You give amazing head love (1991)

Can't say I'd ever heard of Phil Perry before coming across a 1991 promo CD-single of his recently on an obscure blog (turns out it had been posted on the excellent Finest Def Mix blog back last September too, but I'd missed it).

Phil seems to have spent much of his career in the shadow of other singers, doing background vocals for Roberta Flack, Patti Austen or Will Downing. On his website you can sign up for the four-day Phil Perry Fan Cruise in the Bahamas and listen to his latest album Ready For Love which include the songs Ready For Love, Melody Of Love and The Strings Of Love. His previous album was called A Mighty Love. The album before that - Pure Pleasure - featured the songs After The Love Has Gone, When It Comes To Love, Love Don't Love Nobody and (whoah! calm down boy!) Love It Love It. See a theme here? Phil loves love.

The 1991 remixes of Amazing Love were done by the stone cold classic team of David Morales, John Poppo, Eric Kupper and Terry Burrus and it seems incredible that they were not thought good enough for full proper release. The chorus go "You give amazing love, no-one does it better and that's the truth. You give amazing love. Seems I just go crazy for your amazing love", and for some reason I just can't help replacing "love" with "head" every time I sing it. Try it!

Call me wicked, but there's something so earnest about Phil's singing that just needs a bit of derision. Despite that, and even though the song sticks to a pretty standard formula, the voice and production really lift it. I immediately (dare I say it) loved it.

So what do I do when given several mixes of the same song that seem to end too soon? I have to tinker with them, and it proved trickier than I thought. Firstly, the mastering is slightly different on the two mixes, meaning that I had to do some subtle filtering in parts to hide the crossover between the two. I extended the rhythm intro (far too short) on the Club mix, used the acapella from the Serious Moonlight mix for extra drama at the beginning and tagged an instrumental part of the latter to extend the former and make a satisfying 8'30" mix.

I could have added even more from the Jazzy Instrumental, but often a good mix isn't just about the length, it's about keeping the energy going, keeping it concise, keeping things interesting. Hopefully my re-edit does all those. I took great pleasure doing it, and I hope you'll like it.

You can have a listen below - and as the track is no longer available to buy (surprise surprise), it's a free download! Enjoy.

More MAW, more me

Following other blogs can be a sobering experience sometimes. For quite a while I couldn't find any current music I liked. My hypemachine thread was coming up with duds. Nothing on junodownload was doing it for me.

Then I came across some amazing blogs with music from the period I love. '92, 93', '94. Places like 90s Club CD Maxi Singles (run by a guy called Mark S) and Finest Def Mix. After having already bought everything I thought I liked from that time (thanks, eBay), these tireless bloggers were coming up with endless gems, day after day after day, that I'd never heard before.

At the same time, I had been tidying up my CD collection and hoping desperately to find time to get my vinyl organised. I set some CDs aside to sell them. Checking on Discogs and eBay, I have now understood that they are almost all completely worthless. All the stuff I thought was rare turns out to be commonplace. I do not have a large, priceless collection of music. I have a huge, worthless waste of space.

Of course I'm exaggerating. Many of my CDs aren't worth euros, but they are priceless to me, and the upside is that even if the other blogs put my paltry selection into perspective, I can still bring something to the table and get pleasure from some real discoveries.


Like Meli'sa Morgan (love that apostrophe). I came across a vinyl rip of her track "Still In Love With You" on the Gotta Have House blog. It blew me away. Firstly, both the mix and dub were great, secondly they are from the golden period of Masters At Work (early nineties) and thirdly I'd never heard of them before.

There was quite a lot of noise on the mp3's, which was a shame, so I de-clicked them with ClickRepair, took out the excess empty space at the beginning and end of the tracks and re-posted them for anyone to download. Mark S saw my comment, did a bit of research and found out that - in theory - a CD-single of the MAW mixes existed. In the meantime, I has gone mad about the track, e-mailing Meli'sa's old label and leaving a message on her Myspace page (neither ever replied).

But Mark came up trumps. Finding a CD-single for sale on amazon.de, but with no tracklisting, he chanced his luck and ordered it. A few days later, he received the CD and it contained all the Masters At Work mixes in top quality. For a househead and MAW-lover like me, it was as dream come true. He very kindly posted them to me for a project I had in mind...

Like many MAW mixes of the time, the vocal and dub were different but could be combined easily into one long track. Which, of course, I couldn't resist. So here's my Fist fusion of the Meli'sa's In The House and Hard Love dub mixes by Masters At Work. Top quality sound, top quality mixes, and my humble input. Perhaps I have something to offer to music after all.

Download Meli'sa Morgan - Still In Love With You (Meli'sa's In The House mix & Hard Luv dub Fist fusion) here.