The Normal - Warm Leatherette / T.V.O.D.

Daniel Miller is, above all, the founder of Mute Records. He has also produced a number of bands, most notably Depeche Mode, and recorded several of his own projects. The most notable of his recorded output is The Normal, who apart from a bizarre single-sided live EP with Robert Rental, released only one single, the ridiculously influential Warm Leatherette with T.V.O.D. on the flip side. Clearly influenced by J.G. Ballard's Crash, Warm Leatherette is a sick sexual trip about getting it on in a car crash. That might be over-simplifying things, but it's still fairly accurate. T.V.O.D., while not explicitly linked to any pre-existing content, is about plugging yourself directly into a television signal with your antenna/aerial. By today's standards, these songs aren't all that shocking, but they get Miller credit for being an early example of popular music being created with minimal electronic equipment.

Miller also recorded as Silicon Teens, labeling that moniker a band and even coming up with fake members. Next week I'll post their sole full-length, Music For Parties. It's very much in the same vein production-wise as The Normal, but instead focuses on synth-pop covers of early rock classics like Memphis, Tennessee and You Really Got Me.

This is transferred from a US promotional 12" with each song on an individual side. I don't know why they bothered to press a 12" for such short tracks when a 7" would have done just fine, but someone must have thought a DJ might cue these in a live set and would prefer a larger record. Really though, who knows? If you're curious, here are links to the discogs reference for this single and the pressing these files were made from. Enjoy!


The Normal - Warm Leatherette / T.V.O.D.


PS - Grace Jones recorded an excellent cover of Warm Leatherette in 1980 that's very funky. You can download it HERE. She's not the only one to cover it, either. Check the wikipedia reference for a list of additional artists who have covered it.

Girls On Top

The history of the mash-up is far too long to go into accurate detail here, so I'll talk for a minute about the aura surrounding one Richard Philips, better known as Richard X, previously known as Girls On Top. Since releasing a few very popular mash-ups, Mr. Philips has gone on to remix and produce a number of big name artists including Annie and Nine Inch Nails (can't get much more polar than those two, eh?) but his breakthrough was a re-recording of his mash-up "We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends", which was a meeting of the music from Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric?" and the vocals from Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me". Yes, unlikely bedfellows indeed, but what a payoff! The track gained enough popularity for a commercial release at which point a slightly edited version was recorded by the Sugababes. It became a number one single on the British charts and, as such, Richard X's career became a legitimate one.

As Girls On Top, Philips only released two vinyl-only singles. These were "Warm Bitch", which was a mash-up of The Normal's "Warm Leatherette" and Missy Elliot's "She's A Bitch" with "We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends" on the b-side and "Being Scrubbed" which featured the title cut, a mash-up of Tangerine Dream's "Being Boiled" and TLC's "No Scrubs" and on the b-side, "I Wanna Dance With Numbers", a mash-up of Kraftwerk's "Numbers" and Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody". Both singles have since become collectors items but have also been bootlegged relentlessly. At one point, a bootleg "Greatest Hits" collection of Girls On Top tracks appeared featuring both singles in their entirety, a Beatles and Fat Truckers mash-up, a remix of the Sugababes version of "...Friends" and an unreleased track featuring Aaliyah and OMD.

Today, I present to you, a collection of these 6 tracks. It is worth noting that the tracks posted here are not from a single, unified source. I have good quality vinyl rips of the two singles but the version of "Being Scrubbed" has a skip in it, so I used a version from a bootleg compilation in it's place. Also, the Beatles/Fat Truckers track is from a ridiculously lo-fi source so please don't accept this as representative of the final product. I've actually looked high and low for that one and, apart from a youtube stream, had no luck in finding the complete track. The Aaliyah/OMD track is actually from a mix someone gave to me but is indeed the complete track. I'm sure if you ran it through a spectral reader you would find it's quality to be dubious, but it sounds perfectly find to my ears. Finally, if you would like to learn more about Mr. Philips and his various productions, please visit
his site. It's very detailed and features samples of many of his works.



Girls On Top

01 Being Scrubbed (TLC vs. Tangerine Dream)
02 I Wanna Dance With Numbers (Whitney Houston vs. Kraftwerk)
03 Warm Bitch (Missy Elliot vs. The Normal)
04 We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends (Adina Howard vs. Gary Numan)
05 The White Single (The Beatles vs. Fat Truckers)
06 Romance V.3 (Aaliyah vs. OMD)