“Ohh – that’s bad.” Any claim S’Express might make to pioneer status seems not to stand up – as people on the M/A/R/R/S thread were quick to point out, this kind of sample-dense cut-up was losing its novelty by Autumn ’87, and six months in dance music is a terribly long time. Mark Moore’s group increase the density of sampling, and make their borrowings more obvious, but what they also do is push the social context of this kind of sampladelic club track. Yes, there’s the predictable spaceships and stock footage in the video, and lots of odd shots of S’Express members miming to the samples, but all the shots of Moore himself and its lava-lamp lightshow imagery make the point that this isn’t a novelty record, or an aesthete’s studio project – “Theme From S’Express” is a record for and from a new kind of clubland, and a four-minute advert for it too.
The heart of “Theme” is that whacking great lift from Rose Royce’s “Is It Love You’re After”, a blast of reproof refitted as a simple, glorious call for action. The spine of it is that nagging acid tweak bouncing along in the rhythm, combining with the treated and clipped vocal samples to give the record its pushy urgency, its sense of hustling you. Don’t worry about where we got this stuff from – don’t worry about what it means – just dance! Those things are what make the record work as pop. The rest – all the kitschy little snips of dialogue – is flavour and ornament. So maybe S’Express were a little more innovative than you’d think, taking the thrust of sample-collage pop away from all that surface cleverness, switching-out the head-nodding hip-hop structures M/A/R/R/S and Coldcut worked within for something a lot more disco.
This was certainly how “Theme” felt at the time. A couple of months before my family’s lodger had brought home the February 1988 issue of The Face, with Jon Savage writing about the 70s as “The Decade That Taste Forgot”. The phrase stuck with me, as it was meant to: it’s still attached to articles and exhibitions about the era. I don’t remember the piece itself, but Savage is no simple foe of the 1970s – he was working on England’s Dreaming at the time, as much a celebration of 70s fringe and pop culture as of the whirlwind it produced. So there’s nuance in the phrase – the sense that “taste” might be a bad angel, that “taste” had done for the 80s in the end. At the same time there was enough simple resonance in it to erase that nuance if that’s how you wanted to play it. The renegotiation of the 70s was underway – awful or extraordinary or both – and “Theme From S’Express” fits right in, an early stab at the question “what do we do about disco?” in the way glam had approached rock’n’roll. “Theme” – like “Superfly Guy” and “Hey Music Lover” – is not just a modernisation of the 70s but an amplification of them, draining off the grey and leaving a day-glo collage. Taste didn’t forget this version of the 70s, it was driven off with a neon pitchfork. The most joyfully, calculatedly vulgar number one for years, laughing at you you for laughing when you could be dancing instead. “No – that’s GOOD.”
Score: 9
[Logged in users can award their own score]
I like this a lot more than I ever liked Pump Up The Volume, this one has just so much more momentum to it.
I won’t linger on this one as I don’t get it at all. It does everything Tom says it does but if you don’t dance you want a song.
A very insistent record – with M|A|R|R|S you at least had the option to sit and think about it and listen. With this all you can do is dance.
“Drop that ghetto blast-er!” I think the key differences between this and PUTV are that this sounds more fun and light-hearted mood-wise – no screeching guitars like wolves in the night etc. Also, unlike the faceless M/A/R/R/S, Moore and his cabal (not entirely defined at this point but later to expand and include Billie Ray Martin and Sonique) seemed keen to present themselves as a ragtag ensemble pop Thing, again seeming to challenge the definition of what a pop group could be now – and to me it looked as much fun to be in S Express as it did to be in Adam & The Ants or Madness. Like them Moore braved ridicule and welcomed all into the House, just as another Mo(o)re (Jonathan) with Matt Black were warming up on the side of the pitch for a greater assault on the charts.
Their subsequent singles featured fewer samples but Superfly Guy and Hey Music Lover (maybe even Mantra (For A State Of Mind) were as terrific as this debut. I must also confess to thinking ‘Original Soundtrack’ was the CLEVEWEST album title ever when I was 12.
