Music was better in 1994/1995

Sorry, but I really do think so.

For example, the concept for this record from 1995 sounds like the worst idea ever; take a soppy power ballad by Foreigner and do a wailing diva garage remix. Run away, run away!

No, come back.

Satoshi Tomiie, part of the New York Def Mix team (David Morales, Frankie Knuckles...) was at the peak of his form in 1995. He simply dropped Terri Symon's original lilting FM-friendly vocal, used a different take of the song at house tempo (obviously recorded especially with a house mix in mind), and created a positively blazing, absolute classic remix. Dripping with drama from start to finish (ie, it's a bit gay), the long piano intro leads into a song which is now completely unrecognisable from the original version. Only at the very end does the original chorus get a look in, but by that time you're hooked, you've been had, but you're happy.

In the end, the song's gospel-led chorus of "I want to feel what love is, I know you can show me" turns out to be perfect garage fodder.

Remixers would often also do a dub of the same song for mixing in the harder clubs, and Satoshi's dub of this track was also to be a masterpiece. Darker, with stabbing chords, searing high vocals and a sense of foreboding, it also happened to be at the same tempo as the vocal mix.

It was just too tempting to not put them together.

So here you have it: the Jason Fist re-edit (14'25") of the Satoshi Tomiie club and dub mixes! Heaven for garage lovers, probably hell for everyone else. What I especially like is that you can't quite tell where the two segue. Although it was one of my first edits, and the track is now twelve years old, I still listen to this with the same pleasure.

Which brings me back to the title of this post: they don't make them like this any more. The amount of work put into this track is incredible.

Too much for you? Here is the video to the Foreigner original, all in slow motion, very 9 1/2 weeks in parts, with a lot of studio session footage that we are supposed to believe is really them recording, and a truly sick-inducing ending (hint: he finds out what love is).

Also included below, for the kitsch factor, is the radio version of the Terri Symon track before it got remixed to destruction. Yuck! I think you'll find the garage version a little less sickly...