'85 to '88 What happened?

My brother's two daughters celebrated their twenty first and eighteenth birthday in late September. early October. I'll sometimes get the list of songs in the chart during the month of someones birth, download the best of them and make a CD as a present. I did this for my two beautiful nieces and disovered an interesting thing. The charts in September/October 1985 had some great songs, the inimitable Grace Jones - Slave to the Rhythm, Simple Minds - Alive and Kicking, Mick Jagger and David Bowie - Dancing in the Streets, Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere, Siouxsie and the Banchees - Cities in Dust, Cameo - Single Life, The Cure - Close to Me, The Smiths - Boy with the Thorn in his Side, UB40 - Don't Break My Heart, King - Taste of your Tears, Marillion - Lavender, Kate Bush - Cloudbusting, Dire Straits - Brother in Arms.

Something for all tastes and at least the first few are dancable (in modern parlance). No one, no matter what their taste, can deny that they're not good songs well played. Perhaps it's nostalgia but I also feel some kind of warmth and humanity coming through as well. Now here's some of the very best from from September/October 1988 and I'm really scraping the barell here. The Pasadenas - Riding on a Train (reissue, notice!), Bill Withers - Lovely Day (Another Reissue remixed), Michael Jackson - Another Part of Me, U2 - Desire, Salt 'n' Pepper - Shake Your Thang (cover). The rest is early and shit Acid/Rave/House, Pet Shop Boys's cynical and fake impression of dance music and Rick Astley, Enya and Phill Collins.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED! I was depressed, I tell you honestly. Like watching a plane with your family on it in a slowmotion tailspin...well not that bad, but you know what I mean. What happened to music in those three years putting us in a kind of fug of pretentious, formulaic, sad and I'll say it again, cynical attitude to music that continues to this day.

Anyway, a good sight for chart hits through the years is www.everyhit.com

Hard Disk Down

Tragedy has struck the Armchair DJ. The hard drive on which all my songs is stored has crashed. Did I backup? Does King Kong floss?

Anyway, while I await a new hard disk I'm using the kids' computer and getting musical tips from my partner who caters for parties. Two songs she recetly found very dancable were The Clash- Magnificent Seven and White Stripes-My Doorbell. She prefers the original Clash to the Basement Jaxx vs Clash - The Magnificent Romeo(soulwax remix) which has more notes in it.

Funky Funeral

When the day comes that Armchair DJ must retire to the big armchair in the sky he doesn't want his box to burn to the strains of John Lennon's 'Imagine' or some soppy ballad. He wants his friends and family to boogie together in his memory, right there in the isles of the crematorium or wherever they decide to dispose of his putrifying corpse.

My preference is the great Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground."

What's yours?

Cross Cultural Covers

Though playing everybody’s old favourites as part of a set is often a way of getting people up dancing, (if only because it triggers memories in the older generation of a time when they could dance) it’s a good idea to play with the formula a bit and throw in a series of covers in the style of different genres, culture or even language.

Badmarsh & Shri - Get Up (James Brown remix) is, I humbly suggest, a must on any DJ’s list: funking in a world music way like nothing else I’ve found, by mixing their Sitar Ritual with the previously mentioned funk classic.

Rachid Taha - Rock El Casbah is a fun Arabic rendering of the Clash classic.

Mo Horizons - Hit the road Jack (Pé na Estrada) gives a Latin groove to the Ray Charles standard.

Reversing the cultural cross over is Blackeyed Peas feat. Sergio Mendez - Mas Que Nada.

Though you won’t get me mentioning many Reggae tracks this one which I think is in French and Arabic Corneille & Cheb Mami - Enfant d'Afrique translates Stevie Wonder's Jammin’ in a no frills way.

Doing our bit to show that the world is one!

Funk Switch

Went to a bit of a drab party last night. Gave a CD of some funky stuff to the hostess. The stereo was pretty useless but people danced nevertheless.

Eddie Bo - Hook and Sling (Part 2) came on and a guy slouched in a sofa with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder (I forgot to say it was fancy dress) brightened up and told me of an great New Orleans Funk album he picked up called Saturday Night Fish Fry. He said there's a Eddie Bo track on it called 'The Thang.' The beginning of a great friendship, perhaps.

I had a bit of a listen to The Thang online...but prefer Hook and Sling. I've another verion too by Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - Hook And Sling Meets The Funky Superfly which is fun but just doen't have that sublime funk zing that Eddie Bo's has. That thing that turns something on inside, which only good funk does. Like Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions - Use Me Up or James Brown's - Get Up. Once it's switched on you can never switch it off, it's only on standby or energy saving mode until you hear another funk riff.

Welcome to here...

So this is just a place to note any good songs I find and what goes down well on the dancefloor in my head. I'm not really a DJ. I haven't even got any vinyl. But I like to listen and to dance and my parties usually end up with most people dancing until they drop, so my taste can't be all that bad.

I won't upload tracks here. That would be illegal wouldn't it. But I'll direct you towards some which I think are funky, groovy or whatever is the right or wrong hip word for making you want to move your feet or even more parts of your body to the rhythm.

I'll also be flagging up songs that mix well together and who knows, they might give some proper DJ's some ideas.

So where shall we start? How about a nice mix -

Professional Widow by Armand van Helden and Tori Amos mixes very nicely with Chase the Sun by Planet Funk.

A great track I've recently rediscovered is a Ravin mix called Arabian Song [Da Ghetto Fuckiro Club] by Kodo.