The Best 40 Crossover Tracks – #10 – Hip New French Thangs, Daft Punk

10. Da Funk – Daft Punk (1995, Virgin Records, Taken from ‘Homework’)

I was crossing a road in the heart of London’s ‘Trendy’ West End when I first heard ‘Da Funk’ by Daft Punk.  I didn’t know it was ‘Da Funk’ at the time but it was blaring out of the window of a bright yellow Volkswagen Golf and I was on my way to London’s ‘Flagship Record Shop’ – The Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street to pick up some tickets to see James at the Shepherds Bush Empire.  ‘Da Funk’ momentarily stopped me in my tracks, and then I realised I was stood in the middle of the bloody road and I needed to move.

The second time I heard  ‘Da Funk’ was about nine minutes after the first hearing, as it was playing as I walked into the Virgin Megastore.  Back then London’s Virgin Megastore had an instore DJ who sat in a circular Perspex booth and played CDs to the shoppers, they would tell you what the record they were playing was and that there was a discount Tshirt sale on the second floor. When I was fifteen and walked into the Virgin Megastore for the first time I literally thought that this person had the perfect job.  They got paid to play records in a record shop.  Then again when I was fifteen I thought Bono was cool.  A few years later Virgin Megastores ditched their in house DJ in favour of an actual radio station, which they pre recorded and piped into stores on a daily basis and I rapidly thought of a new career progression. 

Anyway, a few minutes later after pretending to browse the vinyl records the DJ eventually told me that he had played ‘Da Funk’ by (and these were his exact words –  I can remember it vividly because I repeated them to the bemused looking sales assistant roughly fifty seconds later when I asked for a copy of ‘Da Funk’ on twelve inch when I collected my James tickets.) “Hip new French thangs, Daft Punk”. 

No wonder all the Megastores shut.

‘Da Funk’ is astonishingly good even today nearly thirty years after it burst onto your stereos.  From the traffic and crowds samples at the start that lead into that guitar sound that drops out so that a solitary beat can come in and then the synths can join it and that riff can re-enter the fray alongside some tweaks (and those tweaking acid blasts at around two and a half minutes are roughly the point where mot dancefloors explode with people generally losing their shit) and some more beats. 

All that sounds quite perfunctory but its when all that is gelled together that ‘Da Funk’ really works, and although it’s incredible all the way through – the las three minutes or so are just insanely good. 

It wasn’t just ‘Da Funk’ that filled the dancefloors when I was DJing in the late nineties, the third track to be released from ‘Homework’ was another twisting slice of acid disco that sent dancefloors delirious.  This one built itself up into a frenzy, whooshing and twnkling away until a sped up disco beat throws itself headlong into the song around two minutes in.  It was an odd choice for a single given that it was basically seven minutes of bleeping madness. 

See Also Burnin’ – Daft Punk (1995, Virgin Records)

The track was released about eighteen months after ‘Homework’ came out and so to add something new to a bunch of DJs got hold of it and remixed.  The pick of the bunch was the Slam Mix who added a distinctive Chicago House feel to these hip new French thangs, it also sounded nothing like the album track.

Burnin’ (Slam Mix) – Daft Punk (1997, Virgin Records)

If that wasn’t enough, the second single to be released from ‘Homework’ was ‘Around the World’ which actually gave the band their biggest hit (until ‘Get Lucky’) that is and that came with about 40 different remixes – most of them are available on the 25^th Anniversary of ‘Homework’ should you want to invest in them, but if you don’t, the one you need more than the rest is this one

Around the World (Motorbass vice Mix) – Daft Punk (1996, Virgin Records)

Nearly Perfect Albums – #93

Random Access Memories – Daft Punk (2013, Columbia Records)

In reality it could have been any of Daft Punk’s four albums that made this list, but in the end, ‘Random Access Memories’, their fourth and final album (and one seriously overlooked from the recent Fourth Album Countdown) was the one that makes it.  In case you are interested, it just pipped ‘Homework’ after a photo finish.

The reason is ultimately quite simple, ‘Random Access Memories’ contains so much to love, you get jazz, live drumming, NASA samples, ballads, Giorgio Morodor’s life history, Julian Casablancas and that Pharrell Williams collaboration.   You get a load more as well – but even if it was just all that it would probably still push it into the brilliant category.

