Everybody's dancing in the moonlight

[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 were invited to Boogie At Your Desk to:

The KLF - Last Train To Trancentral (live from The Lost Continent)

I can't believe it's taken me til November to realise that one of the best tracks ever to Boogie to is Last Train To Trancentral. Which is odd - when eostar asked me last year to choose five tracks to Boogie to at her party, Last Train to Trancentral was way up there on my list.

So, what reminded me ?

While in Boston, we bought tickets to go and see the Blue Man Group (who, incidentally, are in London soon and I really would recommend them).

A lot of literature describes Blue Man Group as "indescribable". They aren't, of course. However, I suspect you enjoy the show much, much more if it's a surprise. So I shall say enigmatically that they provide a truly inspired mixture of music, physical theatre, performance art and comedy.

Their finale in Boston was an utterly barking piece of theatre-wide carnage, involving the entire audience, lots of UV light, and lots of stuff. And this carnage, resulting in a near-gnostic explosion of laughing and dancing, was soundtracked with the only (I think) piece of recorded music they used all night - Last Train To Trancentral.

The KLF are notoriously difficult to pin down to anything, but (if you can find it), get a copy of The White Room. It's one of my all-time great albums, and contains something for any mood. ("It" ? The damn thing exists in so many different versions it should probably be called "them".)

Trivia fans and completists may be interested to know that, if you can find a tape (or presumably LP) version of The White Room, you get the LP Mix of Last Train To Trancentral which is completely different. Less Boogyworthy, but well worth listening to in its own right.

I'd also thoroughly recommend 45 by Bill Drummond (half the KLF) - it's the book he wrote to celebrate his 45th year. The KLF are very definitely on the mad side of genius, and 45 is a very painless, good-humoured way of exploring some of the erratic, Eristic and plain loopy things that Drummond has been involved in.

Comments

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

45 is indeed one of the great rock books. If you can find a copy of Bill Drummond's pre-KLF folky-acoustic solo album 'The Man' checkout a wonderful track called 'Julian Cope Is Dead'

Oh and I agree with the above re Chill Out.

[metame.livejournal.com]

I rather liked Bad Wisdom which is a story about a "journey to the North Pole" (not exactly a literal success I can revela without fear of givign much away) by Bill and Mark Manning (from Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction). They wrote alternate bits without a lot of cross checking, it would seem.

It's mad, and in places pretty juvenile, but had a certain anarcho-mythological[1] quality.


[1] i have to use one made up word each day, my doctor insists.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

Bad Wisdom gets bogged down in Manning's somewhat self-indulgent behavious at times but is worth reading.