Back in 1996, Junior Vasquez released “If Madonna Calls,” an infamous tribal-house track crafted around a message Madonna had left on the DJ’s answering machine: “Hello, Junior. This is Madonna. Are you there? Call me in Miami.” It was one of the tunes I heard played often during my first-ever trip to San Francisco that summer (this was the other).
Vasquez released the track in response to a falling out he’d had with Madonna. For a time, the DJ and artist had been inseparable, as he’d completed club mixes for many of Madonna’s songs. Some were commercially released (“Rescue Me,” “Secret,” and “Bedtime Story”), while Vasquez also made white-label mixes from her master tapes (“Like A Prayer,” “You’ll See,” “I Want You,” etc.) and played those during his weekly club residences.
Of course, legalities prevented Vasquez from sampling Madonna’s voice on “If Madonna Calls.” Another female approximates her original message on the released version, though it’s assumed the mix Vasquez played in his own sets featured the original message. Madonna was not amused, and a total freeze-out began. Her longtime publicist Liz Rosenberg states as recently as 2003, “I can assure you that Madonna will never work with Junior again.”
Now 14 years after the original “If Madonna Calls,” Junior Vasquez has teamed with German production duo Fisher & Fiebak for an all-new set of mixes. (The timing seems weirdly fitting now that I now call San Francisco home.) By dialing up the classic track and re-opening old wounds, it would seem that Vasquez and Madonna are forever resigned to remain on the outs. Take a listen to previews of all four new mixes:
Purchase Junior Vasquez – “If Madonna Calls” (2010) via iTunes, Amazon MP3.
