4 February 1982
"The 12" version has a lot going on, and may be worth paying more for."
— Charlie Gillett
The extended mix. Nothing says ruining your favourite song like doubling its length with an off-putting intro and a disconcerting, needless breakdown in the middle. I've never been that devoted a collector that I've sought out 12'' singles by Pet Shop Boys or The Beautiful South but I've encountered enough to know how utterly dire they could be. The Stock Aitken Waterman compilation The Hit Factory Vol. 2 that I got for Christmas one year sold itself on having exclusive extended versions of Kylie Minogue and Rick Astley hits (the long version of Jason Donovan's already ghastly "Nothing Can Divide Us" was especially awful, with a crass changeover from its tacked on intro to the proper song at 1:39). But at least these SAW numbers were intended for a Friday night comprehensive school disco or someplace else where people might theoretically be getting down. Rock 12'' mixes, on the other hand, are pathetic attempts to bring studio boffinery into three-chord wonderland without any plausible raison d'être.
Such was my ignorance of the extended mix that I assumed it was something that had been around forever — or at least as long as the 12" single had been a part of the format racket — and my aversion towards them went so far as to delay my Chic phase by a few months. Looking to get a good compilation by the influential New York disco-funk pioneers, I was put off by the lengthy versions of "Everybody Dance" and "Good Times". When I finally did relent with the superb The Definitive Groove Collection I discovered that these tunes were best consumed in their full on form. "Everybody Dance" is neutered in its 7" brevity; the twelve incher, by contrast, amounts to an invitation for everyone to set the two dollar highballs they'd been nursing down and get to the task of flooding the dancefloor. A "Good Times" that pushes on towards the seven minute mark keeps those good times going; edited down to radio length and you're just getting just the faintest glimpse of them.
Perhaps with this in mind, Charlie Gillett makes his recommendation that punters ought to invest in the longer mix of Diana Ross' "Mirror Mirror". The once and forever Supreme may have known a thing or two about how to make a party purr having recently come off a career resurrection with "Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out", done in cahoots with Chic leaders Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers. I spent some time playing the two versions back-to-back, hoping to detect just how much more is going on in the 12" mix but I didn't hear anything discernible. While cropping a song down to size ought to be about including everything that ought to be there — if the famous 'cantina' section of The Beach Boys' "Heroes and Villains" had been good enough it would've been part of the single instead of resigned to bootleg hell — adding on should be an extension of what's already there. I get the feeling that "Mirror Mirror" is supposed to hit the six minute mark but shorn of a third of its length leaves nothing out without wearing out its welcome.
If it manages well enough as a production feat — pulled off by Ross herself who must have learned a lot from Edwards and Rogers as well as Motown's expert studio technicians — it doesn't hold up as an actual song. Taking the familiar "mirror, mirror on the wall..." trope as its theme, it devolves into Ross' gentleman beau having turned her life "into a paperback novel". From there, the subject matter is all about the various chapters of her life that have revolved around this anonymous rogue. Ross, always a surprisingly underrated vocalist for such a successful singer, turns in a sweetly accusatory performance but she can't hide the fact that the material just doesn't measure up, something that extended mixes and single edits couldn't hope to hide.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
China Crisis: "African and White"
One of many alliterative acts of the time, China Crisis were soon to have a brief but respectable run of chart singles but not quite yet. Doing for the remix what "Mirror Mirror" is to the 12'', there is little that differentiates this from its reissue a few months hence. As Gillett says, there are lots of cool musical ideas here but I have to quibble with his assertion that the vocals are all doom and gloom. Dealing with the situation in South Africa, the sentiments are simple but genuine enough. Combining some African elements with a new wave feel, this is a stellar performance, the kind of thing that Talking Heads would have been proud to have put out. A definite shoulda SOTF.
"The 12" version has a lot going on, and may be worth paying more for."
— Charlie Gillett
Such was my ignorance of the extended mix that I assumed it was something that had been around forever — or at least as long as the 12" single had been a part of the format racket — and my aversion towards them went so far as to delay my Chic phase by a few months. Looking to get a good compilation by the influential New York disco-funk pioneers, I was put off by the lengthy versions of "Everybody Dance" and "Good Times". When I finally did relent with the superb The Definitive Groove Collection I discovered that these tunes were best consumed in their full on form. "Everybody Dance" is neutered in its 7" brevity; the twelve incher, by contrast, amounts to an invitation for everyone to set the two dollar highballs they'd been nursing down and get to the task of flooding the dancefloor. A "Good Times" that pushes on towards the seven minute mark keeps those good times going; edited down to radio length and you're just getting just the faintest glimpse of them.
Perhaps with this in mind, Charlie Gillett makes his recommendation that punters ought to invest in the longer mix of Diana Ross' "Mirror Mirror". The once and forever Supreme may have known a thing or two about how to make a party purr having recently come off a career resurrection with "Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out", done in cahoots with Chic leaders Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers. I spent some time playing the two versions back-to-back, hoping to detect just how much more is going on in the 12" mix but I didn't hear anything discernible. While cropping a song down to size ought to be about including everything that ought to be there — if the famous 'cantina' section of The Beach Boys' "Heroes and Villains" had been good enough it would've been part of the single instead of resigned to bootleg hell — adding on should be an extension of what's already there. I get the feeling that "Mirror Mirror" is supposed to hit the six minute mark but shorn of a third of its length leaves nothing out without wearing out its welcome.
If it manages well enough as a production feat — pulled off by Ross herself who must have learned a lot from Edwards and Rogers as well as Motown's expert studio technicians — it doesn't hold up as an actual song. Taking the familiar "mirror, mirror on the wall..." trope as its theme, it devolves into Ross' gentleman beau having turned her life "into a paperback novel". From there, the subject matter is all about the various chapters of her life that have revolved around this anonymous rogue. Ross, always a surprisingly underrated vocalist for such a successful singer, turns in a sweetly accusatory performance but she can't hide the fact that the material just doesn't measure up, something that extended mixes and single edits couldn't hope to hide.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
China Crisis: "African and White"
One of many alliterative acts of the time, China Crisis were soon to have a brief but respectable run of chart singles but not quite yet. Doing for the remix what "Mirror Mirror" is to the 12'', there is little that differentiates this from its reissue a few months hence. As Gillett says, there are lots of cool musical ideas here but I have to quibble with his assertion that the vocals are all doom and gloom. Dealing with the situation in South Africa, the sentiments are simple but genuine enough. Combining some African elements with a new wave feel, this is a stellar performance, the kind of thing that Talking Heads would have been proud to have put out. A definite shoulda SOTF.
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