Posts Tagged ‘Joy Division’

Grace Jones

Friday, November 4th, 2011

Listen: She’s Lost Control (Single Edit) / Grace Jones
GraceJonesControl.mp3

Somebody, somewhere knew how to pick terrific material for Grace Jones. Possibly it was she herself. For my two cents, this is absolutely one her all time best vocal interpretations. Ever.

I do know the early 80′s musical patch during which Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’, a B side only, was recorded by Alex Sadkin and The Compass Point Allstars, coincided with Jean-Paul Goude’s image reinvention. As a result of that intense visual makeover, Chris Blackwell hung the already completed WARM LEATHERETTE cover art in the studio as the album’s sessions were begun, instructing the entire team to make a record that sounded like the photo looked. He told me this himself.

Eventually released in an extended club version, complete with dub, it’s this original B side ‘She’s Lost Control’ that is most valuable as a 7″. Despite all the other versions finding their way onto bottom of the barrel scraping compilation cds, this single edit has only ever appeared where it originally was issued, on a 7″.

Messiah

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Listen: Temple Of Dreams / Messiah
Temple

Not to be confused with Switzerland’s death metal band, this Messiah formed in ’88 during London’s acid house craze by college friends Ali Ghani and Mark Davies. When the pair met at an Iggy Pop concert, they decided to purchase some electronic equipment and make music for fun. According to the band’s bio, it was then that their musical chemistry became evident, coinciding with the English rave scene. The duo’s brand of techno encompasses the aggression and volume of punk as well, the diva vocals of house music. So there you have it.

By the early 90′s, several of those acid house anthems began to surface into the mainstream, and even found their way onto the occasional US major label. Such was the case with ‘Temple Of Dreams’ in ’92. Rick Rubin’s American Records, then distributed by Warner Brothers and just down the hall from Duane and I at Medicine, picked up Messiah for the US, and issued ‘Temple Of Dreams’ as an initial single on his techno offshoot, WHTE LBLS.

Everyone loved this on the floor. I don’t think any of us could get enough of it, or the various mixes that seemed to be commissioned weekly.

But the back story was as intriguing as the single. In ’83, This Mortal Coil released a cover of Tim Buckley’s ‘Song To The Siren’, a track from his STARSAILOR album (’70), as a UK single. Peaking at #66 in the Pop Charts, the record went on to spend a total 101 weeks in the UK Indie Chart, a run that ranked 4th during the entire 1980′s, after three classic long-selling records: ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ / Bauhaus (131 weeks), ‘Blue Monday’ / New Order (186 weeks) and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ / Joy Division (195 weeks).

Messiah actually sampled This Mortal Coils version heavily, adding their own blips and bleeps plus a bunch of new shouty vocal vamps.

Despite having played this white at the time, I hadn’t heard it for years until tonight while doing some therapy filing. It’s on about the tenth repeat play at this point.