Way back in 1995 when ‘Hooked’ first appeared, PWL saw fit to splash out on a rather cheesy promo video for the track. The video was actually very rarely seen though did make a few appearances on MTV Europe and late night UK TV.
After much searching we managed to actually locate a copy of the original video which of course is now floating around via YouTube so I guess everyone can see it now and see how daft it looks, but hey, all fun stuff I guess and just in case you were curious….
We were toying with the idea of sticking out ‘I’ll Be There’ on vinyl in the USA a while ago, but such has been the swift demise of the already ultra niche vinyl market over here that it just didn’t seem worth it. Instead we’ve put all the best ‘I’ll Be There’ remixes onto one maxi CD EP and called it (not surprisingly), ‘I’ll Be There Remixed’ on our own Buzzsonic Records label. Its only a very limited pressing but you will alternatively be able to grab the tracks in the USA on iTunes shortly (sometime next month hopefully) and burn your own CD that way I guess too if you prefer.
We’ve just set up a PayPal page if you want to buy direct from us here (cheaper!). CD Baby will also be distributing which means you can walk into your local record store (in the USA) and order it there if you prefer that method thanks to CD Babys affiliation with Super D, one of the largest music distributors in the USA.
We’ll be having fuller details, how to order etc here within the next week or so, just a few production details to finalize and it’ll be ready to go. If it all works out like we hope we’ll be putting together a similar package for the ‘Hooked’ remixes. Its the first time anything by the 99th Floor Elevators has been issued in the USA so its just to tie up back catalog loose ends and hopefully give us a bit of a profile before we start to issue music from other artists and new stuff from the Elevators.
In the meantime you can register your interest by contacting us via our MySpace page, or subscribe to our RSS feed here to stay up to date with any news.
Was cleaning up my MySpace profile last week and wandered off on a tangent somewhere and stumbled across Tommy Bedlams (aka Ry Thomas) profile. For once I didn’t reach for the mute button when the inevitable music sprang into action. The track in question was the cracking ‘Tekattackin’ which is a very European sounding stomper, more Hard Trance than Hard House and just the kind of energetic monster we love in these parts.
The track has been snapped up by Traffic Records the well respected label run by Vinylgroover and the Red Hed and you can hear a sample on the Tommy Bedlam profile page (see link below). Brilliant stuff and re-affirming my faith in the harder stuff!
Apologies for the criminally long gap between posts but nothing pressing to report, alternative temptations etc etc ! Anyway there are another couple of new(ish) mixes of ‘Hooked’ floating around of late, one from 7th Heaven and one from Nik Denton. For a change there’s a move away from the well beaten path of Hard House remixes as ‘Hooked’ has been tweaked to death in that area by the best I guess so…..
The 7th Heaven remix kind of updates the spirit of the original version and the Tony De Vit and Simon Parkes remix from way back in 1995 ! If you like it commercial and liked the TDV epic version you’ll love this one.
Nik Denton offers up one of his funky chunky house remixes which gives the track a nice funky swagger and even a bit of street cred for once!
The two mixes will be served up as a very limited 12 inch single next month via Toolbox House though there is already a one sided 12 inch pressing (only about 110 copies I think) that you can find exclusively at Hard To Find Records.
To hear samples of the new mixes try the download sites above, they all have previews. Trackitdown offer the option of either Wav or 320kb MP3 formats for download. None of that ropey low bit rate stuff you pay for at iTunes.
If you fancy a copy of the 7th Heaven limited edition one sided 12 inch go to Hard To Find Records, they ship worldwide and I have personally been using them without any probs for years internationally (shipping to Florida) and domestically (when I was in the UK). You can blag a copy for around $2 plus shipping at the moment.
Well, no big deal to anyone else but us right here but we added our 1000th ‘fan’ on our MySpace page today which is quite astonishing when you consider its been completely word of mouth, we havn’t DJ’ed or done a gig in over six years and there still proves to be a groundswell of support that we never really plugged into until the MySpace phenomenon took off. So…
Meanwhile, plugging into this new network we’ll see how our remix ep does using MySpace as its marketing edge (or part of). We’ll have all the new remixes of ‘I’ll Be There’ available in the USA, Japan, Canada and Australia via iTunes pretty soon. The remix package will also be available on CD in the USA on our own Buzzsonic Records label. Its an impressive package too with three hard mixes from Killer Hurts, Nik Denton and Paul King and three house mixes from Nick Harrington, Nik Denton and Brad Smith. There will also be a Radio friendly Lucid Labs mix too. Anyway..
There’s also a bunch of other stuff in the pipeline which we’ll mention in the next day or so.
