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 a tune which makes me smile, and which has 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.

Today you are invited to Boogie At Your Desk to:

Smoking Popes - Writing a Letter

(This is an mp3 file, but it's a legimitate download.)

Today is a great day. Today, the seven-years-defunct Smoking Popes have got themselves back together and are playing a reunion gig. Now, I've never quite forgiven the Smoking Popes for breaking up at around the same time I first heard of them, thus never giving me a chance to hear them live.

So yes, I'm quite excited about the idea of a reunion gig. Will I be attending it ? Well... er, no, actually, because they've rather rudely decided to play it in Chicago, which was a little far to go on a school night. smokingpopes.net has been intimating the possibility of a forthcoming tour, however.

It's surprisingly common to find the marvellous Born To Quit lurking around in second hand shops for a trifling number of pounds. Failing that, there are rumbling rumours of reissues, so keep your eyes peeled. It's not all head-down-and-go indie-punk, there's some surprisingly thoughtful songs on there too.

Had it not been available for download, I'm not sure that Writing A Letter would have been my choice as their most Boogyworthy record. I've been Boogying to it, despite that recording's somewhat low fidelity. My favourite song is probably the song I knew first; sitting in the middle of a compilation made for me when I was a student is the uncharacteristically cheerful Just Broke Up With My Girlfriend. It still makes me smile everytime I hear it. And if you just go and buy Born To Quit, you can hear it too :)