphrey's Hip-Hop Radio Edit)
Humphrey is Humphrey Riley who produced this remix with DJ Ron-Ski and Wiz.

04 Vibeology (Keith Cohen's House Mix)
The long version of Cohen's remix.

05 Vibeology (Humphrey's Hip-House Mix)
The long version of Humphrey's remix.

06 Vibeology (Keith Cohen's Penthouse Dub)
There was another Cohen dub of the song released on the US cassette single that was quite a bit goofier. That dub features someone doing a Ross Perot impersonation and talking about how Vibeology would truly help the people or something like that. This dub, unfortunately, is missing all of that inspired goofiness, but it's still a fun and mostly instrumental edit of the Cohen remixes.

BONUS: Vibeology (Hurley's House Mix)
After complaining about the disappointment but eventual pleasure found with Steve "Silk" Hurley's remixes, it would be ridiculous for me to not post at least one version for your listening or gawking pleasure. This is Hurley's main remix for Vibeology and is pretty damn great. If you like this, his Houstyle remix of Prince's Gett Off is essential listening!


Just in case that wasn't enough Paula Abdul or Vibeology weirdness for you, check out this strange commercial for the song's Japanese release as a single.




PS - If you thought this post seemed to tread into the territory of The Lost Turntable's universe, wait till you see my Trilogy post! A C&C Music Factory side-project that's gonna make you puke!

Apollo Smile

I apologise to anyone traumatized by this post in advance, but I thought it only right to finish talking about Matt Dike's productions with one I'd mentioned earlier but otherwise ignored. That would be Apollo Smile, and boy, get ready for a smack-like overdose of bubblegum!

Ms. Smile has been around since the early nineties and is best known as the voice of Ulala in the English versions of the Space Channel 5 games. Her contributions to those games are pretty notable as most think she got the voice-acting perfect and the games are looked at as early precursors to the Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero games, their spin-offs and various clones. None of that has anything to do with her career in pop music though, which based on this album alone is pretty dismal. I suppose I'm being a bit hard on her as this was the early nineties and her music comes off like a full-band version of Deee-Lite with the sex-flair right up front, and maybe if I had heard this record around the time I was listening to World Clique I would have a different opinion (as in I still enjoy World Clique), but as it stands it sounds mighty dated, almost like they were trying to sell an early twenties Britney Spears to teenie-boppers but without as much sex yet more than what was acceptable for the time. Sorry if that's a little long-winded, but listen to Thunderbox and you'll understand.

Apollo's career continued despite the album flopping and she has recorded at least two more solo albums since independently, played with an "Atari" band named Rockbot and hosted the Sci-Fi Channel's Anime Week in 1998, which I'm sure is due to her then calling herself The Live Action Anime Girl, something I'm sure existed in Japan long before Ms. Smile's arrival. That said, she probably would have went over wonderfully in Japan but I haven't read anything to prove she did.

Most of what makes this album fail is the over-enthusiastic vibe coming from Apollo's vocals, which isn't to say she's a bad singer, but it doesn't sound like she either knew what she was doing here or the engineers and producers sucked. Freddie Richmond, Jr. gets the main production credit here and he's also credited with mixing the album with David Bianco who was given a co-production credit on six tracks. As for the rest of the line-up, several names known for quality stand out including engineer work from Steve Ett, Sylvia Massy, Brendan O'Brien and David Bianco again, co-production on four tracks from Matt Dike (both versions of Dune Buggy, Temple Of Love and Peace Sign), remix credits to Bill Laswell for the Praxis version of Thunderbox and Shep Pettibone for his version of Dune Buggy, and vocals and "box" (?) by Johnny "Guitar" Watson. So Johnny "Guitar" Watson didn't play guitar on the album? WHAT?!? It's also worth noting that Matt Dike, Mike Ross, Rick Ross (not THAT Rick Ross, Mike's brother and manager for Delicious Vinyl), Chris and Cynthia Goss (think QOTSA) all get thank yous.

A few tidbits worth explaining, the version of Thunderbox listed as the Praxis Remix is not listed as such on the album, but in the credits Mr. Laswell is given his remix credit. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why a remix was made of that track as it isn't terribly different from the original version which was featured on the Days Of Thunder soundtrack. I've included that version as a bonus track for anyone interested enough to examine it. Mr. Pettibone doesn't get his name on the track list either, where his version of Dune Buggy is listed as a Bonus Remix, but again the credits do list him as the responsible party so I only thought it was right to do the same here. There were several additional remixes of Dune Buggy created which are also attributed to Mr. Pettibone, but I have no interest in hunting those down so please forgive their non-presence here. Last but not least, I have seen Matt Dike credited several times as the original producer of Thunderbox, although the album's credits and those from the Days Of Thunder soundtrack don't agree with that statement. Whether he is or is not though, it sure sounds like something he would have at least started, what with a guitar riff heard both on Paul's Boutique and Tone Loc's Loc'ed After Dark and drum loops from Bonzo's Montreux off Led Zep's Coda, but until such a time as I or someone else gets to ask him directly we may never know.

