Los Clodettes - Alexandrie Alexandra (Joey Negro mixes) - 1995

Although moving to Paris in the early nineties made finding some records a real battle, there were - from time to time - benefits. The rise of the French touch, Dimitri from Paris, Daft Punk... it wasn't all bad. And then, in 1995, Sony released Joey Negro remixes of a French disco classic Alexandrie Alexandra, originally sung by French disco deity Claude François. For those who don't know of him (and outside of France, there's no shame in that), he was famous for:

a) wicked/disturbing disco moves and threads (for the 1970s)
b) his backing singers/dancers The Clodettes
c) co-writing the original version of My Way, and
d) accidentally electrocuting himself by trying to change a lightbulb whilst in the bath. True.

Disco was not taken very seriously at the time (François was sometimes called "the favourite singer of the under-10s) but he is is mourned to this day by a bunch of nostalgia-obsessed loonies, and his hits are heard all the bloomin' time on French radio. To be fair, he more or less brought disco to our shores, which I suppose is not a bad thing, had an amazing ear for a hook and danced like a wigged out motherfracker. Check out his legendary moves below. The video is from 22nd January 1978. Two months later, François was dead.



The Clodettes' version of Alexandrie, Alexandra seems to have originated on Joey Negro/Dave Lee's Z Records label, but licensing it to Sony France was a masterstroke. It's rare to see a well known tune like that get released through a major with remixes by such an underground name.

Whether the releae was success, I don't know. 16 years later it's not even available as a legal download, a bit of a shame seeing as the CD-single had four great mixes and a total running time of over 45 minutes. A bit of a classic.

I had a bit of fun putting two of the mixes together (a vocal and rather daring acid-laced version), making an 18-minute version that's part cheesy, part surprisingly catchy, a guilty pleasure if you will. Not sure what sort of club would play it (first part's too cheesy for the underground crowd, second part's too 'strange' for the mainstream crowd) but although it almost makes me cringe, I do have a soft spot for it.

You can download Les Clodettes - Alexandrie Alexandra (Joey Negro/Parallel mix Fist fusion) here (33MB)
(and the whole CD single can be had for 3 euros here!)

UPDATE: there's a legal download available (of the Z Records 12", with some of the CD-single mixes + acapella and bonus beats) here. Thanks Konstantin!

Joey Negro presents Lifeforce "Feel Your Body" - 1992

I'm not really in the habit of posting whole CD-singles. A lots of other blogs do it, and good for them, but I partly felt bad for copyright reasons and partly didn't want to duplicate what had been posted elsewhere.

However, as time goes by I've realised that I do have some stuff that people might be interested in (and that hasn't been posted elsewhere) and more importantly that specialised blogs have become the unofficial archives for a lot of record companies that made their buck back in the day and then moved on.

I get pretty angry frustrated about the non-availability of a lot of what I call classics. God knows I would buy them if I could, but I can't. Anyway, enough ranting...

This 1992 German CD-single on EastWest isn't half as rare as I thought it was (you can still find it second-hand here on amazon.de for example) but I got it on eBay a few years back and was pretty chuffed. It's classic, early Joey Negro with a plethora of mixes that all have their subtle specificities, and dates from a time when disco house was so big that the majors were licensing left right and centre(stage!).

You can download Lifeforce - Feel Your Body here (66MB)

By the way, I am sooo over mp3 (especially at 192 kbps, not really archive quality). I'll be using FLAC for single tracks but in this case it was too heavy, so the mixes are ripped in m4a format at 256kbps (which is - to my mind - better than a 320kbps mp3 file and a lot lighter to boot).