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The Face magazine (UK) has a very interesting article about bootleg remixes in the UK. Whitney Houston's "It's Not Right But It's Okay" is quite central to the content of this article (excerpts follow): - - Currently breaking all records are no less that nine bootleg remixes of the song. They were delivered just a day before by an anonymous man in a shiny grey Mercedes. All copies were sold by the end of the afternoon at £6.99 a go. - - ...Currently, the trade is in huge R&B radio hits such as Faith Evans' "Love Like This" and Whitney Houston's "It's Not Right But It's Okay" retailored specifically to take in the urgent bump'n'hustle of UK Garage. These, in turn, stimulate the relentless turnover of white labels that keeps the dancefloors and pirate stations of the garage community at boiling point. At the last count, Whitney's record company had heard ten bootlegs, all traceable to a sole US import single bearing the acappella track. Curiously, Whitney's US record company, Arista, had chosen not to include the mandatory spoiler noise - usually some background percussion running through the acappella, intended to prevent bootleggers from getting a 'clean' vocal sample. - - One of the Whitney Houston bootlegs coupled "It's Not Right But It's Okay" with Shanks and Bigfoot's garage anthem "Sweet Like Chocolate." - - [comment] "Bootlegs definitely increase the public's awareness of an artist, and don't really affect sales," says Jamie Topham, who manages club promotion for Whitney Houston in the UK. "People hear 'It's Not Right But It's Okay' on a bootleg and buy the official release, thinking it'll have that mix on it. There were maybe 15,000 copies sold on bootleg, but 500,000 of the official release were sold. Because we're owned by an American company, they commissioned R&B and tribal house mixes for the single, and they did well. But they don't understand it if we say we need a Booker T mix for the underground garage scene." Apparently, the KCC remix of It's Not Right But It's Okay is a reaction to the demand for a UK influenced remix of the song. It's late, but we got it - Manish. NEWSFILE: 3 JUNE 1999 |