bomb the bass

[5] Bomb The Bass featuring Justin Warfield, ‘Bug Powder Dust’

I’m getting weary legs as we stagger towards the 1994 finish – but hey, the thrilling 2008 Top 20 countdown begins a week today! Make a note in your Smash Hits diaries, pop fans.

This is an excellent record and everything; I’m just feeling tired today. Let’s see if I can pep myself up simply by talking about Justin Warfield’s pseudo-intellectual cut-up flow and Tim Simenon’s aggressive electro motor beats. Warfield was ever keen on styling himself as a beat poet and ‘Bug Powder Dust’ is ripe with Burroughsian word clashes and good sounds – verbal and musical – as he waggles his beatnik head to Simenon’s spiky Brit-house. It’s cool and rules, although I think I prefer Warfield’s own ‘Fisherman’s Grotto’. Ok.

We do the bus-listening trick again, reprazenting in the priority seats by the door. Junior rolls her shoulders and twists her hips before announcing at the end, quite unnecessarily, “That made me dance.”

[1] Neneh Cherry, ‘Buffalo Stance’

Gigolo. Huh. Sucker.

La Cherry burst on to the scene, all pregnant earth mother horsing around on Top Of The Pops. She was bold, beautiful and the hippest thing since sliced Furious Five. She invented Massive Attack, Sugababes and Betty Boo. She called the unborn girl Tyson, a green light to idiot Beckhams everywhere, and made Bomb The Bass rock the place. Yeah, you’ll remember I explicitly referenced this song right back at No.20. You should’ve known.

Difficult to call, this. I mean, does everyone realise it’s a stone cold genre-busting phat classic? It’s a cool pop record with a surprise around every corner and faultless cred, erm, credentials. Neneh annoyed the pants off people, sure, but that’s what comes of being an outré risqué locomotive.

As for Junior, it shut her up. She was bellowing along the South Circular after Catford, so her mum shoved in the Cherry and it silenced her in seconds. Awe. Or. Or it was so loud, Junior’s mum couldn’t hear the young lady anymore. Either way, result.