50 Pound Note

Dead Or Alive – The 50 Pound Note Rip It Up 2006 Mix
(Original upload date 29 December 2006)

DOWNLOAD (103 MB, 192kbps, 1:14:47)

Your Sweetness (Is Your Weakness)
Brand New Lover (Dust Monkey’s Love Bubble Club Mix)
Hooked On Love (Razormaid Mix)
Love Toy (Instrumental)
In Too Deep
Come Home With Me Baby (Deadhouse Dub)
Lover Come Back To Me (Extended Remix)
My Heart Goes Bang (American Wipeout Mix)
Unhappy Birthday (12″ Remix)
You Spin Me Round (Razormaid Mix)
Something In My House (US Wipeout Mix Part 2)
Sex Drive (Direct Hit Mix) by Glam featuring Pete Burns
Turn Around & Count To 10 (Razormaid Mix)
I’ll Save You All My Kisses (The Sonia Mezumbda Memorial Mix)

Reworking Dead Or Alive’s Rip It Up album is something I’ve always wanted to do. While the material is unimpeachable the (at that time) state of the art digital edits were poorly timed and now sound very dated. In 2001 I started putting material together for a redo, and while this version isn’t as polished as what I’d envisioned, I’m still pretty happy with it.

When I had a regular DJ gig I was always frustrated with DOA’s remixes because they’re noisy and messy, making them difficult to mix in/out of. Even some of the edits crafted by Razormaid suffered from timing problems, so while I’ve listed the particular version of each track I used, nearly every one of them is actually my own edit.

Apart from the eight singles on the original album I’ve added six others: Turn Around & Count To 10 appeared on Nude in 1988 and was a #1 single in Japan for 17 consecutive weeks (The band has scored 17 #1 singles in Japan). Come Home With Me Baby was also on Nude, as was Love Toy, but Love Toy only appeared as a bonus track on the Japanese CD (and has never been available elsewhere). Your Sweetness (Is Your Weakness) and Unhappy Birthday first appeared on the Japanese-only album Fan The Flame (Part 1) in 1990, and while Unhappy Birthday subsequently appeared on Nukleopatra in 1995, Your Sweetness (Is Your Weakness) has never been available in the US. Sex Drive was written and produced by the Italian dance trio Glam in 1993, and was also included on Nukleopatra.

I call it a 3-way tie, but my favorite DOA tracks are Hooked On Love, My Heart Goes Bang, and Lover Come Back To Me.

When I first traveled to England at the age of 17 (summer of 1988) I had one of those yellow waterproof Walkmans with an auto-reverse feature, and I listened to Rip It Up on a loop for the entire trip. It was somewhat fitting then, when, on this last trip, my friend Laurance gave me the ornate, blue metallic paisley-covered shirt he wore to see the Youthquake tour in 1985.

Pete Burns has never been a man of tact. Read some of his quotes on the band’s Wikipedia page for a good laugh.

PS: I had DOA’s DVD Evolution: The Hits running in the background while working on this mix, and it’s obvious Pete was a fashion whore for Vivienne Westwood in the early days. In a TV appearance from 1980 he’s wearing one of her necklaces made from chicken bones, and in an appearance from 1982 he’s decked out head to toe in clothes from her Buffalo collection: oversized top hat, rags tied into his dreadlocks, a cardigan with buttons made from tin can lids – think Haysi Fantayzee, The Belle Stars, and “dressin’ like a hobo.”