fri 29/03/2024

Unexpected Party Starters | reviews, news & interviews

Unexpected Party Starters

Unexpected Party Starters

Eight unlikely tunes that have pulled recalcitrant dancefloors back into focus

Over the last 25 years I've done a lot of DJing, or at least playing records in public that, occasionally, people have been refreshed enough to dance to. I've done sets in all manner of scenarios, from nightclubs to house parties, to gallery events, to a Finnish festival in front of thousands, to a Balham comedy club. The last used to pay me £300 a night to play the same cheese and predictability week after week, but one evening when I put on "Fools Gold" by The Stone Roses and my heart sank with boredom, I knew it was time to get out, £300 or no £300.

So what is an "unexpected party starter"? Let's attend first to the "party starter" bit. Wherever you're playing records (or CDs or MP3s or kinetic mind-melds or whatnot) energy can dissipate, the focus can become disparate, not on the one but among the many. The tunes listed have, in my past, brought everything back with a fizzing jolt to the moment, to the we're-all-in-this-together. It's not that on every occasion everyone immediately hit the dancefloor, just that the room snapped back onto a musical wavelength, everyone suddenly aware again of the possibility of dancing rather than chatting, chilling or taking more drugs.

As to the "unexpected" qualities, lack of expectation is all relative. These songs' unexpected nature was down to setting. If you play "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols at a Back to '77 Punk night, it's hardly an eye-opener, but if you play it at the peak of a tough house set, it may well send the place doolally (or ruin the night - I've never tried it). The list below adheres to a principle of musical elasticity applicable to any party that needs pepping up. What I'm getting at, in a mildly pretentious way, is that some of these tunes were only out of the ordinary at the moment I played them - they played perfect counterpoint. Anyway, enough waffle, it's Christmas for heaven's sake, so here are my eight unexpected party starters, part one (part two will be next Christmas - a tasty carrot to help you get through 2011).

rodrigo_y_gabriela_coverDiablo Rojo - Rodrigo y Gabriela

I was in a Goth pub in Boston, Lincs, a couple of years ago, playing at a friend's 40th. I'd never been up there before and this place was very much the sort of joint where if it didn't fit somewhere between The Cramps and The Specials, it didn't fit, full stop. My pal was mates with the landlord but the place was full of the pub's usual clientele, the younger end of which may have listened to My Chemical Romance but the majority of whom were Sisters of Mercy through and through. I had been playing punky, funky stuff and dropping in Balkan beats and the occasional old dance tune (KLF), but faces stared blankly. Too arrogant to simply give in and play, say, "No More Heroes" by The Stranglers, I chucked in this track from Rodrigo y Gabriela's debut album. The Mexican acoustic guitar duellists have a heavy metal background and the song is one of their most hyper, using a finger-thump of the guitar body as a beat. What happened next wasn't a slow focus of attention back into music, of the type mentioned in the intro; no, the place went ballistic, loony tunes. To say the least, I was pleasantly surprised. By the end the whole venue was shaking and from then on in things went a treat.


Watch the video for 'Diablo Rojo':



moskauMoskau - Dschinghis Khan


There is an ongoing trend, of which I thoroughly approve, for relocating disco's inner cool, clubs like Horsemeat Disco, Norwegian DJs such as Prins Thomas, all harking back to the scene's gay underground roots, to the Italo-disco of the Eighties, to disco's psychedelic space-rock aspect. But there is, famously, another side to disco that's just plain goofy, and rarely more so than when it ran smack-bang into German schlager (uber-cheesy folk-pop). The results are thoroughly silly but if catchy enough, can be tricky to resist. I first saw Ghengis (or Dschinghis) Khan's "Moskau" on a YouTube clip and immediately tracked down a 7". I was awed by the way it made Boney M's "Rasputin" seem almost shy and retiring by comparison, and I adored the garish acrylic retro-kitsch of the band performing it on TV in 1979, looking like a dough-tummied circus act. A few summers later, for mischievous fun in a marquee with a mixed-age crowd who wanted Elvis records and were getting bored of my doof-doof-doof music, I slapped "Moskau" on the turntable in original German. Suddenly, accidentally, I had 'em, because it was a song that no one could take seriously so no one felt there was any cool agenda. That and the fact that it's one of those songs that seems familiar and, within a minute, even an imbecile could sing along. We all did. See also the wonderful, demented cod-classical Teuton disco-funk epic "Captain Starlight" by Zazu.

  • Find Moskau on Amazon

Watch "Moskau" performed on German TV in 1979


amy_winehouseYou Know I'm No Good - Amy Winehouse

"What?" you say, "That's hardly an unexpected party starter, it's a monster hit off one of the most successful albums of the last decade by an iconic star of our times." True enough, but it's also dinner-party slooooow, and, for my purposes, it appeared from an alternative place. I went on the decks at a party in a London venue a few years ago, brilliantly shabby, like a mini-rave. Unfortunately the guy who had been on before me had been inspired by these surroundings to work his way up to hard techno by around nine in the evening, apparently for the benefit of a small group of nodding men. I followed his groove but it was going nowhere fast so I pulled this one out of the bag. It was, I thought, far too slow to do anything other than pause things a moment, but a wonderful thing happened. All the females, from yummy mummies to young foxes, appeared from where they'd been hiding, and some sort of male self-aggrandisement bubble burst. These ladies all knew they were no good and sinuously sashayed their way around the floor by way of demonstration. Everyone loves bad girls, including girls imagining themselves that way, so it was an all-round winner. Delicious.