There is no greater feeling in pop than the serenely hyperactive knowledge that something new is happening in public. Perhaps it had been happening in private, known only to a select cult of readers or clubgoers, for some time, but when it breaks into the charts with the unassailable confidence that comes only with knowing that this is your time, your moment, euphoria is difficult and frankly inadvisable to contain.
While “Pump Up The Volume” was the signal for all “sonic theft merchants” to begin raiding the charts, the moment of change can be pinpointed to the Top 40 for the week ending 20 February 1988, when “Beat Bis” by Bomb The Bass and “Doctorin’ The House” by Coldcut simultaneously gatecrashed the lists. Both went top five, and only Kylie stood between Bomb The Bass and the number one slot. In those heady days of early digital sampling, when the copyright laws on sampling hadn’t quite been ironed out, everything was fair game and every game was guaranteed a fair adventure. In contrast to the noughties world of Guilty Pleasure sample + off-the-rack techno beat = easy hit, the Dadaism of Tim Simenon, and of More and Black, floods all over the place; samples, catchphrases, Big Ben, Casey Kasem, alarm clocks, all thrown into mixes compelling, comedic and utterly brimming with active nowness.
And those too were the heady days of Philip Glass enthusing about S’Express on BBC2’s The Late Show – so much so that he subsequently remixed their 1989 hit “Hey Music Lover.” Imagine John Carey or Julie Myerson – or Paul Morley for that matter – doing likewise on the Newsnight Review Show today. DJ Mark Moore’s introductory and biggest hit was as sublime a trip as the opening sampled commentary promised (“And it is a trip”) careering like an avant-popist dodgem through Rose Royce’s “Is It Love You’re After” and throwing in elements of anything else he could find in his 12-inch rack, most notably Karen Finley (“Turn off that ghetto-blast-AH!” and on the 12-inch mix “Suck me off!”) to create Cubist bubblegum which scrunched up history into paper planes, all the better to fuel tomorrow’s flights. “I’ve got the hots for you!” panted the backing singers repeatedly as Moore bombards his beats with elements random and sublime. The Original Soundtrack album arrived a year too late but maintained the high standards set by “Theme” while also prophesying the superbad early ’70s revival half a decade ahead of Pulp Fiction. And via his work with Malcolm McLaren on Waltz Darling, one of the most shamefully neglected albums of the eighties, he beat Madonna to the vogueing craze. “Theme From S’Express” is cheap and priceless, tacky and profound, and everything that affords pop music the adjective “great.” The reaction – and sneaky revenge of New Pop – had begun.
For me this is superior to the M/A/R/R/S record.A lot more urgent and energetic and one that I rarely get bored of when I hear it.This would also be more danceable and must surely have gone down better at discos.
M/A/R/R/S comparisons notwithstanding its still brilliant in its own right.
10
Do you know, this is the first single to turn up on Popular that I bought at the time it was a hit. (Incidentally, I don’t remember it having that sleeve, but this one – http://ring.cdandlp.com/prenaud/photo_grande/113902749.jpg ) At the time, it struck me as enormous fun, a version of cool that was happy to also appear gauche, and full of jolly details that whizzed past the listener while you followed the essential groove of the thing.
I’m not quite so sure now – but then, the thing wasn’t created with my 37 year-old 2010 self in mind! When I hear S-Express hits now they tend to sound a bit weedy – unlike Pump Up The Volume, Paid In Full or Beat Dis, which still strike me as bold. At worst, this might be for tedious muso reasons – I didn’t know Is It Love You’re After or Sly Stone at the time and now do – or at best, it might just be because the element of surprise was a big part of their appeal at the time.
At the same time as that Face article there was also a ‘1970s styles’ issue of the NME in Spring 1988, with a rather lame cover of two models in disco clobber.