As far as ‘Euphoric Trance‘ (aka ‘Anthemic Trance’) goes, things kind of peaked for me back around 2000 and one of the all time classics of this genre was Rank 1’s ‘Airwave’. And guess what, there’s a really cheesy video for it too. Still a great track irrespective of genre . Its highly unlikely that Rank 1 will ever come close to this masterpiece.
Remember when MTV was really great for catching really meaningless pop videos as a quick fix you’d talk about in the pub later (hey, I’m from England). Now you get that fix at YouTube.
Anyway this is the really erm, meaningless video for ‘Jumbo’ welded to a rather good electro-ish, pop-techno tinged outing from the sometimes great Underworld.
OK then from today I’m hoping to add at least one dance music related video post from around the web, if this doesn’t happen straight away its because I’m also in the middle of a webhost move and a site update which means a new version of Word Press (which this site runs on) and a new site look. All this should be done over the weekend so bare with me if the site vanishes for a while. It’ll be back !
Anyway. I found this interesting clip from an Australian documentary called ‘Melbourne Shuffler’ which tracks the roots of the Melbourne rave scene and dance craze from the late 80s . There’s a two disc DVD available via mail order.
The musical roots of the 99th Floor Elevators are steeped in old hi-NRG, Euro dance and heavily influenced by people like Giorgio Moroder, 80s PWL, Record Shack, Bobby Orlando and later the playlists of the great Tony de Vit, amongst others.
In this vein back in 1999 there was a great Euro hit by producer Carlo Resoort under the name Alena. ‘Turn It Around’ had a great hook and a fantastic vocal with a thumpingly addictive dance mix from the Space Brothers which I have somewhere on a Wonderboy DJ double pack.
Being in Florida since May 2003 means that I’ve been woefully out of sync with whats going on in Europe so I completely missed a new version of the track by 4 Strings which sticks pretty close to the original (close but not as good) and charted in the UK in 2004. Naturally the video has found its way onto YouTube so you can check it out, though if you really like it I recommend you seek out the Space Brothers excellent ‘Rethink’ version on Wonderboy.
If you havn’t already noticed there’s a pretty huge link directory attached to this blog. Floorelevators.net is bulging with 3000+ hand picked websites generally related to DJing, DJ’s, dance music and the music industry. Its a world wide thing so not just US or UK centric, though there is a slant towards those two countries.
I’m currently having a clean out of all the dead links and am looking for something a little more up to date to present the data in a nicer more up to date fashion. Maybe something akin to Del.icio.us. We’ll see.
Anyway, have a browse around as there’s a stack of useful info in there, from online radio stations, vinyl stores, record distributors and 12 inch vinyl pressing plants and the like.
It’s pretty old fashioned technology (using a creaking PHP script), its not Web 2.0 or anything but the directory is still one of the most popular results for ‘Dance Music Industry’ if you search in Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN.
Hysterical! Another really funny clip hunted down at YouTube. Not really sure of the original source but any off your head raver will get this one. Choice!
OK, this is getting quite addictive ! Still hunting around YouTube for dance/dj related clips and this one came up. Pretty standard MOR Euro pop trance trash with all the usual trappings of cutsie white girl vocalist and all that, but hey worth a look we thought.
Its from Eric M, the track is called ‘Everytime This Song Plays’ and its on Aardvark Records. All new names to me.
OK then here’s another one as we trawl the web for DJ related video content. Not really one for house or hard house heads but if you’re into DJ technique, scratch DJ Q Bert is a good one to watch (if not listen too!).
This ones grabbed from YouTube again and is a three minute clip from an in store performance he did at Stacksvinyl hip hop store in LA.
In the few months we’ve been inactive on this blog another web phenomenon has been gaining as many column inches in the tech press and users online as MySpace called YouTube. YouTube is the number one ‘viral video’ website at the moment, dwarfing Yahoo, Google, MySpace and AOL in content and users.
Anyway, we thought we’d start crawling through the user submitted video on there for DJ related submissions and start posting the best/worst/most unusual here.
First entry today is the plain loopy DJs Of 2006, which is a DiY mishmash of unknown DJ images and helium vocalled Euro stomp which serves no purpose whatsoever other than to raise the question, WTF?
It was thought that Paul King’s remix of ‘I’ll Be There’ would remain a CD only exclusive. The track was initially made available on the Toolbox Recordings 5th anniversary compilation, ‘Toolbox Volume 1′, demand has been such however that Pauls ‘PK Retro Trade Mix’ will see a limited airing on vinyl as the flip to the Paul King & Nik Denton co-production ‘Rok The Discotek’.
