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Radio Dance '90s

Track list:

1. Madonna - Vogue
2. Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam - Let the Beat Hit 'Em (The Brand New Super Pumped-Up C&C Vocal Club Mix)
3. Vanessa Williams - Running Back to You (The Mix)
4. The Cover Girls - Funk Boutique (12" Remix)
5. B.G. the Prince of Rap - This Beat Is Hot (Rhythm Radio Edit)
6. Kwamé and a New Beginning - Ownlee Eue (Polka Dellie Mix)
7. Bingoboys featuring Princessa - How To Dance (Ambient NY Mix)
8. Black Box - Everybody Everybody (Le Freak Mix)
9. Toni! Toni! Toné! - Feels Good (Extended Version)
10. 2 in a Room - Wiggle It (The Club Mix)
11. Adventures of Stevie V - Dirty Cash (Money Talks) (Sold Out Mix)
12. D-Mob introducing Cathy Dennis - C'mon and Get My Love (Dance Hall Mix)
13. Jomanda - Got a Love for You (Hurley's House Mix)
14. CeCe Peniston - Finally (12" Mix)
15. Lidell Townsell - Nu Nu (Original Club Mix)
16. Sagat - Why Is It? (Fuk Dat) (Rob's Fuk Dis Mix)
17. Aly-Us - Follow Me (Club Mix)
18. Juliet Roberts - I Want You (Extended Mix)
19. Kym Sims - Take My Advice (Hurley's Extended Mix)
20. Robin S. - Show Me Love (New Club Mix)
21. Black Box - Strike It Up (Original Remix)
22. Technotronic - Get Up (Before the Night Is Over) (Muted Mix)
23. Bizarre Inc. featuring Angie Brown - I'm Gonna Get You (Original Flavour Mix)
24. Crystal Waters - Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless) (Basement Boy "Strip to the Bone" Mix)

Behold, the power of nostalgia! It isn't quite true that the '90s are the new '80s (I think it's fairer to say that the late '80s are the new '80s, at least in dance music, re: acid-acid-a-a-a-a-acid), but I'm counting down the days . . . alone? With revivalism's omnipresence (when aren't we throwing back?) comes disdain from those want innovation at every turn, who sling around the word "dated" as though it's an epithet (as though things shouldn't sound of their time, and, even more, as though "datedness" isn't what's behind vintage charm).  There's a notion that nostalgia clouds taste, that it fools people into equating "familiar" with "good," and that it otherwise places emphasis on not the art but everything surrounding it (think about your favorite songs from 15 years ago and try to not think about where you were, what you wore or who you loved).

But nostalgia doesn't have to be blind, just like loving pop music doesn't have to be anti-intellectual. We know the story well: a knowledge of history is key to understanding the present. Nostalgia is merely knowing our personal history and going one more -- obsessing, reveling, fagging out in it. It's mental jogging in place, an emotional game of solitaire, cerebral masturbation -- at the very least, a fine way to pass time.

That mechanism plays a major role in Radio Dance '90s, a blended (however imperfectly) mix that mistily looks back the beginning of my romance with dance music. My goal here is to collide my past with my present, using vintage material to illustrate my relatively recent love of DJing/mixing. Each of the songs presented received substantial airplay in South Jersey (at least the coastal part) in the early '90s. I love them all, and I especially love that the brutally homophobic South Jersey was such a hotbed of dance music, a sort of salvation for me back then, even if I didn't know it.

Plenty of what's here hit on a national level, too -- "Vogue," "Feels Good," "Everybody, Everybody," "Finally," "Show Me Love," "Strike It Up," "Get Up" and "Gypsy Woman" all went Top 10 and almost all of the remaining tracks were Top 40 hits. But South Jersey had few peers in its saturation of dance music, and maybe that's why nothing here seems obscure to me (true story: after spinning at a bar/lounge in Park Slope last Friday, I was told that my set wasn't "commercial" enough, despite the abundance of chart hits from the past 20 years). You might not love "Got a Love for You" inside and out, as it barely scraped the Top 40. Where I'm from, it was played non-stop during the summer of '91, as present as bikinis and humidity on the beach.

Though freestyle was a huge part of my listening youth, I've decided to focus mostly on the house (or housey) faction of back-in-the-day radio to start (a mix dealing with freestyle, among things, is in the works, though). Not everything here is strictly house (i.e. founded on the 4/4 thump), so I refrained from calling it Radio House '90s for the sake of accuracy. That said, it's not all strictly '90s, either (though nothing here was made after '94). "Dirty Cash" was released in '89, though it charted in '90. "C'mon and Get My Love" made its mark on radio in '89, which I discovered after recording. Oops. Still, that track has a plastic-soul spirit, a hip-house tinge and growly white-girl vocals. Here, it is home.