An era-definingly massive record on my dancefloor – and hooray, SO bloody easy to mix into and out of, even for a ham-fisted klutz like me, thanks to its juddering one-note intro and breakdown. Up a crucial few BPM from “Pump Up The Volume” and “Beat Dis”, usefully placing it within the lower end of the house spectrum. And, most on-trend of all for my crowd, who had lapped up the “Shaft” samples on “Whitney Joins The JAMs”, it brought the disco back: via the Rose Royce sample, of course, but also via the horn break from the fabulous “Crystal World” by Crystal Grass (50p from Rob’s Record Mart on Hurt’s Yard). The 7-inch edit still sounds wrong to me, stripped of its “SUCK ME OFF! SUCK ME OFF! SUCK ME OFF!” section. A time capsule of happy memories. Good times, good times.
@5 Cubist Bubblegum – YES!!!
this still sounds fresh, joyful and stupid/clever – despite it’s 70s fancy dress it feels more forward looking than PUTV – possibly the faster BPM
You know something’s good when you see it on TOTP and think I wish I was a part of that – and the booming UK club culture of this time meant you could be
worth mentioning that Prince had played a part in that 70s psychedelic funk revival with ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’
TOTPWatch: S-Express thrice performed the Theme on Top Of The Pops (the Christmas show we’ll come to in the fullness of time);
21 April 1988. Also in the studio that week were; Danny Wilson, Jermaine Stewart and Hazell Dean. Peter Powell & Simon Bates were the hosts.
5 May 1988. Also in the studio that week were; Joyce Sims, Magnum, The Christians and The Primitives. Bruno Brooks & Adrian John (who?) were the hosts.
This barely charted at #91 in the U.S. Good yes, but like Billy Smart, I’m not so sure either, and I do love a good dance song. But as others have pointed out, it is insistent and that is its greatest virtue.
Contrarily, I’ve always loved to listen to this, but may only have danced to it a handful of times. I value insistency even when sitting around as usual.
Actually this must have been inspired by “Whitney Joins The JAMs”, mustn’t it? The stabbing brass riffs from “Shaft” (sampled by the KLF) and “Is It Love You’re After?” (sampled by S-Express) are more similar than I remembered…
re #9 I was a bit jammy but timed a segue of ‘Heart Of Glass’ into this just right the time I DJ’d at Club Popular. It felt Good.
A new kind of DIY. Theme was all playfulness, anti-cool, real POP – the Part Time Punks to Beat Dis’s Read About Seymour. PUTV had seemed a more professionally constructed animal, forbiddingly so, a full stop. But the Rhythm King brace were clearly home-made and so way more inspiring.
The hi-hat was an aerosol spray. Amazing! To me this single was more dada (or at least my take on dada) than anything ZTT produced. It wasn’t about prizing the latest import or owning the umpteenth limited remix either, it was completely of the moment and entirely inclusive.
Here’s what else Theme from S’Express told me: all you needed was a record collection, a grasp of song construction, a mate who could sing, and access to a sampler. It changed my life.
@ 5, 8, 10 etc
Mark Moore IIRC came directly from the West End Rare Groove (Shake n Fingerpop etc)scene which had been playing 70s disco and funk for a couple of years by now and many on that scene had been wearing the early 70s flares, poor boys hats etc as well so surely this was the obvious end product of that scene grafted to some housier beats.
This scene was still influencing fashion/music etc a year or 2 later with the more obvious (and less disco)Brand New Heavies and Young Disciples.And blatantly disco revivals like the Carwash (in Soho).
I think any link/influence by such as the JAMS to be pretty tenuous to say the least.
I also remember the Tube being covered in stickers for this before it hit the charts which was unusual for a record back then and defintely a club track.
Fantastic review even if I think the mark is a bit too high.
I can see what’s impressive about S’ Express but it doesn’t do it for me not just because I lack the funky bones but also cos I’m not sufficiently intimate with the seventies or dance music to really grasp it.
Re: Punctum at 5 – Now that the Great Rock n Roll Swindler has shuffled off this mortal coil I do hope he’ll be recognised as one of the unsung figures of eighties pop. Double Dutch, Madam Butterfly, Something’s Jumping in your Shirt – all fab tunes with musical concepts and videos to match.
