Throwback Thursday: M|A|R|R|S and Pump Up the Volume (1987)

M|A|R|R|S has just the one single but it was a monster. First, it was considered to be a major development in the history of British house. Second, it showed how the deconstruction and reconstruction of songs could result in something completely new and different. (By the way, the name is derived from the people who worked on the song: Martyn Young, Alex Ayuli, Rudy Tambala, Russell Smith, and Steven Young.)

At least 24 old songs were sampled for the standard single mix Pump Up the Volume (more samples appear in the various remixes):

1. Trouble Funk, Pump Me Up
2. Bar-Kays, Holy Ghost
3. Tom Brown, Funkin’ for Jamaica (NY)
4. Eric B. and Rakim, I Know You Got Soul
5. Criminal Element Orchestra, Put the Needle on the Record
6. Fab 5 Freddy, Change le Beat
7. James Brown, Super Bad
8. Coldcut, Hit Me
9. Beside, Change the Beat (Female Version)
10. Jimmy Castor Bunch, It’s Just Begun
11. Pleasure, Celebrate the Good Things
12. Fred Wesley and the JB’s, More Peas
13. Montana Sextet feat. Nadiyah, Who Needs Enemies (With a Friend Like You)
14. Whistle, (Nothing Serious) Just Buggin’
15. Graham Central Station, The Jam
16. Grand Mixer DST and Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin, Mean Machine
17. Pressure Drop, Drop the House (You’ll Never Be)
18. Public Enemy, You’re Gonna Get Yours (My 98 Oldsmobile)
19. Run-DM, Here We Go (Live at the Funhouse)
20. Stock Aitken Waterman, Roadblock
21. Dunya Yunis, Abu Zeluf
22. Fred Wesley and the JB’s, Introduction to the JB’s
23. The Soul Children feat. Jesse Jackson, I Don’t Know What This World is Coming To
24. Afrika Bambaata and James Brown, Unity (Pt 3 – Nuclear Wildstyle)

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