Let’s start with that Pharrell Williams, disco funk masterpiece shall we,

Get Happy – Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams (2013, Columbia Records)

That was, a deserved number one, and one that stayed at the top of the charts for about a month back in the spring of 2013.  It was a track that made Daft Punk one of the biggest acts in the world, it was also one that ratcheted up the expectations for ‘Random Access Memories’ to something near fever pitch.

When ‘Random Access Memories’ arrived it didn’t disappoint, a 13 track, hour plus homage to dance music, synthesizers and electronica, albeit one that wants to you to not only ‘Lose Yourself to Dance’, but wants you to head bang, chin stroke and smooch to it as well.

Lose Yourself to Dance – Daft Punk (2013, Columbia Records)

‘Lose Yourself To Dance’ is perhaps the natural successor to ‘Get Happy’, what with it being another Pharrell collaboration.  It’s marvellous too, a track is built for an eighties disco with coloured squares  on the dancefloor and men in ill-fitting suits strutting along side it.  Unseen robots urge you to “C’mon” alongside some handclaps straight out of a street dance class.

Those two tracks, alone, should be enough to make you grin most of the day – but should you want more – then take a look at ‘Contact’ – that’s the one with the NASA sample (in which Gene Cernan tells the folks back at Houston (or wherever) that “There is something out there”) – which descends into one of the best album closing wig outs ever recorded as the drums crash, the synths rage and the beats escalate to something akin to a musical boiling point.

Contact – Daft Punk (2013, Columbia Records)

‘Contact’ may close the album spectacularly, but it’s the stuff in between that makes it sound magnificent.  Track three is ‘Giorgio by Morodor’ a triumphant celebration of the retro sound of the synthesizer which starts like an after-dinner speech by the great man and then builds from that retro celebration into some way more modern and thrilling as literally everything in Daft Punk’s music cupboard comes out to play in what I’m going to describe as a musical fist fight.

Giorgio By Moroder – Daft Punk (2013, Columbia Records)

‘Doin’ It Right’ is equally brilliant, a stop start collection of synths and psychedelic sounds that are held together by a great vocal by Animal Collective’s Panda Bear.  Its really only the sad, lonely sounding ‘Game of Love’ which really holds ‘Random Access Memories’ back, but even that is a tiny flaw on what is ultimately a wonderfully engaging and stunning album.

Doin’ It Right – Daft Punk (2013, Columbia Records)

A Month of Beasts, Bugs, and Birds – #6 – The Bear

Two Weeks – Grizzly Bear (2009, Warp Records, Taken from ‘Veckatimest’)

Dave knocked on my door about ten minutes ago. 

He was looking for a bear. 

Not just any bear though, a small cuddly one wearing a white vest with a heart on it.  It belongs to his three year old granddaughter who is standing in front of me tears dripping off her face onto my nicely swept front patio.

“It’s called Potato” she sniffs.  Which is a tremendous name for a bear I tell her.  This doesn’t help and she just sniffs some more and her little face fills up with tears again.

Potato has been missing for about an hour.  The girl was walking with her grandad, they stopped to take a picture of a nice tree and then when they got home they found Potato was missing.  The tree is at the back of my house just by the farmers field, which is why Dave has knocked on my door.

A small lane loops round beside the tree and eventually works it way back up to the road. 

I ask Dave if he has checked the track.  He nods and mouths “Its not there” and I try my best to look hopeful.  Normally what happens if a cuddly toy goes missing is that someone picks it up and pops it on a wall or something, unless another three year old has been passing by and they’ve pocketed it, you know what these feral three year olds are like.

Trick Myself – China Bears (2018, Fierce Panda records, Taken from ‘All That Distance EP’)

When my daughter was about the same age she left her favourite Bunny ‘Rab Rab’ on a bus and she was distraught, luckily for us the bus driver took ‘Rab Rab’ in and sat him in the cab and then handed him to the office and so when we phoned up we were able to get Rab Rab back..  I’ve also trudged a mile back up a hill on Dartmoor to find ‘Sheepie’ who got left on a rock when my daughter was four, so, as Dave tries and fails to convince his granddaughter that Potato will be fine,  I tell Dave that we’ve all been there.

I reach down grab my shoes and tell him that I’ll go and have a look for him as a fresh pair of eyes is sometimes a good thing.