The obituaries have inevitably focused on what he got up to around 1976-77 and that’s understandable, but for all his flaws the Stoke Newington boy was an artist through and through before, during and after the Sex Pistols.
Absolutely blinding. I loved it from the moment I heard it and I love it still.
As most people above seem to grasp, it was a record that hoovered up everything that had been going on – from the cut-up records to rare groove to the nascent acid house scene and Prince – and turned it into pop, turned it into fun. As Tom half-remembers, The Face were dabbling with 1970s to find a way out of the high 1980s. After all, the Hard Times look in its mature manifestation had gone boyband with Bros, and both the 1960s soul thing and the retro jazz thing had become the stuff of too many ads. An infinite number of dull groups of the Johnny Hates Jazz persuasion had made the return of tailoring look a whole lot less attractive. Suddenly, silly was good.
And of course none of that begins to explain why Theme From S’Express is so great…
I’d actually never heard this before today! I was two years old at the time and this doesn’t seem to have turned up on any 80s retrospective I’ve ever seen or heard.
It’s pretty great really! Like it a lot.
Great stuff written so far. I have very little more to add except that in my view it’s worthy of a 10 for it’s sheer unbridled joy. Marvellous.
Completely out of my comfort zone here, and it leaves me unmoved. The child of disco, of course, and probably a grandchild of some of the more stoned acts of the late sixties. I can’t imagine this having real impact outside a packed club with pharmacological enhancements, an environment which would always have given me the screaming abdabs.
A 9 for this seems preposterous [doesn’t leave much room for much more impressive contemporary tracks such as Where is my mind? and Peekaboo – or even the thing I remember dancing to at exactly this moment, Sinead’s Put your hands on me (with its awesome vid. projected in a club – novel for the time, which is why I recall it!) – does it?], but that score does at least have the virtue of explaining how someone might think Discovery was the best album of the ’00s.
One influence on the track that hasn’t been mentioned: there’s some of Shannon’s ‘Let the music play’ in the bass-line somewhere. Neneh Cherry mined the same stuff a little later to much greater effect in my view. At any rate, the simultaneous greater polish and greater grit of things like Ride on Time can’t get here soon enough for me.
Where Is My Mind, in the odd parallel universe where it got to #1, would be an 8 or 9 (the band would do better pop singles tho). I love Siouxsie’s earlier 80s output but have never found her ‘dancier’ work quite as convincing as you, Swanstep! It’s all good stuff though.
ugh peek-a-boo – clompf clompf CLOMPF (goosestep /= dancing)(early 80s output = actual ‘dancier’ work); i think the only siouxsie hits i can stomach once she went paisley and the well dried are ‘cities in the dust’ and ‘kiss them for me’ (if only for that pil/schooly d – i forget who used it first – break). this is the first track i can remember tracking down based solely on seeing it topping the britcharts and wondering ‘wtf is that’ (and probably hoping it was another ‘pump up the volume’). doesn’t do as much for me as m/a/r/r/s (i’m not sure many records could), but it’s held up much better than i could’ve imagined (better than ‘put yr hands on me’, which i did love – MC LYTE – but seems secretly lumbering to me now and ultimately as out of its depth as ‘domino dancing’). this depends on busyness and hooks alot more than ‘pump up the volume’ and doesn’t have much of a groove in its heart (whereas ‘putv’ is all about its foundation)(‘putv’ -> homework, ‘s-express’ -> discovery). truthfully it could be shorter (another way you can tell this is a pop song masquerading as a dance track) and i suspect very much that it’s a late 80s club analogue to ‘eye of the tiger’. nothing wrong w/ that – even if it is just ‘eye of the tiger ’88’ it’s still at the very least a solid 9 in my book.
A number 9 hit in Australia on the AMR chart, number 11 on ARIA. I’d never heard this as far as I can remember, but its essence is certainly familiar: the start of a sound that took over Britain for a few years and was only starting to fade when I spent a year here in 1991-92. Can you feel nostalgia for a track you’ve never heard? That’s what I’m getting from this, rather than personal memories of its chart-topping dance-floor impact, so for me it’s a modest 6.
