Love is the message remix - genius or sacriledge???

[juicefree20]

I came across this mix of 'Love Is the Message' which was chopped into a Latin kind of groove. I can hear some timing mistakes & parts of it are a bit choppy. If you haven't heard this, take a listen & tell me what you think...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLxS_...eature=related

[topdiva1]

No where near genius - and beneath even sacriledge - just a MESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[soulster]

Boring. ZZZZZZZZZZZ

[arrr&bee]

Even when i'm in a hooch haze i hear better stuff than this crap.

[juicefree20]

If it were any other song, I might have a different opinion, but THIS is THE ANTHEM & I don't like it messed with unless it going to be a flawless remix.

I think that the premise is a rather interesting one, restructuring it as a Latin-styled groove. While admittedly, this is a song that I'd never think of rearranging in this manner, I believe that it could've been better had there not been so many obvious mistakes.

For example, fluctuating time signatures & the horns & stabs coming in on the wrong beats, as well as being off-beat. As a DJ & any dancer will tell you is a definite no-no. Some of those cuts are similar to a needle skipping on a record. Classic dance music still has 8 beats to the bar, but as constructed, this song would leave real dancers confused & mess up their groove.

You simply can't toss in sections all willy-nilly. I wish that I had the individual files that he used because I'd like to mess around with this mix a bit & place the individual elements where I know that they should be. Too many of them are off & it's very jarring when I hear them enter the mix.

I believe that the brother had an interesting take here. I just would like to see him structure it better. As it stands, it seems as though he wasn't really considering song structure, got a bit carried away with his chops & lost himself in the middle of measures.

[ms_m]

Doesn't do it for me but check out the comments.
They didn't mix this for us. LOL

[pshark]

Juice, this isn't an official remix. This was mixed by the youtuber

[juicefree20]

Pshark:

Indeed it was.

I was just wondering what people would think about how he restructured it into a Latin-type groove & how he might have approached it in retrospect. Especially when you consider the fact that to many of us, this song is the greatest Dance classic ever.

[daddyacey]

"Especially when you consider the fact that to many of us, this song is the greatest Dance classic ever."
In its original form it was the greatest Dance classic ever , an "Hord de Vour" , T.M.'s remix made it "Gourmet Entree". Done..........

[honest opinions]

Daddyacey NAILED the fact that it was an acknowledged dance classic [[well, acknowledged by everyone except Gamble & Huff who didn't want the tune on Philadelphia Classics because it was not a "hit") upon original release. I don't know what a Hord de Vour is....but if it's an original mix that was a hit- then YES. [[LOL at Hord de Vour~!)

Missing from general memory in the story between TOM MOULTON'S interpretation is the 3 year period during which many DJs did re-edits of the track. The most famous in my area [[NYC) was the one done by Keith Dumpson- which had an influence on everybody, and got tons of radio airplay. Once T.M. did "the red lightbulb trick" with Huff and took it to "dat other level".......it was OVER. Then the second [[and to another generation the most famous) edit- the Danny Krivit edit which blended Tom's best with snatches of Gil Scott-Heron [[uno dos tres QUATRO) and Vince Montana's Salsoul Orchestra, has in some camps become better known than even Tom Moulton's version~!

I personally have about 8 or 9 different version of L.I.T.M. on bootleg vinyl dating back thru the 80's and 90's.

I agree with everything you said [[Juicefree20) about the latinized version. I really dug what he was TRYING to do. But YouTube is an open forum. It's democratic. Thus his mix [[as you rightly said) cannot be judged by any other criteria other than "I liked it, or I didnt like it". G&H or Moulton or even US on this board liking it- is not the point of the mix. A guy tried out an idea he had and put it up to share. Society has changed folks. LONG AGO. The unpolished among us [[including those on this very board who cannot spell, have horrible grammar and think it's 'micheal' jackson and/or 'sly'vester) have open access to post what they want where they want.

DC

[chidrummer]

Juice, to me this is almost an entirely different song. No simblance of the original melody of LITM at all. The only connection it has with LITM is that it samples part of the intro and a tiny bit of the keyboard part. Other than that, it's all drum machine parts. The only timing issues I sensed was a slight hicup at the beginning "fill", but other than that it seemed fine to me. My biggest problem was the distortion from the kick drum. I suppose after a few listens I would consider this track catchy, but I'm amazed at the comments it's getting. Like M said, obviously, this stuff wasn't made for my taste. It is something creative, however, and for that the guy deserves some props.

oh, and the "Hour de Vour" is a camouflaged, Hors d'œuvre or appetizer. It all comes into focus now.

[juicefree20]

H.O.

Though I'd have never had considered this kind of arrangement, on the surface it's a pretty good idea. The biggest problem that it suffers from is its execution. If cleaned up, it could be pretty good.

[juicefree20]

ChiD

As ax ex-DJ, I'm a "four-to-the-bar" kinda guy. Of course from our classic soul music, I love those 12/8 ballads that folks like Otis used to make.

This remix is in 4/4 & actually, the timing mistakes come in quite early in the mix.