Herjazz – Huggy Bear (1993, Wiija Records, Taken from ‘Taking the Rough with the Smooch’)

I take a walk around the lane past the tree and as Dave says, Potato isn’t there. I stroll along the lane – there is a little cottage at the end of it, a sweet old couple live there, and as I approach their house, the lady who lives there waves at me out of the window.  I waved back and she calls out to me

“Does this belong to your little girl?” she asks. 

It is Potato, well I assume its Potato.  I smile at the lady and tell her that it’s not miy daughters but I know a three year old whose bedtime she has just made a whole lot easier.  I tell her I’ll be back in five minutes and go and fetch Dave who sitting on a wall near the farm.  His granddaughter is looking really tired and fed up.  I whisper to Dave that the lady in the cottage has Potato. 

Doin’ It Right – Daft Punk (featuring Panda Bear) (2013, Virgin Records, Taken from ‘Random Access Memories)

I walk up the lane with them and do the introductions and watch as the little one tells Potato off (who does has a mischievous look in his (one) eye) for “running away”. Dave thanks me and looks like he could kiss the old lady at the cottage.  His granddaughter has a sudden zest life all over again and skips off up the lane.

Bear Hug – The 2 Bears (2012, Mercury Records, Taken from Be Strong’)

Here’s tomorrow’s creature clue ‘A creature with other 7000 different types of species’

Retrospective Musical Naval Gazing – #7 (1997)

1997 was the year that wife stealer extraordinaire Richard Ashcroft marked his return from the musical wilderness by strolling in a straight line down Hoxton High Street.  Whilst doing that he jumped on the bonnets of passing Ford Cortinas and bumped into people who had the temerity to be walking in the opposite way. Ashcroft’s stroll was all the time accompanied invisibly by a string section that liberally borrowed part of a Rolling Stones song that scuppered any future royalties.

I am of course talking about the video to ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, something which I tried and failed to recreate at rush hour in Waterloo Train Station about two weeks after the song had been released.  I got about twenty metres before a massive chap running for the 0820 train to Surbiton sent me absolutely flying.

Anyway, 1997 was the year that Britpop clung on by its fingertips for a bit longer and Spiritualized and Radiohead battled it out for the Album of the Year titles (in my top ten’s Spiritualized won and Radiohead were beaten into fourth by Primal Scream and Mogwai – who had in 1997 emerged as my new favourite band). 

However, despite all that the record that sat at the top of my tracks of the year chart was a reissue and was for the first time a record that didn’t really on a guitar to be brilliant.  It also came backed with an incredible video and the way that bassline vibrates, and loops is still amazing today. 

Da Funk – Daft Punk (1997, Virgin Records, Taken from ‘Homework’)

Although I accept that if I was to rewrite the Top Ten from 1997, then it probably wouldn’t be Number One, because the track at number two almost certainly would.

Dry the Rain – The Beta Band (1997, Regal Records, Taken from ‘Champion Versions EP’).  ‘Dry The Rain’ is one of those songs that I can remember exactly where I was when I heard it for the first time.  This is because I was sat in a police station, and it came on the radio as I was sat in the reception area waiting to make a statement about a car who had just run over over a woman on a packed London City street.

At Number Three was this: –

Nothing Last Forever – Echo and the Bunnymen (1997, London Records, Taken from ‘Evergreen’) but it was there for reasons that I’m not going into right now.  Readers of the old WYCRA blog will possibly remember why.

The rest of the top ten was by and large made up by bands who had excellent albums that year.  So ‘Karma Police’ by Radiohead was at four, ‘Electricity’ by Spiritualized was at five ‘Kowalski’ by Primal Scream was at six and this was at seven, although it didn’t feature of their excellent album: –

New Paths to Helicon Pt.1 – Mogwai (1997, Chemikal Underground Records, Taken from ‘Ten Rapid’).  If I remember it rightly most of the last three months of 1997 was spent looking for, buying and listening to Mogwai records. 

You know what I said just up there about ‘Dry the Rain’ “almost certainly being number one” if I were to ever rewrite this top ten.  Well, I think I probably lied, because the song at number ten almost certainly would be at the top.  A song so assumingly lovely that I almost posted something by bloody Embrace instead (who were at number 9).

