Standing at the machine every day for all my life I’m used to do it and I need it it’s the only thing I want it’s just a rush, push, cash….
I have never been a Yello fan (The Race and Oh Yeah was all I knew of their work up to this point) and I have absolutely no memory of buying this record. But I am extremely glad that I did.
As a connoissuer of the needlessly long 12″ single I must have been the core target market. Weighing in at a substantial 11 minutes long, Metropolitan Mixdown Part 1 was the b-side to Yello’s Of Course I’m Lying single, presented in a beautiful gatefold sleeve complete with cheeky photos of Dieter and Boris in their euro-finery and a space for that all important part 2 disc. I can only guess that it must have been one of those 99p specials to give it a nudge into the charts (storming to, err, number 27) that attracted me to it in the first instance. That and a chance to finally have Oh Yeah on vinyl. I never bought disc 2.
It’s bloody ace by the way. Pulling together The Race, Bostich, Call it Love, Santiago, Tied Up, Vicious Games, I Love You and Oh Yeah, this record is far more than the sum of its parts, most of which I had never heard before. Nothing outstays its welcome and it nips along at a fair old lick, brilliantly glued together by Paul Dakeyne for DMC.
I have no idea whether this was ever considered cool (Yello always seemed like Kraftwerk’s camp next door neighbour to me) but some of it sounds cool-ish. Or exotic at least.
Here it is. Don’t bother with part 2. It was massively disappointing in comparison.
Record at Random 