Livin' Proof

WELL DON'T I FEEL LIKE A TIT!

I wrote this post below in disbelief thinking a song had been credited to one singer and had vocals belonging to another. It turns out there are simply different versions for each vocalist available - a nice little touch actually given the history of the act they are paying tribute to. Except these remixers are extracting the actual vocalists and at least giving them some credit. How was I supposed to know?

Read below with a pinch of salt, then:

Above: Janice Robinson originally released Dreamer 3 times until it became a hit, and has since released it a further 2 times just so we get the point.

Something fishy is going down within the Australian dance community right now and I am not referring to the stench of Dannii's native chart positions. Livin' legend and ex-Livin' Joy vocalist Janice Robinson's good name is being destroyed by over-anxious evil gays falsely re-releasing her signiture hit Dreamer using vocals from that of her Livin' Joy replacement Tameka Starr.

Now, I have mixed feelings about the abs-ulous Tameka, whose real name is the faaabulous Doris Diggs, as a singer who sounds as if singing someone to death with her ear-drilling vocals. Her sparse catalogue of sporadic recordings is not much to look at, and yet in 1993 she fearlessly gurned her guts out on the Capella-tastic and rampantly spectacular Feel The Rhythm:



Movin' back to Janice, she herself has already re-released Dreamer back in 2005/6 with some pretty epic remixes so solid that there wasn't enough fibre in the world to slide them out the American Bilboard dance charts for a whole week before they vanished without a trace. There are two superior edits to choose from, either the funky-house elasticity of the Joe Bermudez Club Edit or the racous Nic Mercy's Epic Anthem which makes all other dance tracks extinct throught its 9:28 minutes of titanic destruction. The relentless open-fire purring persuasion of 'here we lie all alone, am I dreaming' once again erupts her unforgettable rapture - Tameka's exhaustedly shrill take on this track does not get anywhere near her rival's full-throttle roar.

Below: an all-too brief wig-free solo-sprint from Robinson with the gutsy singer-songwriter single Nothing I Would Change sadly never got off the ground despite touring with idol Tina Turner and singing her song on an unforgettable episode of US sci-fi drama Charmed, as seen here posing with cast-members (L-R) Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs.

Because Starr superseded Robinson before an album was written or recorded, it was decided to re-record Dreamer for inclusion of the album and the original was tagged on the end as a hidden track - basically Tameka recorded it to seal over any confusion anyone might have had with 2 vocalists on the 1 album. Remixes such as Wayne G's tranceplant-treatment prove Starr's efforts were not completely useless, but there is one definative singer who wrote this track, and when she sounds like a higher-sexed Tina Turner as well, it's not as if there would be any doubt which is which. However, everyone knows the definative remixes of Dreamer are the piano-stampeding Loveland's Viva Tenerife Mix, the stop-start carnival carnage of the Junior Vasquez Soundfactory Mix and the head-spinning trance of the Big Rollo's Mix.

Dreamer '05 (Nic Mercy's Epic Anthem) - credited to Janice Robinson
Dreamer '09 (TV Rock / Darbuck & Klien mix) - credited to Viani DJ/Veerus & Maxie Devine Feat. Janice Robinson