Stop dreaming of the quiet life cos it's one we'll never know.....

A Town Called Malice was and still is the one for me that started it all. I wanted to start dancing and never stop, but more importantly I wanted to be him, I wanted to make that noise, the bumping, pumping, insistent, infectious bass line that underlined the whole thing, the engine room that dragged the song forward by the scruff of its neck. Together with the poignant lyrics it seemed that, in just 2:55, it offered that rarest of things to anybody left with the imagination to hear it, namely things don’t have to be shit if you want them to change. I worshipped at its bass altar.

It was only as I got older, mellower and my musical tastes started to broaden that I realised that the very bass gods I worshipped might have gods of their own. All roads lead to James...... The ultra-catchy bass line was in fact pretty heavily influenced by "I'm ready for love" by Martha and the Vandellas. Check it out.

Yet even when I realised that perhaps after all nothing is new, even when I realised he was singing about Woking, this still warms my heart every time I hear it, join me and worship.