In the house in a heartbeat sheet music11/29/2022 ![]() It got to No 2 and David went on to a successful pop career. The track skilfully balanced underground cool (skippety beats and those stuttering “re-re-wind” break downs) with crossover appeal (slick production and chocolatey smooth R&B vocals). But merciless piss-taking from comedian Leigh Francis aside, his second single with two-step production duo the Artful Dodger was one of UK garage’s high points. DMĬraig David must wish he’d never uttered the words “bo’ selecta!”. Tom Jones, Joe Perry and Sugababes have all had stabs at it, cementing its status as the defining indie party track of the modern age. Most of all, it made everyone who heard it want to dance – and instant megastars of its creators. Insanely addictive, it masked an observational narrative that made the simple act of eyeing a girl up in a nightclub sound like an act of espionage. ![]() In an explosion of buzzsaw guitar, Arctic Monkeys announced themselves to the world in spectacular style. Windowlicker might sound like the strangest song ever to gain mainstream appeal, but at its heart lies a really good tune – and that’s why, despite the permanently shifting song structure and the lunatic polyrhythms, it’s become a something of a classic. Rumour has it that there is a demo version of this song, with Richard D James, aka Aphex Twin, playing the original idea for the song on guitar. Written and co-produced by Errol Thompson, in between his day job engineering apocalyptic predictions of fire and brimstone by the likes of Culture. So there was sweet irony in reggae’s only UK No 1 of the era being two women celebrating being young and looking good, turning the disapproving heads of the Rastas as they walk the streets in their “pants and ting (ooh!)”. Roots reggae was a studiously macho genre: big on righteous finger-wagging, less so on dressing up and getting down. A fondness for marijuana leads to an increasingly absurd chain of events in which the protagonist flunks his college class, misses his child support payments, gambles his money away, is unable to perform sexually, loses both his legs in a car accident and is left homeless. Joseph “Afroman” Foreman’s cautionary comedy about the drawbacks of the weed serves as the most effective anti-drug song of the 21st century thus far. The iconic riff remains a bedroom guitarist’s rite-of-passage, still pertinent in the Guitar Hero age, while the song’s surprisingly sparse arrangement predates modern minimalists such as Chicago rock trio Shellac. The sky-scraping verse, with its themes of immortality, was a typically audacious way for the band to reaffirm itself. Instead, they recruited singer Brian Johnson and released their best single a few months later. When vocalist Bon Scott died of alcohol poisoning in 1980, AC/DC briefly considered calling it a day. But it’s the musical mix of light and shade that brings this psychodrama to life, the way in which an effortlessly funky disco beat and Benny Andersson’s triumphant piano pounding are slyly undercut by the neurotic strings and the bittersweet vocal delivery. Not so much a celebration of dancing, more a piece of reflective melancholy told from the position of the wallflower, a broken-hearted woman who takes vicarious pleasure in watching a 17-year-old dancer. Their first two albums, Newbuild and Quadrastate, were pioneering records, and their big crossover hit Pacific State still sounds like nothing else. Massey and Price brought in two fresh-faced DJs by the name of the Spinmasters, aka Darren Partington and Andy Barker, who also hosted a seminal radio station on Sunset Radio. ![]() The original line-up was Martin Price, Graham Massey and Gerald Simpson, but the later soon went solo as A Guy Called Gerald and made his own mark with Voodoo Ray. Very much done a disservice by being lumped in by some with the whole Madchester movement, 808 State, named after the Roland TR-808 drum machine, were true electronic innovators. ![]()
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