The remix begins with two 8th notes & that's cool, Most of us soulful people dance with a pretty specific rhythm, usually clapping on 2 & 4, the downbeats. When he throws in the "uno, dos, tres, cuatro" countdown, instinctively, one expects to hear the horn stabs on the 1st beat of measure [[OOPS!!!) 5. Instead, he brings them in on the 2nd beat [[OOPS!!!) of measure 4 & that is very jarring & leaves me with the feeling of being somewhat adrift & rudderless. It's as though he took away the anchor which held the mix together.

Put it like this, purely from the perspective of people dancing, the elements of the mix are displaced. I spoke about the horns coming in on measure 4 & in terms of 4/4, that measure is simply rushed & it abandons any sense of song structure as we know it. [[ADD>>>) It's rushed one measure too soon & that's the first problem with the mix. Most dancers would expect that countdown to occur in the 4th measure & the horn stab to occur on the FIRST beat of the 5th measure, which would've kept everything firmly on beat & in time.

So now that the horn stab was rushed in too soon, when you get the 2nd horn stab, it still feels wrong because it is. It's like an incomplete sentence because the expected beats are not where any of us would normally expect them to be. The ironic thing is that while he eventually catches up with the 4/4 time signature, everything still feels displaced & it still feels like a rudderless boat.

It simply seems to be that while he had a pretty damn good idea, he simply tossed basic song structure out of the window & as a former DJ, to me it just sounds like a confused mess. I can guarantee you that if I were to play this mix for DANCERS, they'd get totally pissed off because they just wouldn't know where they were at any given point in this mix.

The mix has you floating somewhat adrift, as there is no anchor or solid beat that holds everything together. I imagine dancers looking around like "WTF?", as they search for something...ANYTHING that they could hold onto. Put it this way...pick a song, any song that's written in 4/4 & you can sing a typical lyric over the rhythm & everything would fit in place. The lyrics would flow as you'd expect them to & the rhythms would fall into place as you'd expect them to.

Now try that same experiment with this remix & see if you'd have a solid base to work with. It's the equivalent of a record skipping & everyone having to find the beat again.

I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to download that mix, run it through cool edit in order to strip everything down to my preferred "four-to-the-bar" & what I'm saying will make infinitely more sense because it's easier to show you, than to tell you.

[daddyacey]

I admit I was lazy and did not look up the correct spelling of Hors d'œuvre ,[[thank you Chi), but I had hope that you all would understand what I meant.
Thanks H.O. for your comment ,because I only wanted to state what I truly felt was a fact as I saw it. The original was the perfect "snack" with all the perfect ingredients, bite sized and open to only limited remixing ,with the tools of the time,[[tape edit ,cut and splice or blending), and I have that Dumpson Re-mix [[on ADVANCE ?) that was popular here in N.Y. T.M had the advantage of using the basic multi track to create the ultimate remix ,and in the Philly Classics CD issue booklet, he states how hard it was to do it and this was in the pre-digital era. Yet it still stands the test of time. The analogy I meant to make was that it went from snack with a tooth pick to a plate sized portion with the T.M. remix. That track was screaming for a proper "Club Remix".

JUICE--- Dang!!!!!! You broke that s.... down to the science of the "Brotherhood" of DJ's ,retired or otherwise!!!!! D.J. 101. I could only shake my head while reading your post. VERY WELL SAID!!!!

[juicefree20]

Daddy:

Thank you! Coming from you, I appreciate those words.

I had my grandson all day & didn't have much time, but here's a liitle sketch of this mix that I did in about 15 minutes. The changes that I made were about the first 1:30, the rest is the orignal mix as it was. I would've done more, but with my grandson crawling all over me, he needed my time more than the mix did Plus, restructuring the first 1:30 gives me a foundation to work from, as that was the part of the mix that really stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

It's a bit troublesome, as I'm pretty much restricted to using his beats & have to work around that. But...no excuses. The remainder of that mix is easier to fix, simply by shifting some of the parts & eliminating the sections that seem to be rushed or off by a half-measure or so.

Here's my unfinished edit, again, the first 2 minutes or so are my changes. If you compare the two, you'll hear where my edits end & the original continues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbsPXJj2l4M

When I get more time, I'm going to chop it up, measure by measure & show you what I believe could've been done with [[or eliminated from) the mix. Like eliminating some of those horn stabs that seem to come in with no particular rhyme or reason, or at least tighten them up a bit.

[daddyacey]

Yes ,that's the difference between us old school A+B deck mixers ears and perspectives towards the sounds and execution of
mixing ,compared to the "DJ's" of today ,with the digital tools they have available today. We also have that "emotional" connection and attitude that's unique to the time period ,when the track was new ,as opposed to a new jack thats dealing with a confirmed classic. It's like they try to modernize things to make it better ,but wind up taking it out of it's natural element.
Like taking a Duece and a Quarter and fuel injecting it to run on lead free gas. WTF?
Any how ,It did my heart good to see that yes even now with grands and other things that come with maturity ,"The Force" is still with some of us and I look forward to retirement when I finally can spend all day playing and mixing ,on pension and social security!!!!!!