Pop Goes the Remix
By the mid 80's Dance music seemed to have shed much of the negative baggage left over from the Disco era. Live DJs and dance clubs were again popular with mainstream audiences. The 12-inch single had become an accepted format for the record industry, and soon a flood of commercial 12-inch singles began to emerge. These not only included specifically club-oriented Dance artists, but also began to include remixes of releases by mainstream Pop and Rock artists. The trickle of remixed Rock and Pop songs would soon become a stream and then a river.
A key 'remixer to the stars' was Arthur Baker , the man who collaborated with Afrika Bambaataa to invent Electro. Arthur Baker 's hard-charging breakbeat style was very popular in clubs as well as sounding good on home turntables. He kicked off 1984 with a remix of Daryl Hall and John Oates' Say It Isn't So. This was followed closely by his legendary remix of the Rolling Stones' Too Much Blood considered by many to be a precursor to the late 80's Acid House style. He helped turn Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want To Have Fun into a club crowd pleaser later in the year, and his Blaster remix of Dancing In the Dark brought Rock legend Bruce Springsteen into the Dance charts in the summer of 1984.
More legendary Rock performers reached dance clubs in 1984 when Yes released their album 90125. Having endured a number of personnel changes early in the 80's, the group returned to a close approximation of its original membership for 90125, released in 1984. The choice of Trevor Horn as producer helped clear the way for his Art Of Noise collaborator Gary Langan to remix the leadoff single Owner Of a Lonely Heart for the dancefloor. Progressive rock entered the clubs in a brilliant mix.
The DJ remix services that were prominent in the 80's also had a role in bringing mainstream Pop and Rock to the clubs. DiscoNet was one of the oldest and most popular. Throughout the year DiscoNet distributed exclusive remixes to their DJ subscribers. Among the mainstream artists to reach the clubs in 1984 via DiscoNet remixes were Kim Carnes, Huey Lewis and the News and Tina Turner. Gary Otto and Frank Schmidt were among the remixers who created these classic recordings.
In the fall of 1984 Peter Wolf, the lead singer for the J. Geils Band, released his solo single Lights Out. To appeal to clubs, a 12-inch single was recorded with remixes by the legendary mixer Francois Kevorkian. Wolf became another Pop-Rock legend to reach favor with club audiences. In a manner similar to the heady days of Disco's peak, the Dance music community of the mid-80's drew attention from all directions of the mainstream music industry. This attention would again fade with the expansion of House, Hip-Hop and Techno later in the decade.