Ralphi Rosario, Neil Tennant (of Pet Shop Boys) and Craig Snider

One of our favorite remixers here at PRO MOTION is  the legendary Ralphi Rosario. He has been in the busy for over 25 years and mixed everyone from the Pet Shop Boys to Donna Summer and Madonna. Most recentley for Ralphi has mixed Debi Nova’s Drummer Boy and Pet Shop Boys Did You See Me Coming? for us. We had a chat with Ralphi about what keeps the music business exciting for him, who he thinks is doing a great job with remix and production at the moment, his current projects and who he would like to work with again! Check it out!

Ralphi Rosario Interview

Camille: What have you been doing?  Anything exciting?

Ralphi: Yeah, actually I just turned in a mix for a group called The School Girls that was produced by Nick Cannon, Mariah Carey’s husband.  That was just a week and a half ago and that was the last mix that I’ve done to date, so I’m just trying to juggle a few of my own indie things at the same time, trying to get all these other things released that I’ve done in the past.

Camille:  What indie projects are you working on?

Ralphi:  There is a new Rosabel single that features Tamara Wallace, it’s going to be on Blue Plate, it’s called “Come On, Get Funky”.  The next thing I want to do, I have a chill out album that I actually started with my co-producer, Craig Snider, we’re gonna visit that and try to get that wrapped up.  I wanted to try to work on a full length Ralphi Rosario album this year.  I really want to do that.

Camille:  Have you ever done anything like that before?

Ralphi:  Yeah, actually, it’s funny.  I had done- the last thing was in 1999 called “45 Miles of Nerves” that had “Take Me Up” and a bunch of other things on there, but I kinda really love the interaction of working with other people on something, other singers, background singers, musicians, I really love the interaction and it’s a lot of fun and I really, really miss that.

Camille:  Well that sounds like it’s definitely going to be very interesting.  I look forward to hearing that.  You mentioned you were working with Craig on some of the stuff.  How did you guys get together?  I know you worked on the Debi Nova for us.

Ralphi:  Yeah, the latest thing to date was Debi Nova.  We’ve done quite a few remixes, we’ve known each other, I want to say, close to 20 years now, if not maybe a little bit more.  We met through Mark Picchiotti and Craig had co-produced a few tracks with him and I, basically, was always doing a lot of stuff on my own, but once Craig had come in to help out on a few things early on, I found that there was a more broad picture with what I was working on on my own.  He kind of colored things up a little bit, so it was really nice to have him on.  We’ve been good friends ever since.

Camille:  I know that you’ve been in the business for a long time now–over 25 years.  Obviously, you’re well respected and you’ve worked with a lot of great people.  What keeps the industry exciting for you?

Ralphi:  I love the challenge of it all and I’m very creative, very passionate about what I do, but I always love the fact of having the challenge be presented to me, that’s the first thing.  I’m always moving and always wanting to do something new.  I get inspired by many different forms- I’m always surrounded by that.

Camille: The singles that you’ve recently done for us- Debi Nova, The Pet Shop Boys “Did You See Me Coming?”, and BWO.  Do you ever start off with a direction that you want to take with a mix or how do you find out what direction you want to go?

Ralphi:  The first thing, more than anything, is I really need to listen to the track in its original form.  That’ll tell me whether or not there is a heartfelt song there or if there is a really good foundation to create a new mix because I myself am more of a technical person, with programming and music and everything but I like when the artist themselves deliver a very good song, it’s very easy to put together.  I work twice as hard at making it even better.  Sometimes when stuff is presented to me and it’s very raw and it really needs a lot of work, I really have to go extra on a limb to try to pop something out of it and it’s really hard to try to get something out.  When you’re dealing with nothing there, sometimes it can be very daunting.

Camille:  Do you ever get feedback from the people that you work with?  I know you just met Neil Tennant from The Pet Shop Boys at the concert last year.  Did you get any feedback on the mix from him?

Ralphi:  Chris was the one who said “Oh my God, thank you so much.  The record went number 1 and we’re very, very happy.”  I have loved those guys from day 1, I mean, they were my soundtrack through high school, pretty much.  It was such a pleasure to actually hear Neil’s voice in my studio.  I just, I died.  That’s like, Donna Summer did the same thing.  Getting feedback from them means everything.  Sometimes, I will get a phone call.  Donna Summer actually called me herself and told me, when I worked on “I Will Go With You”, she actually called me and told me that she had to sit there and listen to 17 different versions but she said mine stood out the most and she really appreciated it.  That made my day.  It made my year, actually.

Camille:  Wow, that’s really impressive.  There’s a lot of new talent on the scene at the moment- is there anyone that’s caught your eye- DJs, remixers?

Ralphi:  In terms of production people and remix people, I would have to say Jody Den Broeder is one of the people that I admire the most.  He comes from a well-known camp of people that are actually programmers and producers themselves and him being a product of all that stuff, I’m glad that he was able to shine and do his own thing.  When he was there and available, I recommended him to so many people.  He’s very talented and he’s one of the people that I thought he’d be amazing for this type of work.  In terms of the other producers and everything out there, I still am a big fan of Chus and Ceballos, I’m still a big fan of Roger Sanchez, I’m still a big fan of Tom Stephan.  These are people that have had a history in what they were doing and I really welcome that because they kind of know what it takes to put it together.

Camille:  Is there anybody left on the artist side of things that you really want to do a mix for that you haven’t had the chance to yet?

Ralphi:  The only one that I still would love to have to this day is—I’d like to do another Madonna record, if it was presented to me.  I mean, I did “Love Profusion”, but that album was so stabbed at and looked at the wrong way that it didn’t really produce any hits off there, it was totally overlooked.

Camille:  It’s a good mix though.  I liked it.

Ralphi:  To me it needed to have that—everyone else is trying to get tech-y and everybody else is trying to get all modern and everything and electronic.  I’m like “What happened to the soul of it all?”  So just a little bit of soul never hurt anybody and I thought it sounded great.

Camille:  Yeah, it was a good one.  Well  you put that out there, huh?

Ralphi:  Yeah.  I put that out there but there’s still one other person- I mean, there’s so many people that I really love and adore to this day- but I think a person that I would like to see on the comeback trail would be George Michael because he still has a lot of soul about him too.

Camille:  The last thing I wanted to ask is, we talked about the indie projects you’re working on, what other more mainstream stuff are you doing right now?

Ralphi:  In terms of remixes?  The last thing I did was The School Girls, it was called “Something Like a Party” and that was for Island Def Jam and then prior to that, there were 2 things.  There was Shontelle for Motown and it was called “Licky”, very interesting because it has a different flair to it but it has a lot of energy, it’s pretty amazing.  And then the last one, actually around that same time frame was Yoko Ono which came out, and it’s called “Give Me Something”, which was a challenge in itself but when the end product and the end result had happened, I really pulled it together and I was very, very pleased with the end result.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5EOR18pMhk

Did You See Me Coming? (Ralphi Rosario Mix)

“Did You See Me Coming?” is one of my favorite cuts from the fantastic Pet Shop Boys album “Yes” and I think that the Ralphi Rosario remixes add a really great dimension to the track.

Later this week we’re gonna be speaking with the legendary DJ/Producer about these mixes and much more, so if you have any burning questions for him send ‘em my way!

DID YOU SEE ME COMING? (RALPHI ROSARIO VOCAL MIX)

DID YOU SEE ME COMING? (RALPHI ROSARIO DUB MIX)