@taDOW, 25. I’m with you in vastly preferring classic Kaleidoscope/Juju Siouxsie, but from that much more patchy later period, Peekaboo rides high I think. All the backwards rhythm track stuff means that when Peek. comes on at a club even now it *really* pops – nothing else has ever sounded quite like it, and it’s head-snapping. I share your reservations about MC Lyte’s part in Sinead’s track – it feels well-intended more than anything else – but Sinead’s bits more than make up for that mis-step, or so it seems to me. Anyhow, as for your final remarks: tom-score(Eye of the Tiger) = 6. That’s about where s-express belongs in my view, but Popular love for everything Hi-NRG through to Acid House (it feels like there’s a seperate, median=7 scoring curve for that!) won’t allow that.
@Tom. Good to hear your Pixies alterna-score. I just checked and Surfer Rosa was really a v. big album in the UK in 1988/9 – 60 weeks near the top of the indie charts apparently. Such a shame that they didn’t get that faster UK spin-cycle -> single crossover that has often happened for weirder US acts (from Scott walker to Blondie to the white stripes).
Theme definitely has a much more ‘pop’ sensibility than Pump Up The Volume, leaning away from the hip-hop stylings of earlier sample hits towards acid house and what would be Italian House. This was perhaps one of the first ‘house hits’ that had a much wider appeal. Pop kids and even mums could get into this. Perhaps coming from the gay scene meant Mark Moore had more pop nouse and wanted a bit more melody? It certainly paid off.
While a lot of tracks from this time have disembodied vocal snippets that make you cringe, nothing about Theme now sounds out of place; ‘Drop that ghettoblaster!’ ‘Oh, that’s bad….no, that’s good’…amazing, and still get howls of recognition around pub tables. Well, they do for me.
S’Express also seemed to embrace coverage in the likes of Smash Hits, and as mentioned by Lonepilgrim, were fantastic on TOTP and actually gave a PERFORMANCE as opposed to standing by turntables looking uncomfortable. This was House with a capital P. (For Pop, that is. Oh, never mind)
Anyway, great stuff,and the follow ups were also excellent and varied, but avoid the pointless remixes from 1996, they’re bloody awful. I will also give it 9.
Much as I enjoy this and others like it there’s always this little soul snob voice in my head tut-tutting over someone ripping off an old classic for profit, especially when it relies so heavily on the one sample. I had the same problem with Beyonce’s ‘Crazy For Love’
‘Is it Love You’re After’ was reissued in the wake of this and I remember Chris Tarrant playing it on Capital one morning and accusing Rose Royce of ripping off S’Express!
A fabulous pop single – joyous, inventive, danceable, crammed to bursting with interesting ideas.
The best Number 1 in a long, long while.
Bought “Original Soundtrack” – it had some very fine moments indeed, Pimps, Pushers and Prostitutes anticipating in feel if not perhaps sonically, Tricky and Portishead.
The most joyfully, calculatedly vulgar number one for years, laughing at you for laughing when you could be dancing instead.
I was going to say that only a Brit could find this song vulgar, but then “calculatedly” is your money word (or get-out-of-jail-free card) here; “Theme From S’Express” is vastly more acceptably hip and pomo and studied and safe for the intelligentsia than “I Think We’re Alone Now” is, for instance, or unbunnied American number ones from 1988 such as “Could’ve Been,” “Seasons Change,” “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car,” “The Flame,” “Hold On To The Nights,” “Wild, Wild West,” “Bad Medicine,” and “Baby I Love Your Way/Freebird” (I’d add “Look Away” and “Groovy Kind Of Love” except that I don’t remember what they sound like). As such it is joyous, and made my P&J honorable mention top 30, but a lot of real disco – not to mention 1988 girl twirl and freestyle and Miami Sound – soundly trounces it, as does stuff that ruled Dial MTV all summer, like “Pour Some Sugar On Me.”
