The History Mix: Summer of Love, Oakenfold and Perfecto

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2018-02-01)

“Summer of Love” To Be Next Single?

Signs are mounting that “Summer of Love” will be the song that follows “Get Out of Your Own Way” for promotion of the album Songs of Experience. “Get Out of Your Own Way” started being pushed at radio stations as early as November 2017, but it was a couple of months later that the video for the song, as well as a couple of remixes were released, and a big push was done at radio.

It looks like “Summer of Love” is getting that early push now. Recently Dutch DJ Ruud de Wild announced on his radio show on NPO Radio 2 that “Summer of Love” was U2’s new single. It looks like as with “Get Out of Your Own Way” they may be testing the single a bit earlier in some markets.

Another sign a new single is coming? The inevitable remixes, and that leads us here as one has already popped up!

The “Summer of Love (TILT & Danny Stubbs Perfecto Remix)” made its debut on December 7, 2017 featured on a show by Will Atkinson on BBC Radio 1. The track was also featured by DJ Rusty Egan on his Artefakt Radio broadcast in Mexico on January 5, 2018. More recently DJ Solarstone has included the song on his “Pure Trance Radio” show on January 24 (Episode 122). Long time friend of U2’s, Paul Oakenfold has also been including the song in his recent Planet Perfecto podcasts, debuting on January 22, with the 377th episode of Planet Perfecto, and also being included in episode 378 last week. Tilt and Danny Stubbs have worked extensively with Oakenfold’s Perfecto label in the past, and the U2 remix includes Perfecto in the title. The song has also been uploaded to YouTube at the Tilt Official account, making it easy to share the song directly:

Stubbs is an audio engineer and record producer from Stoke on Trent in the UK. Tilt have been active in the clubs for 25 years and are signed to Oakenfold’s Perfecto label. The duo are made up of Mick Park and Nic Britton who also originate from the UK. Mick Park has previously worked with U2, being part of Killahurtz, which produced the Killahurtz Fly Mix of “All Because of You” which was included on the 2005 single “City of Blinding Lights”. Another remix by Killahurtz, “Original of the Species (Killahurtz Casa De Angeles Mix)” has never been officially released. Mick Park was also thanked for the remix of “Vertigo” called the Redanka Power Mix, although he is not credited on the track beyond a thank you.

A few links should you want to listen to this “Summer of Love (TILT & Danny Stubbs Perfecto Remix)” as part of one of these mixes:

Does this make the remix an official track? At this point it hasn’t been released by Universal for promotion. The remix is being shared by the DJs behind the remix, Danny Stubbs and TILT, to friends in the industry such as Rusty Egan, Paul Oakenfold and Solarstone. They then promote the song. Sometimes the remixes sent around this way end up released, but in other cases the remixes are never officially ‘sanctioned’ and released.

The Perfecto Podcast

The “Perfecto Podcast” has been a great place to hear new remixes of songs, and all have only been heard through that podcast and never released. Paul Oakenfold is the man behind Perfecto and most of us know the two have a long past working together. Paul continues to feature U2 in his own project when they have new music to promote. The podcast is produced weekly and features Oakenfold and a number of guest DJs mixing tracks, resulting in a two hour mix of songs. The podcast is available at a number of locations on the internet including iTunes, Tumello, SoundCloud, and is also archived at Oakenfold.libsyn.com.

The songs by U2 that have been featured on the “Perfecto Podcast” over the years are as follows:

“Summer of Love” (Tilt & Danny Stubbs Perfecto Remix)

  • Episode 378, January 29, 2018
  • Episode 377, January 22, 2018

“Raised by Wolves” (Adam White Remix)

  • Episode 278, February 29, 2016
  • Episode 271, January 11, 2016
  • Episode 265, November 30, 2015
  • Episode 259, October 19, 2015
  • Episode 257, October 5, 2015
  • Episode 255, September 21, 2015

“Beautiful Day” (OdelaF Bootleg)

  • Episode 210, November 10, 2014

“Beautiful Day” (Mat Zo Remix)

  • Episode 096, January 1, 2011

“Magnificent” (Club Mix)

  • Episode 088, November 6, 2010

“I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” (Christopher Lawrence Club Bootleg)

