Wednesday 20 June 2012

'Material Girl' - Madonna (1985)



"Boys may come and boys may go,
And that’s all right you see.
Experience has made me rich,
And now they’re after me."

They were hearing only bad news from Radio Africa. While the pop masses could only tune in to Radio Ga Ga, Radio Goo Goo and Radio Blah Blah. But on Frimley Park Hospital Radio in the mid-Eighties, they were listening to my homemade 17-minute Madonna megamix.

Disc Jockey was one of my dream jobs growing up. (The others included designing T-shirts with giant slogans on and filming the further adventures of Princess Leia.) My school friend Mike beat me to it on the DJ front, landing a  job on local hospital radio. Mike was one of those guys that looked five years older than anyone else in our year. And he was obssessed with Fern Britton (who presented the regional news at the time).

Mike invited me down to the hospital one Sunday afternoon to watch him at work. Which I translated as ‘co-present’. So I came loaded with TDK C90 tapes full of endless remixes that I’d made. Blame Jive Bunny. Throw a few songs together and get to number one. You just needed a good memory for drum breaks and a fast finger on the pause button. Yep, Jive Bunny and I were leading today’s mash-up generation.   

Somehow I convinced Mike to play my Madonna megamix towards the end of the show. Kinda forgetting to mention that all my mixes were ridiculously long. If you liked Madonna, that was a great afternoon to be in hospital. It got cut off about two thirds of the way through though, as we risked crashing in to the next show. And on future visits, it was thought best that I leave the remixes at home.

Mike went on to his dream job the next year: providing Tannoy announcements at the local football club. And I’m still working on that Princess Leia screenplay.
 
Spotify linky:
Call this a remix 'Jellybean'? Only 6 minutes long! 

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