Time to flip Oscar’s tape and see what’s on the other side.
scan by me.
Another tasteful fade-in from a station ID into 99 1/2 by Carol Lynn Townes, probably know best from being in Breakin’. If you’re not already familiar with Breakin’, you should probably catch up on that before coming back to this post. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
Now that you’ve caught up, you’re sure to recognize Ollie and Jerry’s Breakin’ (There’s No Stoppin’ Us). I’m actually starting to think that maybe we’re really dealing with a mix from late 1984 here. Breakin’ AND Ghostbusters? Need more proof?
After telling us it’s 2:05 (am or pm?), I Can Dream About You by Dan Hartman pops up. This sounds like another 12″ mix, but is from the soundtrack to Streets Of Fire, another 1984 summer flick. I’ve reached out to Mickey “Mixin” Oliver himself on Facebook for his input, but he’s probably a very busy dude that, somehow, looks way younger now than he did in the 80’s! House keeps you fit, apparently!
The mixing has gotten sloppier here and there’s actually an announcer, but since he’s not doing a lot of talking, I’m going to guess it’s 2am on a Sunday morning. They’re still playing extended mixes and mixing between songs, which seems very unlikely for the middle of the afternoon. I still feel like we’re missing a big chunk of that awesome Saturday mix though, which is a shame. (It also sounds like my rip might have some skips that I’m just noticing now. Sorry about that. I’ll do a proper re-rip soon and put the whole thing up for download.)
Next up is Fragile – Handle With Care by Cherrelle. This is the 2nd Minneapolis Sound jam to show up in the mix. This is a Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis joint. It’s not far off from Prince productions of the time, especially with those DMX (I think) drum beats. I mostly know Cherrelle from Saturday Love with Alexander O’Neal, another Jam/Harris production on the Tabu label.
The last song, before we fade out, is 17 by Rick James, yet another 1984 song that’s got me pretty firm on thinking we’re dealing with a mix from no earlier that Late Summer of ’84. I’ll be honest… I thought Ghostbusters came out later than it did and based most of my assumptions on that when writing about Side A. That means we’re even earlier in the development of House than I thought, so it’s a double-shame that we don’t have more of this mix. It’s not the earliest Mixin Oliver mix circulating (there’s an easy to find 1983-84 NYE mix floating around, but you’ll probably have to register on the Deep House Forum to find a reliable link). It’s still pretty cool to have this tiny window of history rescued from just being tossed out altogether like countless other radio tapes from the era.