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The remix is half consumer fraud, half connoisseurship run amuck. Ofcourse, a good club d.j. can jolt the assembled asses with the rightdub, but most of the extra stuff the labels put on 12-inchersfunctions as filler for anyone except a beat baby. So I was surprisedto discover three recent remix compilations that have their uses.Madonna'sYou Can Dance (Sire) leaves her biggest radiohits untouched for some future compilation; yet, not counting thedub-mad "Into the Groove," a dance track to begin with, these secondssound more at home in their specially segued all-new extensions thanburied away on her albums.
Side B of Billy Idol'sVital Idol (Chrysalis) is justmacho disco, but side A plays up the cartoonishness of hissneering persona with special effects his videos should onlyequal. And moving to the sublime, we have New Order'sSubstance (Qwest). When the band was still extricatingitself from the cerebral gloom of Joy Division, New Order liked discobecause it was trancelike--that is, boring. But just to keepthemselves awake, the band members devised their own system of kineticpercussion and topped things off with hypnotic chants, especially onthe singles that areSubstance's substance. Arevelation.
Long ago and far away, Earth, Wind & Fire taught black pop fansthe wisdom and beauty of the self-contained band. Although a tourfeaturing the two other original members is planned, the band on thenewTouch the World (Columbia) is composed of two soloartists--leader Maurice White and his sometime compadre PhilipBailey--joining their voices in song with a bunch of L.A. studio andpublishing hacks. Yet White still gets good music out of histrademark. No matter who created them, "System of Survival" and "MoneyTight" make him sound more in touch with the world than all his soloartistry.
Playboy, Mar. 1988
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