Sunday, April 20, 2008

Some old school gems

So what are some of my favorite videos/tracks from my MTV days? Well, here are two of them. First of all, 'Voodoo Ray' by 'A guy called Gerald'. An absolute dance classic and probably my favorite dance tune of all time. It always brings an instand smile to my face. My God, do I have some good party memories to go with that track.

The video for 'Voodoo Ray' shows one of the problems that we used to face on the Partyzone, namely that record companies refused to spend money on promos/videos for dance tracks. So we were often forced to show crappy videos to amazing tunes. Still, it didn't detere us. We played the tunes that we believed in & continued to put pressure on the labels to give us better quality vids. It just took those dinosaur record- execs years to figure out that dance music had crossed over into the mainstream.

Anyway, enjoy this old-school diamond...




The next video was more of a mini-movie, so it's in two parts. It's the 'Weekender' track from 'Flowered up'. James Hyman (the producer of the Partyzone) and I loved this when it came out. It is absolutely 'spot on' with its depiction of the drug culture in the nineties & especially the little things like those cabbies outside the clubs in the morning made us laugh. I don't know if any other show apart from the Partyzone used to play this video (and we used to play the whole thing), but as far as we were concerned it was a classic. So again, enjoy and let it transport you back to those crazy days ; )




4 Comments:

Unknown said...

Voodoo Ray - what a great track. I love that tune. It's 2008 and labels are still not spending money on dance videos. Most are still cheezy & cliche w/women dancing like zombies in their underwear. The music is still good though.

BellaVida
http://iluvhousemusic.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Ace stuff! I love A Guy Called Gerald too. Do you remember "Finley's Rainbow" (feat. Finley Quaye)? You used to play it on PZ around 1995/96.

By the way, Flowered Up's "Weekender" used to be played also on Chill Out Zone back then. ;-)

Anonymous said...

I've been searching the flowered up video for ages. Thanks for the link! Brings back memories :-)

PsyTox said...

awesome track :)

While I'm at it, I hope you can remember this track because I've been searching for it since the dawn of man: you played it on PartyZone for a while, and it was a dubby breakbeat thing with a man repeating "and I Return... Stronger Man". The video was b/w with someone doing capoera style moves in it. If you have any idea what I'm talking about please let me know what track this is ;)

Thanks!