I like to boogie on a Saturday night

[venta]

It's Friday! It's about three o'clock! It's time to Boogie At Your Desk!

Friday afternoons need a little something. I think they need a Top Tune. Something to make you shuffle in your seat and, if possible, Boogie At Your Desk. I'll be endeavouring to fill this gap some Fridays this year.

I'm not claiming that any track provided to enable At-Desk Boogying is one of the world's best or most profound pieces of music. It will, however, be one of the tunes which make me smile, and which have at some stage made me surreptitiously Boogie At My Desk.

Desks are not compulsory, of course. Feel free to boogie through your office, in your bedroom, round your lab, across your classroom, on the train - wherever you find yourself on a Friday afternoon.

If you like the track, go out and buy the album it belongs to - I'll try and recommend a suitable CD to purchase for any BAYD track.

This link will expire at some point in the future.

Today you were invited to Boogie At Your Desk to:

Saint Etienne - He's On The Phone

For years I was convinced I didn't like Saint Etienne. I don't know why. I certainly couldn't cite any songs of theirs as evidence. At some point I remember hearing You're In A Bad Way on MTV2 and being rather struck by it, and wondering if I'd ever actually heard a song of theirs.

However, He's On The Phone remains the greatest stealth dancefloor track ever. It's not, as it starts, an obvious candidate for dancing. It's certainly not an immediate stompy track, or even an enticingly bouncy pop track.

It is, however, inextricably linked in my mind to the first time I remember hearing it in a nightclub. And when the song reaches the "Yes!" that begins the chorus, there I am: dancing by myself in the middle of the floor.

The Saint Etienne singles collection, Too Young To Die is rather lovely and flits gently through a pop landscape, encouraging you to dance round your bedroom. Well, it encourages me to dance round mine, anyway.

Comments

[kneeshooter]

People dance to this? Was it ever on TOTP?

[venta.livejournal.com]

People dance to this?

Well, *I* do :)

Was it ever on TOTP?

Buggered if I know. A quick google suggests it got to number 11, so it might plausibly have been :)

[kneeshooter]

Hmm. Kids those days etc.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Hmm... that's the first BaYD that hasn't really worked for me.

I'm struggling hard to find an alternative way to put it, but I'm losing the battle: It's bland.

Or possibly I'm just too old and grumpy for cheerful pop stuff ?

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

I own Good Humor but never got into it. In fact the only song of theirs I can say I like is their storming cover version of Gary Numan's Stormtrooper in Drag.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

<pedantic>

That was technically by Paul Gardiner, who was Numan's bassist in Tubeway Army. But although undcredited, Gary Numan contributed vocals and keyboards on that track, so it was him really!

</pedantic>

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Super!

[diffrentcolours]

I never took to Saint Etienne, they always seemed to be a poor person's Dubstar.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I was listening to a Dubstar single yesterday (The Self Same Thing, from 2000, 99p from the cheap-jack book shop in Temple Cowley).

I'd never noticed before what a northern accent the singer has. The 'a' in same and shame were really harsh, flat vowel-sounds (such as I do when I think my mother isn't listening to tell me off :)

[edling.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! The first BAYD that I actually own.
I'd submit the larger Best Of Collection- Smash The System as something to look at for people that like this sort of thing, on the grounds that it's got 34 tracks, none of them are different mixes of the same thing, and lots of them are really rather good (after a quick flick though, it seems that Angel, Burnt Out Car, Sylvie, Madeleine and the rather funky instrumental Cool Kids of Death are all missing from the singles compilation.
Excellent bouncy music though (although they do have a habit of putting very downbeat lyrics in there thing- just listen to Like a Motorway)- they're one of my Spring/Summertime staples, and Sarah Cracknell's got one of my favourite ever voices.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

Well, it's very bouncy, and that's what you want for a bayd track. It grew on me over a couple of listenings, and then became a bit tiresome. Problem for me is the synthesiser. I'm a huge fan of it in general: Gary Numan (previously mentioned), Vince Clarke and others have done splendid things with it. [Earlier stuff such as Kraftwerk I came to later.] But it's not all good: it sounds (to me) like there's just one particular type used on every God-awful Ibiza hit of the 90s, and it's the same one on this.

Still, that Banquet by Bloc Party a few weeks ago was a very fine track and I'll happily suffer the odd duffer so as not to miss the good ones!

[diffrentcolours]

It's one of the things I like about Dubstar...