So again, I apologise for any undue trauma you may suffer from listening to this craptastic voyage I am featuring for you today, but it's not right to mention something and then not explain it, so I thought it only right. Sorry if I hurt your feelings Ms. Smile, if it's any consolation YOU WERE GREAT as Ulala! All this said, enjoy if possible and may the devil have mercy on my soul, although the way he works he might reward me for this one!


Apollo Smile

01 Thunderbox (Praxis Remix)
02 Dune Buggy
03 I Want You To Love Me
04 Love Comes Your Way
05 Theme For All Nations
06 Friends
07 Hymn To The Sun
08 Temple Of Love
09 Peace Sign
10 Theme (Reprise)
11 Dune Buggy (Shep Pettibone Remix) (listed as a bonus track on the album)
12 Thunderbox (Original Version) (bonus track, courtesy of ME!)

PS - The image in this post has nothing to do with the album cover, although I think it's a heluva improvement if you ask me! Girl is HOT!!!!! and with five exclamation points! For those who want the real cover, it's embedded with the MP3s in the rar. Also, found this little article asking where she has went to. In a strange way I hope they find her, not just because she's hot but because she seems like she really believed in what she did. So, Apollo, if you're out there, sorry for the bashing but drop a line to the people and let 'em know what you're up to.

Michael Jackson - Dangerous Demos

Back in June, shortly after Michael's passing, I posted these "demos" along with some rough mixes from Nirvana's Nevermind album. The post focused on the supposed story of how Nevermind went to number one because of post-holiday returns to record stores. I thought it was an interesting tale and I figured I would share it with my readers, yet without notification my post disappeared with the Nirvana tracks. I never got around to doing a new post about these Dangerous recordings, but now is as good a time as any, especially after it was brought to my attention that the site got mentioned at the LA Times' blog (thanks Scott!) and I'm sure people visiting the site would like more MJ!

This collection of tracks appears to represent an early version of the Dangerous album. The backing tracks are mostly complete but Michael's vocals are clearly not final takes in all places, so while they're not all finished versions they're definitely far from demos, but I'm not going to change the title as this is what they're generally referred to as. Also, I've seen this listed as having been sourced from a test pressing of the album, although this is rather unlikely with the tracks not being finished. As I understand it, these tracks are sourced from a DAT dating back to the early nineties which would explain the minor amounts of hiss contained herein.


Michael Jackson - Dangerous Demos
NOTE: You must download both parts to get the complete album.
Part One
Part Two
Sorry guys, links expired again. On top of that, they deleted this post without notifying me, AGAIN. I'm gonna leave this one off for the time being, but it may be reposted eventually. Drop me a line if you have any questions. Thanks!

01 Jam
This doesn't seem to be different from the album version.

02 In The Closet
Princess Stephanie is not present on this version of the song, so Michael voices her parts. The lyrics aren't quite finished.

03 Remember The Time
This doesn't seem terribly different from the album version if it is at all.

04 Black Or White
Basically the released version, although the intro is a little different.

05 Who Is It
06 Give In To Me
Both of these tracks are a little longer than the released versions and the lyrics are not quite finished. Slash is not present on Give In To Me.

07 Keep The Faith
08 Gone Too Soon
Both of these tracks seem to be the same as the finished versions.

09 Dangerous
This is a significantly different version of Dangerous. The lyrics are finished but the backing track is completely different. A slightly shorter version of this track was issued in the Ultimate Collection box-set.

10 What About Us
This is an early version of Earth Song.

11 Monkey Business
This was also released in the Ultimate Collection box, although it's debatable whether it's finished or not. It sounds pretty polished but there are moments when I can't make heads or tails as to what Michael is singing about.

12 For All Time
This song has quite a bit of history behind it. Originally recorded for Thriller, it was dropped late in the runnings but revived for potential use on Dangerous. The 1982 version was released on the 25th Anniversary edition of Thriller, although this version remains unreleased. Both versions are pretty similar to each other.

13 If You Don't Love Me
14 Serious Effect
Both of these tracks were left off Dangerous for obvious reasons. If You Don't Love Me doesn't fit with the mood of the album at all, as it's a lite dance/pop song. Serious Effect, on the other hand, is a pretty decent stab at a modernized James Brown groove. It boasts a rather unexpected guest appearance by LL Cool J which is pretty awesome! We may never hear the Run-DMC collaboration meant for Bad (I don't believe it got past the demo stage on Run-DMC's part.) but this is still pretty great. LL when he still had clout!