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Music history comes alive. Forgotten favourites & undiscovered gems from the rock, soul & reggae archive and a few of the stories behind them. Your host is Simon Tesler, former publisher and editor of 1980s music, media and pop culture magazine BLITZ.
Hello, this is Simon Tesler with more great Sounds from the music archive. This week, it's another special edition. But what shall we call it? Mash-ups? Sampling? Or a whole new phrase, "Musical Interpolation"? Ouch! Coming up, Goldfrapp, Robbie Williams, David Bowie, Blondie, The Doors and much more, but first New Order and also Kylie Minogue.
How clever is that. That was Can't Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head which mashes up New Order's Blue Monday with Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head. It's one of 14 brilliant tracks from the Mashed album released by EMI in 2007, mostly with mixes created by producer and DJ Mark Vidler. It's an extreme example of our general theme this week which has somehow ended up with that uncomfortably formal term "interpolation", in which one musician pays homage to another by borrowing a musical theme or sample from a previous song.
You'll get the idea in a few minutes, but first two tracks that don't quite go that far but are heading in the same direction. Goldfrapp's second album Black Cherry quite clearly came out of a few late night sessions where Alison Goldfrapp and her musical partner Will Gregory had been listening to Iggy Pop's The Idiot on repeat play. No surprise there. It's fair to say that when The Idiot first came out in March 1977, it sounded like nothing you had ever heard before, similar in style to David Bowie's Low, released a couple of months earlier but taken by Bowie and Iggy to a new post-industrial extreme. So first up, Iggy's classic Nightclubbing, followed by one of the best tracks it spawned on Black Cherry, Strict Machine.
Now two tracks that definitely do share some identical DNA. If these guys were on Ancestry they'd be second cousins twice removed, or something, even though they were born 30 years apart. I don't think either needs any introduction -- and I'm betting you can guess what's coming next as soon as I start the first track, which contains a string section that definitely got to live twice.
Yes of course, Nancy Sinatra singing John Barry and Hal David's theme song for You Only Live Twice, followed by Robbie Williams with Millennium, recorded 31 years later and built around those same gorgeous soaring strings.
Now, in most cases, sampling or interpolating part of an old song requires a whole bunch of legal permissions, but that protocol is not always followed. Next up, two tracks where an old song was sampled without permissions, leading to lawsuits that were only resolved when the original artist was not just paid and credited but in the second of these two songs also invited to perform the new version.
In 1989, Italian group Black Box lifted a sample from the song Love Sensation, released nine years earlier, as the main vocal from their new single Ride On Time. A legal storm ensued, not just with Love Sensation's writer Dan Hartman, but more controversially with the original's singer, American soul artist Loleatta Holloway. The case was eventually resolved with fair credit and royalty payments, but Loleatta Holloway never forgave the slight.
A couple of years later, another Italian group Room 5 encountered a similar storm when they used a sample from Get Down Saturday Night, by another American soul singer Oliver Cheatem, on their release Make Luv. To resolve any arguments, Oliver Cheatem was not just credited and paid, but was also invited to perform with Room 5 on a bunch of TV appearances. First up, though, Ride On Time by Black Box and Loleatta Holloway.
Three tracks now by or influenced by David Bowie. Avid listeners to this show may recall that on one of my first ever shows earlier this year I played the David Bowie track Andy Warhol, from his 1971 album Hunky Dory. In 2003, the production team for former S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens made the same sort of deep dive into the musical archive that Robbie Williams had done a couple of years earlier when crafting the songs for her debut solo album Funky Dory. The album name says it all doesn't it. I'm going to play David Bowie's original Andy Warhol once again, followed by Rachel Stevens' semi-homage Funky Dory.
After that, another mix by mash-up supremo Mark Vidler. It is another mark of David Bowie's genius that he was a past-master at adapting the latest musical trend to his own benefit. Who better to raid David Bowie's back catalogue than David Bowie himself. Later that same year in 2003, he hired Mark Vidler to produce a new mix of the song Never Get Old off his latest album Reality. The result was Rebel Never Gets Old. But first, Rachel Stevens and Funky Dory.
Rebel Rebel's glorious guitar riff lives again almost 30 years after it was first recorded. Let's stick somewhere in the same territory, with yet another trace of David Bowie's fingerprints. As you know, it was Bowie who resurrected Lou Reed's failing career in 1972 by producing the album Transformer, the biggest ever commercial success in Reed's entire career, not least because of the timeless track Walk On The Wild Side. That track too, or at least Herbie Flowers' immortal bassline, got a chance to live again in 1990 when it was sampled by the American hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest. Here it is again on Can I Kick It.
Now, two more tracks that surely need no introduction. In 2005, Madonna wanted to use the instantly recognisable keyboard riff from Abba's massive late 70s disco hit Gimme Gimme Gimme on a new track from the album Confessions On A Dance Floor. However Abba songwriters Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus are renowned for their reluctance to let anyone sample their music.
Madonna told Attitude magazine, "I had to send my emissary to Stockholm with a letter and the record begging them and imploring them and telling them how much I worship their music, telling them it was an homage to them, which is all true. And they had to think about it, Benny and Bjorn. They didn't say yes straight away. They never let anyone sample their music. They could have said no. Thank God they didn't."
Here are both songs. In a few minutes, Madonna's Hung Up. But first, Abba with Gimme Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight.
To close the show, another masterly mash-up by Mark Vidler, combining Blondie's proto-rap Rapture with Riders On The Storm from the final Doors album LA Woman. This is Rapture Riders.