Can Giuli Do The Stroll?

I got this friend named Neil, swears Nixon had a soul
But what I'd like to know is can Giuli' do the stroll?
People always ask me, "what's so fucking great about dancing?"
How the fuck should I know?

I like belligerent political music and I like dancing.  Let’s face it I was born to love !!! Me And Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story)*.  You want good times, political anger, knowing references to other tunes and an awesomely groovy groove? Of course you do, if you got the hips, let’s shake ’em like it’s 2003.

!!!^ grew out of a merger between a hardcore punk and several disco-funk bands, to create something forged in the lineage of both, but unique in itself.  Okay so there are links into the sounds of the likes of Gang Of Four and PigBag**, but !!! served up their own take, with dancier beats, a healthy 9-minute length and some shimmering psychedelic guitars in amongst the grooving.  Trust me.

Me And Giuliani is a track that gets better every single time I listen to it, it also improves with volume too.  It is soooo clever the way the band rotate so many different elements in the music, not wishing to get pretentious here but Me And Giuliani has movements; which is damnably beneficial for varying my own movements in response to it.  Trust me.

There are sections that recall Happy Mondays, Tom Tom Club and subtler artier shimmering guitar parts that take us down progier routes.  Around about the 2:36 !!! somehow manage to perfectly soundtrack the sound of a rush hitting the listener’s bloodstream.  Witchcraft, surely?

The always frenetic, propulsive rhythm track argues for something heavier and earthier, a little less cerebral and more musky, which is fine by me.  There’s just no point making a track bemoaning the gentrification of New York and Giuliani’s war on nightlife if it isn’t an absolute banger.  And !!! have plenty to say about Rudy:

NYC is where the freaks come to be free and if I can't get my freak on, see
I'm a hang up Giuliani, he can sic his lackeys on me,
But you can't stop a new age dawning
So if you got hips then shake them

But when the music takes over, the music takes control
Here's a message to you Rudy and you sir, Mr. Bloomberg and 
the rest of you ties-too-tight dudes
Y'all could learn a lesson, by losing inhibitions, yeah
Losing yourself in the music, losing yourself in the moment

Me And Giuliani is just a sublime sweaty thang.  One I’d totally forgotten about for a year or so too, until I woke up humming a melody line from it and it took me about 3 days to work out what it was from.  It is also by far my favourite release on the, a bit-too-pleased-with-itself, UK dance label Warp Records.  

!!! have fun referencing the film/song Footloose*^ by ending the track with the refrain ‘everybody cut, everybody cut footloose‘.  Maybe it’s a good job that Giuli fella’s not around causing any trouble for anyone now, landing anybody in hot water.

A message to you Rudy.

978 Down.

PS:  !!! are, of course, filed under Chk-Chk-Chk alphabetically in the 1537.

PPS: More on dancing under Giuliani – which also references Footloose.  See? I research the shit out of this shit, man.

*I decree-eth that it be henceforth known as Me And Giuliani, purely for reasons of crippling finger fatigue avoidance.

^pronounced and sometimes written as Chk-Chk-Chk.

**surely everybody’s favourite Marxist ska-jazz-funk-Afrobeat-funk-punk-reggae group?

*^where dancing is illegal, see? also the film I taught myself to dance by watching; I was a pretty intense child.