Luther played the boogie woogie

[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:

The Clash - Spanish Bombs

Some time ago, I was given a 2-CD Clash best-of. It opens with White Riot, which defines how I think of The Clash's sound. The album didn't really grab me, and I mostly forgot about it.

Relatively recently, I was given a copy of London Calling. I listened to it, and was completely bowled over. The Clash may have recorded shouty songs like White Riot, but that's really not how most of their stuff sounds - they're actually much more melodic, much more ska than I ever remember.

Since then, I've re-listened to my original double album, and I've radically reformed my opinion. The Clash really were great. However, I still think I'd recommend London Calling as an introduction.

Spanish Bombs is not something I could ever imagine hearing in a club, it's hardly a floor-filler. Yet it's a song you could dance to - someone should use it in a film. Imagine a long, night time shot of a couple dancing the rumba across a rubble-filled bomb crater, the backdrop bleak and the music playing from a tinny transistor...

Well, it works in my imagination, anyway.

Comments

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I'm reading a book about some guy's favourite 500 singles between 1976 and 1999. I was quite surprised that in his opinion (and he was old enough to walk at the time, unlike me), London Calling is well into The Clash's "sell out" period and barely worth mentioning. The only Clash singles from that album or after are Londong Calling ("The Clash reinvented themselves as an eclectic, ambitious but traditional hard-rock band by making a double album with veteran biz maniac and alcoholic Guy Stevens, the svengali behind Mott the Hoople ... title track revealed a giant leap in virtuosity and rock power ... B-Side ... greatest of their interpretations of roots reggae") and Should I Stay or Should I go ("The Clash finally imploded under the weight of dem old rock star contradictions ... The egos had landed").

Still, no accounting for taste and all that.