Patio Song – Gorkys Zygotic Mynci (1997, Mercury Records, Taken from ‘Barafundle’)

The Great One Word Title Countdown – The Didn’t Quite Make It List #1

Here – Pavement (1990, Matador Records, Taken from ‘Slanted & Enchanted)

Today and tomorrow will celebrate the 11 songs that didn’t quite make it into the Top 100, songs for sole reason that they simply didn’t get enough points. They are songs that are, unlike yesterday’s offerings, at least loved by someone.   Each of the songs listed today, only get one vote and then it was quite low down in the Top 30.  For what its worth I fully expected all five of these to feature much higher up the chart.

The first song is ‘Here’ by Pavement.  Which for the record is one of the best songs on one of the best albums ever made, and had I not opened up this nonsense to all and sundry would have probably been in the Top Ten.  Talking of probably being in the Top Ten, here’s Daft Punk.

Contact – Daft Punk (2013, Columbia Records, Taken from ‘Random Access Memories’)

 ‘Contact’ is incredible, a six minute long techno blast that samples Gene Cernan, who was the last man to walk on the moon.   For those of you who care about this sort of thing, the last sentence spoken by a human on the moon was this genuinely “Let’s get this mother out of here”.  

Talking of mothers and samples and Daft Punk for that matter, here’s Ye.

Stronger – Kanye West (2007, Def Jam Records, Taken from ‘Graduation’)

Ye may not have made the Top 100 but the fact that he scored more points than Pavement, LCD Soundsystem and Daft Punk combined irks me in a way that I can’t explain. 

Mannequin – Wire (1977, Harvest Records, Taken from ‘Pink Flag’)

What I also can’t explain is why it took me so long to fall for the erm, wiry charms of Wire.  Twenty seven years ago, a guy I knew gave me a copy of ‘Pink Flag’ as a present.  I think I may have listened to it two or three times before placing it in a box and forgetting about it.  Six months ago after listening to a Chumbawamba cover version of ‘Mannequin’ I revisited ‘Pink Flag’ and its extraordinarily good.

Finally for today we have Chemical Brothers, again an act I expect to do very well – maybe I chose the wrong song for them, although I’m struggling to think of a better one word song for them that this epic blend of big beats and hip hop

Galvanise – Chemical Brothers (2004, Virgin Records, Taken from ‘Push the Button’)

A Linked Series #5

Cracked LCD – Ladytron (2002, Telstar Records)

Welcome to the fifth link in this musical equivalent to a Choose Your Own Adventure story. This instalment sees us stick with our LCDs but finally sees us move away from New York and head to Liverpool where we catch up with electropop pioneers Ladytron. The link in our chain is a track from their breakthrough second album ‘Light & Magic’. Although if we are catching up with Ladytron we should really do it at the Glastonbury Festival.

At the 2000 Glastonbury Festival- the huge chuffing security fence fell down and about two million people got in the site for free. Gangs of marauding youths were stand at the edge of bridges and demand £10 from anyone wanting to cross it, or criminals would just wander in the tented areas and pick up bags and walk off with them. It was whilst one of those gangs was rifling through my tent (stealing of all things, a hammer and a bottle of vodka) that I discovered the brilliance of Ladytron on the New Band stage at around 4.30pm on the Saturday afternoon. I’d gone there because there was a rumour going around the site that The Strokes were playing a surprise set, they didn’t but we stayed for 40 minutes of sublime indie inspired electronica supplied by four cool people dressed head to foot in black. By 6.00pm I liked Ladytron more than I’d ever like The Strokes.

Ladytron are another one of those bands that always seemed to be on the cusp of bigger and better things, but never quite got themselves over the line. In 2011 after five albums (all of which are recommended) they went on a lengthy hiatus, before returning in 2019 with a new album – which I haven’t to my shame heard.

There are lots of directions we could go now, we could for instance, explore bands who are named after songs. Ladytron of course being named after the Roxy Music song.

Ladytron – Roxy Music (1972, E.G records)

Or we could hang around in Liverpool, I suppose, I mean they have a few bands worth checking out and it is recognised as the World Capital City of Pop (genuinely true). You can thank this lot for that (or Atomic Kitten depending on your view).

Strawberry Fields Forever – The Beatles (1967, EMI Records)

Or maybe we could go down Tron bit of the name, which basically gives me an excuse to post something by Daft Punk.

Derezzed – Daft Punk (2010 Walt Disney Records)