  • Find Amy Winehouse on Amazon

Watch the video for "You Know I'm No Good"



darth_vader"The Imperial March" from The Empire Strikes Back - John Williams, performed by Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra

This one has done it a few times. Yes, it mostly works with blokes and a certain type of bloke at that, but it starts a dialogue with and about the music that ripples quickly around the room and can be led off in much funkier directions immediately afterwards. Apparently, when they sound-designed the Star Wars films, George Lucas stuck famous pieces of classical music in different sequences to give composer John Williams an idea of what he was after. I reckon he must have gone for some amped up Wagner for the sequences where Darth Vader stomps iconically about the decks of various spaceships. The bombastic "Imperial March" has become a theme for unadulterated wickedness, but only of the cartoonish variety, and plenty of inner children who perhaps once strutted round their bedrooms humming it, pop to the fore and send their stormtroopers to where the music's playing. See also the theme to Where Eagles Dare.

Listen to "The Imperial March"

  • Find the soundtrack to The Empire Strikes Back on Amazon

torero_bandFrom Me to You - The Torero Band

Now we come to a charity-shop gem. This one hails from a 1969 album called Lennon & McCartney - Tijuana Style, a top-notch sop to the easy-listening market of the day. I don't know who The Torero Band were (or possibly are) but their cabaret Latin instrumental schtick is executed with such panache that few will be able to resist. The album is chock full of Beatles classics rendered "Tijuana", but the child-like zest with which they attack "From Me to You", replete with jazzy xylophone solo, is a wonder to behold. Near the start of various party evenings I've used this one to engage a milling crowd. Almost everyone likes The Beatles, and even if they don't, the merry familiar charm of this version usually works its magic anyway. See also "Age of Aquarius/ Let the Sun Shine" by Engelbert Humperdink.

doaTotal Annihilation - Disciples of Annihilation

Anyone remember gabber? This was a form of music briefly popular in New York and Holland in the mid-Nineties, which took the 4/4 punch of electronic dance music to ad absurdam conclusions, speeding it up to hundreds of beats per minute. The kings of the scene were Lenny Dee's Industrial Strength label and the ace card in his stable was this baseball-capped punk street gang whose New York City Speedcore album remains one of the most extreme musical experiences in any genre. Their premise was to take a sample, usually an angry, swearing cinema gangster, and attach it to insane layers of toxically fast kick-drums. Pure headache music yet somewhow kind of brilliant in its willful perversity. I use this in the way Tchaikovsky supposedly used the cannons in his 1812 Overture, to give everyone a sudden wake-up call. Sure, no one dances but once you've played a blast of this - and I've never played the whole thing - it acts as an electric shock, a revitalising sonic defibrillation unit. It certainly also causes a few shocked laughs.

Listen to Total Annihilation

  • Find New York City Speedcore on Amazon

Fats_WallerAin't Misbehavin' - Fats Waller

This, of course, is a classic but not one you expect to hear at a night of banging electronic beats. I love the hypnotic throb of dance music, the sound of the night, banging endlessly until daylight comes. However, I'm not a mixologist or king of Minimalism, so varied and (I hope) exciting programming is the key to what I do as a DJ (or man-who-plays-records-at-parties, if you prefer, real DJs). Ancient fare such as this is treaure, as the current electro-swing scene is busy demonstrating. I once stopped a techno tune when I - and everyone else - was growing tired of the flavour, like old chewing gum, and plonked this on the turntables. It's much, much slower than techno but once a few had walked away from the dancefloor, a devoted core remained, looking engaged rather than just treading the spot in a narco-daze. Of course, it was simply a wake-up, a rethink, and before long I was travelling back to electronic pulses but from a new starting point.

Listen to Ain't Misbehavin'

  • Find Fats Waller's Greatest Hits on Amazon

j-loJenny From the Block - G-Form

Bizarre cover versions are always a winner. Everyone knows the songs so they pay attention and, if the take on an old favourite is suitably catchy and off the wall, they will likely be dragged into your wicked scheme to make them enjoy themselves. This preposterous assault on J-Lo's already ridiculous claim of "street" credibility comes from a compilation (Inside a Whale's Cock Vol 1) put together by sonic/video prankster Cassetteboy, and takes the form of a jovial George Formby-style run-through of the bling queen's boasting. Once the banjo kicks in, every time I've played it, a large chunk of those present will throw themselves into the frolicking with gusto, many chanting along. See also anything by Senor Coconut.

Listen to Jenny From the Block by G-Form

  • Find Inside a Whale's Cock Vol 1 on Amazon

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