Of course, what is perceived as “safe” or “vulgar” depends greatly on one’s own particular social location, and I’d guess that at the time you didn’t have to endure panel discussions that cited “Pump Up The Volume” and quoted Lautréamont.
Not for nothing was this included on the original Best Dance Album In The World…Ever! (which I took to be the canonical list of post-1988 dance tracks and was not disappointed). Whenever I think it’s on the verge of becoming boring something different turns up (bassline, cowbell, drop that ghettoblaster, OWWWWWWWWWWW!) and saves the day. S’Express is totally invaluable for me when DJing, it’s not as overplayed as eg SL2, yet as far as I can gather everyone born in the early 80s twigs those opening chords as “HERE ARE THE NEWS HEADLINES: TONIGHT BOSH BREAKS OUT OVER THE UK” and scrambles to the dancefloor to hear what Moira Stuart has to say.
“hold on to the nights” and “the flame” (a diane warren ballad by powerpop vets – could anything be more calculated?) are way more studied and safe and less vulgar than “s-express”, nevermind the canny ac crossover moves by tiffany or expose, and i can’t imagine some old dumont type sniffing you’d need to take drugs or – heaven forbid – dance to enjoy post-cetera chicago or post-sussudio collins. as something i had to seek out then and encounter only by freak circumstances now i do wonder if its vulgarity would be a lot less charming if i’d been exposed to it as an omnipresent #1 – it’s a precursor to big beat and bloghouse, with heavy tacky hooks but no hips (a club version of a michael bay movie), and i could see myself loving it initially only to have heavy buyer’s remorse w/ repeated exposure. definitely happened w/ “d.a.n.c.e.”.
Re:32 – “HERE ARE THE NEWS HEADLINES: TONIGHT BOSH BREAKS OUT OVER THE UK”
Ever heard this, Kat?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSJ-ZF6f6hQ
I never quite warmed to this song – it always seemed to me a bit ordinary next to Pump Up the Volume. And I don’t even get a Proustian nostaglic rush on hearing it now. It’s OK, but…meh.
I’m sure this song’s success provoked a lot of ire among funk, disco and house purists at the time, as pretty much any UK dance #1 would. What surprises me is that I like all of the early Disco/House-based chart-toppers up until a cover version from 1992 which I was old enough to reject then and never reconsidered.
Reminds me of a review of Reservoir Dogs – ‘an awesome, pumping powerhouse of a movie’ and like the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously either. Nine for me…
Surely there’s a bit of rose-tinted retro-fitting going on in this thread.
Was this not seen as a joke, or at best a poor man’s effort at something PUTV-like?
I really don’t remember much love for it at the time; it wasn’t really my scene, but I thought then (and still do now) that it’s just a bit of a dog’s breakfast. Not even style over substance, because there isn’t much style there. Often with songs I dislike, I can still appreciate what they’re trying to do, but not with this one, I’m afraid.
no retro-fitting here – instantly and ever since i’ve thought this was very brilliant indeed. i’d say it’s an extrovert’s take on ‘pump up the volume’, rather than a poor man’s – a party not an exhibition.
No retro-fitting here, either: everyone I knew loved this, and I don’t recall reading anything critical. A colourful, campy cartoon which perfectly caught the moment. (See also Deee-Lite, which may or may not be bunny-embargoed; I recently lobbied for its inclusion!)
At the risk of coming over all ignint: what is this BOSH I hear people speak of?
bosh = chris bosh, power forward for the raptors until he signs w/ someone else (chicago? ny?) or maaaaybe does a sign ‘n’ trade somewhere else (word is lakers at the front here); the rumor is wherever he signs, that’s where lebron’s signing.
42 – at the risk of completely derailing this thread, and as a cleveland native, i beg you to pretend that lebron is going to re-sign with cleveland…at least while in my presence!
as far as this tune goes, i can see both sides of this debate. it is irreverent and fun but also a bit of a dog’s breakfast. in this regard, it reminds me of a certain embargo’d #1 from ’94 about a scrooge-like character who has dropped in to tell us that a certain classified substance is “goode”.
