2023/4 Albums Thing 370 - The Go! Team “Thunder, Lightning, Strike”
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I’ve added a few new items to the collection in the past couple of weeks so before we dive headlong into the T section let’s clear all those up before we get back to the alphabet…
I’d bought a boxful of CD’s for the shop. Not something I do very often as all the local charity shops sell CD’s for 50p or £1 each so unless I can get them dirt cheap there’s no money in them (hey call this lifelong Socialist a capitalist if you like but this is my living). Anyways, these were cheap and as I was putting them in the racks I was having a listen to things that looked interesting and I didn’t know. This was one of those and I was hooked immediately.
I like dance music (by that I mean music you can dance to rather than the shite that is, these days, called “Dance Music”), I like weird 60’s/70’s instrumental music, I’m a fan of great movie themes, Northern Soul, PWEI and, as you may have read on this Blog earlier, Smoove & Turrell. Chuck in some Hip Hop, put all that stuff in a big pot, stir it and simmer it for a long aul time and you’d likely end up up with something that sounded very much like The Go! Team. It began as a solo project by Ian Parton, a film maker from Brighton, but following the success of this album The Go! Team is now a living, breathing, playing gigs band.
Ian Parton recorded this album at his parents house while they were on holiday. He played all the instruments but, crucially, didn’t get clearance for any of the samples he used. He’d figured his little project wouldn’t attract much attention so he wouldn’t need permission. On its release in 2004 “Thunder, Lightning, Strike” attracted a lot of attention (it was nominated for a Mercury award !) and Mr Parton had a problem. He and his co-producer, his brother Gareth, had to go back to the tapes, work around or re-record the samples they were denied clearance for and added two new songs, to create this version of the album I own, released in 2005.
Two tracks that sum up “Thunder, Lightning, Strike” are ”Bottle Rocket" and "Everyone's A V.I.P. To Someone”. ”Bottle Rocket" is a bouncy horn driven dancer with a great rap going on throughout. Then with about a minute to go introduces a big sample from Shirley Ellis Northern Soul classic "Soul Time" (the “two-four-six-eight ten, two-four-six-eight twenty” bit if you know it. Listening closely it’s one of the samples he must have re-recorded). It’s dancefloor dynamite.
If anyone out there is making a modern day western then the Go! Team have already supplied you with a theme tune. “Everyone's a V.I.P. to Someone" is an instrumental based on banjo, harmonica, horns and strings and contains samples from "Everybody's Talkin'" by Fred Neil and "Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro. If you close your eyes you can picture the cowboys lazily moving across the prairie on their horses toward a giant sunset, it’s beautiful.
This is dance music to me. Drop me in a club playing this and The B-52’s all night and I’d be in frugging heaven.
Bottle Rocket - https://youtu.be/irTaVohfa-g?si=GXlZeCmnRoIEmHw0