  • Episode 048, January 30, 2010

    “With or Without You” (Mash Up)
  • Episode 029, September 19, 2009

“Magnificent” (Adam White Remix)

  • Episode 027, September 5, 2009
  • Episode 025, August 22, 2009
  • Episode 024, August 15, 2009
  • Episode 021, July 25, 2009
  • Episode 020, July 18, 2009
  • Episode 019, July 11, 2009
  • Episode 015, June 13, 2009
  • Episode 014, June 6, 2009
  • Episode 011, May 16, 2009

Songs may feature on multiple episodes of the podcast, and the most played so far has been a remix of “Magnificent” by Adam White which was played nine times in total between May and October 2009. As it is a continuous mix, the songs bleed into the song before and after, and different portions of the song may be heard in different episodes. None of the songs are things that have been officially released to date. So being featured in a “Perfecto Podcast” does not mean the song will be released, but the podcast does use a mix of released and unreleased music from other artists in the mix.

Ordinary Love

We’d be remiss in looking at Oakenfold’s work with U2 without a mention of his remix of “Ordinary Love”. Haven’t heard it? We’ll give you a moment.

The remix was done by Oakenfold and posted in April 2014. That was five months after the song had been released on a 10-Inch record for the Black Friday Record Store Day event in 2013. In March 2014, the song had been nominated for an Oscar, but failed to win the award. U2 did perform the song on the televised award show. We’ve often wondered if the song had won, if the existence of this mix at the same time isn’t evidence they may have considered a release of a single at that time as a follow up to “Invisible” which had been released in February of 2014.

Other Perfecto Remixes

Oakenfold has been involved in a number of remixes for U2 that have been released, many carrying the Oakenfold name. He’s been involved in multiple remixes of “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” “Lemon,” and “Beautiful Day” all released in multiple edits on different projects by the band and by Oakenfold. Oakenfold accompanied the band on some of the tour stops of the Zoo TV tour and would spin records prior to the opening acts performance. During this time they struck up a friendship that has lasted through the years and resulted in Oakenfold being given access to a number of songs to work on.

Disappointed with the reaction to his remix of “Lemon” Oakenfold decided to revisit it. He took the music from his version, adjusted the speed and started using it in his own performances. He saw a great response so he approached U2 to ask the band if they would be ok with him releasing the music on his own under an alternate name. The band gave permission and Oakenfold brought in vocalist Dominique Atkins. Under the name “Grace” he released the song “Skin on Skin” and the instrumental mix was called the “Orange Mix” a nod back to U2’s “Lemon” and the song was released. The song recorded by Grace reached #21 in the UK charts in February 1996. The song was released on the album If I Could Fly from Grace.

u2 themselves weren’t done with the remix of “Lemon” and in 1997 and 1998 they used the song each night as they boarded their lemon as part of the PopMart Tour playing the remix over the PA system in the stadiums. The song would be accompanied with a video of performance artist Leigh Bowery dancing on the screen while the band was getting into the lemon that would transport them to the B-Stage. Bowery had passed away in 1994, so the video footage was not created specifically for the PopMart Tour, and Bowery was not dancing to “Lemon” in the original clip.

Daddy’s Gonna Pay

Back in the 1990s when everyone was just starting to find U2 on the internet, many of us subscribed to lists such as Wire (u2-List) would hear of another Perfecto remix that had once been played on radio and that remix had been for “Daddy’s Gonna Play For Your Crashed Car” from Zooropa. People would get excited to trade cassettes and get a copy, only to hear really poor sound quality. Mark Reed attempted to reconstruct the original mix from one of those old sources a few years back.

The original files were usually sourced from a 1993 mix that Oakenfold did for BBC Radio 1 in the UK, which aired on November 6, 1993. Those heavily copied cassette copies were what many of us had until 2014 when Oakenfold uploaded a copy of the old broadcast to YouTube. The sound is a marked improvement over what many of us had before. We’ve embedded it below from Oakenfold’s YouTube, it should start off just as “Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car” starts. If you listen beyond that song, you’ll also hear “Lemon” (The Perfecto Mix) in the mix.

A ha! Sha la!

Many thanks to Andrew for reminding us to finish this this week. Graphic for promotion of this article taken from the Facebook page of TILT.

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