More than just taking you on a sentimental journey, I hope that Radio Dance '90s can indeed tell us something about the present. For the most part, Top 40 has put its flirtations with house behind it, like the previously bicurious who experimented in college and only in college. Dance radio is no better. It's a hollow-eyed wasteland full of material fixated on sequencing the ugliest of synth lines, championing one-note bass lines and pimping the most anonymous of voices (you know things are bad when your fingers are crossed, anticipating filterhouse). What it's missing most sorely is character. Whether lovestruck ("Finally," "Nu Nu," "I'm Gonna Get You"), brainless ("Wiggle It," "Get Up"), sanctimonious ("Dirty Cash," "Gypsy Woman"), posing ("Vogue"), nonsensical ("Everybody, Everybody"), bossy ("How To Dance," "Get Up") or self-obsessed ("This Beat Is Hot"), Radio Dance '90s' songs have pulses that don't have anything to do with their 120+ BPM. They were and are alive.

But above all this, I wish you fun. I make mixes to amuse myself (and to give me something to run to), and that's what's most important. All philosophizing and defensiveness aside, if Radio Dance '90s doesn't work on an immediate level, what good is it? If it isn't propelling, it isn't selling. Also, a lot of this stuff can rightly be mocked for how misguided and quaint it sounds, so if you're not dancing to it, laugh at it. See, hindsight has a few different views -- the rose-tinted one provided by nostalgia and good ol' 20/20. This is commercial dance music we're talking -- you can have it your way.

Comments

[rebecca]

this is genius, an online PhD made of candy.

[Tipsy McStaggers]

I tip my hat to you my friend - you are a man among men today

[Sean]

Where were you spinning in the Slope?

[Ian]

Hmmm.... well it's no "Let's Hear it For the 90s."

Kidding. Loves it.

[Alex]

ugh...thanks for the pretentious history lesson. it was uh...pretentious.

[Douglas]

You must be like 40-something to be entitled to preach this much.

[brandy]

Cathy Dennis wrote "Toxic", and actually sings most of the higher parts.
I remember most of these songs from school dances.
Im way too old.

[Not Susan]

Ignore the naysayers: thank you so much. I used to go dance to these every weekend (my job as a nightlife columnist was just an excuse to make money while going out.) All of my stuff was on vinyl and left in my apartment on E. 3rd street when I moved to the Midwest a couple of years ago...*sigh*. I will listed to this, a lot, and thank you each time.

[Foxy]

It's like Q102 or Eagle 106 all over again...

[Carl!]

Absolutely ignore the naysayers! This is an excellent mix, and utterly inspiring. (And I hear you about the 90s, sweet fancy Moses that set list brought me back.)

[Mark Castro]

PLEASE HELP me find a song. It might be late 80s 90s a dance hip hop song. intro "it began in africa" and then the beat gets really fast "get up get up and boggie higher" " show me all your love" thats all i remember pls anyone email me [email protected]

[Mick]

What an incredible walk down memory lane. Thanks for the great mixes...we are lovin' each and every one!

[Rusty]

Jomanda...I love her...thanks for sharing her with the world...you are the best!

[Casey]

Oh, shit! (Lisa Lisa! Black Box! TechnoTRONIC! *weep*) These were the songs I used to hear on Rick Dee's Countdown (was it ever a hundred? or at least fifty?) every weekend . . . the soundtrack to mornings spent playing rented video games for my 8-bit Nintendo . . .

[dat nigga vaughn]

great mix - but you used the wrong versions on a few cuts.
bg the prince of rap - its the hard n heavy remix you want here.
bingoboys - the ambient ny house was an ignored remix on the cd single and 12.

well done on using the correct mix of stevie v though - i scream everytime i hear the wack dime n dollarz remix!

peace.

[dat nigga vaughn]

great mix - but you used the wrong versions on a few cuts.
bg the prince of rap - its the hard n heavy remix you want here.
bingoboys - the ambient ny house was an ignored remix on the cd single and 12.

well done on using the correct mix of stevie v though - i scream everytime i hear the wack dime n dollarz remix!

peace.

[michelle]

boy you brought it back wow!!!! this reminds of the good days i wish i was there again

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