Who: Madonna
What: Finally Enough Love! #1’s Remixed
Where: Simultaneously in Lisbon, Portugal, London, England, Beverly Hills, California, and New York, New York via the suburbs of Detroit and Bay City, Michigan, USA
Why: A remix is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. The only characteristic of a remix is that it appropriates and changes other materials to create something new. Remixes should not be confused with edits, which usually involve shortening and in some cases lengthening, a recording.
Modern remixing had its roots in the dance hall culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s Jamaica. The fluid evolution of music that encompassed ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub was embraced by local DJs who deconstructed and rebuilt tracks to suit the tastes of their audience. Producers and engineers like Ruddy Redwood, King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry popularized stripped down instrumental mixes, which they called versions, of reggae tunes. At first, they simply dropped the vocals but soon more sophisticated effects were created, dropping separate instrumental tracks in and out of the mix, isolating and repeating hooks, and adding various effects like echo, reverb and delay.
From the early 1970s, DJs in early American discothèques were performing similar tricks with disco songs, using loops and tape edits to get dancers on the floor and keep them there. One noteworthy figure was Tom Moulton who invented the dance remix. Though not a DJ himself, Moulton started out by making a homemade mix tape for New York’s Fire Island gay dance club The Sandpiper in the late 1960s. His tapes eventually became popular and he came to the attention of the music industry at large. Along the way, he invented the breakdown section (when all the elements of a song such as synth lines, bass lines and vocals disappear except for the percussion) and the 12 inch single vinyl format.
Record producer Walter Gibbons created the dance version of the first ever commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure. Contrary to popular belief, Gibbons did not mix the record. In fact his version was a re-edit of the original mix.
Moulton, Gibbons and their contemporaries at Salsoul Records, Jim Burgess, Tee Scott, Larry Levan and Shep Pettibone proved to be the most influential group of remixers of the disco era. The Salsoul catalog is seen as the blueprint for the disco mixer’s art form. Pettibone is among a very small number of remixers whose work successfully transitioned from disco to the House era. Sadly, Gibbons died of AIDS related symptoms in 1994 at the age of 40, spending his final weeks living alone in a YMCA.
Contemporary to disco in the early 1970s, dub and disco remix cultures met through Jamaican immigrants to the Bronx in New York City, energizing both and helping to create hip hop music.
When: 2022