The Story of Eric Prydz – Call On Me*

*sorta.

Ooh boy….where to start?

Firstly this is a great video from HowardHandz about the debacle which was the mega-hit Eric Prydz – Call On Me, sampling Steve Winwood’s Valerie. I obviously came in during the middle of this, because BigBadBaz, a regular feature on this blog/podcast over the years posted his remix on GYBO and other places. I didn’t know the origin was actually from Thomas Bangalter and DJ Falcon, in a mix they did in 2002?

Also clickbaity headline is clickbaity – it wasn’t ‘stolen’ from Baz as far I remember, I think he was approached by Ministry of Sound or vice versa.

That was I think the version that came to the attention of Ministry of Sound and later Eric Prydz – I’ve asked Baz for comment on this, because my memory is nearly 2 decades now. But as I remember it from back then, they approached him to release it, he wanted it released as “Retarded Funk’ but they wanted a ‘name’ DJ on it, so brought in Eric Prydz. And yes, Steve Windwood re-recorded it for the released version – a video on the history of Replay Heaven would be fascinating too, they have interpolated so many hits.

Also I had totally erased Spacedust from my memory bar the excellent Stardust vs Madonna bootleg, and no thanks for reminding me! Somehow I totally missed that #1 and no thanks for that reminder or the frankly horrible video.. Those uncredited reboots as they basically were are pretty shady….

Also in the OB1 “I haven’t heard that name in a long time’ was Hard To Find records….who were legendary for making under-the-counter versions. Pretty sure that’s what happened to another famous later commercially released bootleg was distributed via them as an early white label? (Think Miami and another artist beginning with M – being vague cos I might have remembered that wrongly).

Only a few quibbles with this videos are two things: Barry is not a mystery, I’ve mentioned his real name on the podcast and on here, so digging should have found that easily if you look 😉 And I asked a French bootlegger also from that time and Bangalter is pronounced ‘Bangaltair’ not Bangalteh 😉 Also I was pretty sure Retarded Funk was one person?

He missed a key point about what Baz actually added to the track which isn’t in the other versions, which the Eric Prydz version took direct influence for – that pumping sound, the sidechain compression which was a BigBadBaz production hallmark. That’s not in the original live mix from Bangalter & Falon. (It incidentally made it sound a bit pants on radio as it got double compressed, probably why there weren’t many other hits using that technique).

Also missing from this video is the ‘what happened next?’ – BigBadBaz released the Generic Prydz album and a single with Prank Monkey (who released London Booted) called ‘Calling America‘ sampling ELO in his same style. I always loved his version of Stacey’s Mom which was released after the whole Call On Me hoo-ha I think, pretty much bootlegging himself?

I’ve asked the legend for a comment on Twitter, so this might get updated if he responds 😉

Video via iWillBattle