Footage from NASA – check. Hot chick pretending to sing the sampled bit – check. Jackdaw-like tendencies towards various other works – check. I don’t object too much to sampling if you’re going to do something original with it, but building a track around a pile of samples is where I departed from the project. That hook is fine in itself, and indeed in moments of weakness I enjoy this track, but think less of it once I hear the original. It’s an argument we’ll no doubt return to, but for me this just doesn’t have the richness of imagination or creativity of M/A/R/R/S.
@erithian, you say “in moments of weakness I enjoy this track, but think less of it once I hear the original”. But why do you say that this is weakness on your part? Daft Punk’s Harder Stronger… was one thing if all you knew was that it vaguely contains samples(for which DP paid royalties and gave writing credits – they weren’t hiding anything, they are princes among samplers), but quite another if you knew Cola Bottle Baby as well as most people know Every breath you take, say.
Infinitely more enjoyable than Pump Up The Volume – this glides across the dancefloor whereas PUTV stomps. Massively uplifting and enjoyable making great use of the Rose Royce sample at the heart of it. I bought this along with Beat Dis and it heralded a phase where I reconnected with dance music having been lost in the void of 80s alt. rock for a few years as I suspect it did for quite a few people.
taDOW, I think you and I are using different definitions of “vulgar” – e.g., no way are Warren and Tiff et al. catering to the cultivated classes or intelligentsia, whereas the dance hipsters are busy creating a cultivated class. (Though for all I know, Diane Warren thinks she’s the cultivated class. But she’s wrong. Freaky Trigger is far closer than she is, for better or for worse. So were Groucho and Perelman back in the day in comparison to the type that Dumont was sending up.)
That said, I think your writing and analyses are terrific, and I wish that you and a lot of the others would link to wherever else you’re posting and blogging.
Btw, I prefer “Theme From S’Express” to any of those Ameri-ones I named except “Could’ve Been” and maybe the Billy Ocean.
Kat’s the boshmeister here, but I’d say bosh is Cascada’s “Everytime We Touch” and Mandaryna’s “You Give Love A Bad Name” and anything we can rationalize as being like them in some respect or another. I recently claimed that Ke$ha’s “Blah Blah Blah” was America finally creating a bosh of its own.
I’ve only just noticed (having been something of an absentee for a while) that this is a landmark record for me. It’s the very first number one in my lifetime which I have no memory/knowledge of at all. If it’s anything like “Pump Up The Volume”, though, I’m glad I missed it and I can only concur with what Rosie says at #22.
re koganbot’s point about “the vulgar”: it’s a real mistake to confuse a US-based “dance hipster” crowd, who think in terms of discussion panels, with the larger body of the UK dance constituency, which was always pretty vast and grassroots, based round countless dancehalls and discos and clubs up and down the entire UK, and always at something of a distance from the Written*, as Andypandy’s interventions demonstrate. Not quite the absolute distance AP insists on — one of the curious after-effects of punk had been to allow a space for this danceworld to try their hand at writing about themselves discursively within the mainstream body of rockwrite platforms, out of which a certain amount of crossflow and agitational rhetoric emerged. As witness: NOTHING is more punk (or more rock) than the insistence that what I do, untainted by the SO-CALLED mainstream, is a challenge to and takedown of this SO-CALLED mainstream; that secretly the NUMBERS ARE WITH US, and if we organise merely to do what we’re already doing we will prevail.
*Obviously it generated its own extensive Written: release information (“this record out now, in this label hence in this microgenre) and listings material (“this club taking place on this night playing this microgenre”). The long dance of its insulation and outreach — as contreasted with Rockwrite’s ditto — is yet to be fully documented: obviously Simon Reynolds’s “Energy Flash” picks up key threads of it in some depth, the analysis, by a fascinated and approving outsider, of a particularly enthusiastic period. But Simon is never especially good on history back past his own personal engagement.
Possibly I should stop using the word “obviously” in every sentence — it makes me look like a twit.