Tuesday Twelves: Donna Summer, “I Feel Love”

I don’t own a turntable but I have a soft spot for 12-inch remixes. Generally speaking, a 12-inch single is a record that’s big enough to be an LP, but it’s pressed with unusually deep grooves and only has one track on each side. The deeper grooves give it a bigger sound, particularly in the low end, and the songs are usually presented in a extended remix.

This is a great example of a 12-inch that worked: an eight-minute version of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” From what I can tell, the remix producer simply took a three-minute song and played it three times in a row, but it still turned out nicely.

As I said, I’m not a vinyl collector. I like the history more than anything. …  A small cottage industry grew around 12-inches, with adventurous dance producers like Shep Pettibone and Francois Kevorkian making longer versions of singles that had bigger drums and more crazy sound effects. A lot of disco, R&B, hip-hop and electro acts also had their songs reworked and released as 12-inches. Electronic and dance artists still churn them out, though I’m not sure modern 12-inches are as crazy as some of the stuff from 30 years ago.

A search on YouTube can also turn of a lot of strange artifacts by “respectable” (pretentious?) artists like U2, Bruce Springsteen and REM, who had their songs chopped up and turned into club jams in hopes of reaching more people. More often than not, the artists’ core fans seemed to scowl at these remixes and they’ve been allowed to quietly slip out of circulation. Once in a while, these remixes may turn up as bonus tracks on reissues of their ’80s albums. More often, someone posts them on YouTube. (More on those later.)

I’m going to start posting 12-inches, good and bad, old and new, on this blog each Tuesday. If you know of a good one, feel free to make suggestions.