There were other hits that crossed over into the public consciousness in 1991, but this was a monster. A very basic ravey stabby synthy sound on repeat and an at the time untrue statement about the Godfather of Soul made for something quite distinct. And everywhere. Belgian Techno was in almost every car, and those that didn’t had cartoon happy hardcore instead. Oddly this didn’t impact the UK charts significantly (I assume it was too silly for Radio 1) but did reach number 1 in a number of national charts across Europe.
Also notably L.A. Style – James Brown Is Dead had an unprecented amount of remixes at the time, in a time when you had 3 or 4 mixes of something at most. This had around 21 official versions, and some variants / answer songs. “How many variants?” I hear you ask.
Well.
Over at discogs, one dj_stew has compiled a number of these variants. (I’m not sure I’d include the fly as I think it was maybe more inspired by The Scientist – The Bee, but let’s go with it.) Imagine all of those variants together, what a jape that would be! As most of these are on small time labels I doubt spotify would have them. So maybe I could find them somewhere else. Maybe I want my sanity to slowly leak out of my head, as I ponder whether or not James Brown really is dead or alive or in a constant state of unknown flux.
So, anyway, by my reckoning I was able to track down ~90 different versions and I have stuck them up onto Mixcloud so I can share this feeling of, well, not euphoria. Maybe like being smacked around the head with a record flight case.
Not to draw too much attention to any particular subject, this.., thing, covers the dead or alive state of many famous and not so famous names such as James Brown, Mike Tyson, Laura P., Elvis, Mozart, JFK, Horst Tappert (German Taggart), Scopjie (Macedonia), E.T., Einstein, Frankenstein, Manolo (Spanish Roger Federer), Michael Jackson (American Jimmy Savile), Meciar (Slovakian Prime Minister), De La Soul, Adipas (Greek Musician), Freddie Mercury, Meatloaf, Brian Mulroney (Canadian Prime Minister), Pippi Longstocking, the CCCP, Arnie, Helmut Kohl (German Chancellor), Ulyanov (Lenin), San Ku Kai (Anime), Dominator (Supposedly an American Footballer), Jesus, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jörg Haider (Austrian Politician, Schwul / Gay according to Ilsa Gold), Felipe (?), Satan, The Fly, A monkey, Tay-Chee and finally Fred West.