Day 9 – The 30 Day Song Challenge – A Song you can dance to...

Song 9 – A song you can dance to...  – ‘Remember Me’ – The Blue Boy

The Blue Boy - 'Remember Me' cover

I’m quite prepared to attempt to dance to most songs and I rarely leave the dance floor to a song I don’t know.  It’s much more likely that I’ll walk off in disgust to one that I do.  I hate listening to un-ambitious or clumsy DJs, a relic of my long gone DJing days.  I always think you have a responsibility to give the crowd something new and different as well as play some old favourites.  I hate predictable  choices, clunking mixing, which you don’t get as much of now that everyone uses MP3s and hearing the same songs now that I played myself nearly 20 years ago.  I like to hear new records or more obscure old ones. 

I loved this song when I first heard it and I think it still sounds as good as it did in 1997.  A couple of the samples have dated it a little but I’d say it’s a classic.  It’s quite a slow song, a leisurely 100bpm (give or take) with a lovely bassline flowing through the track from start to finish.   There are two distinctive vocal samples, a ‘scat’ vocal and the eponymous ‘Remember Me’ line.  ‘The Blue Boy’ is the Scottish DJ Alexis Blackmore and this was his biggest hit.   It’s a nice song to get your groove on to, there’s no need to sing along and no choruses or breakdowns, you just find the rhythm and go with the flow.  This song dates from the late 1990’s although the song that the vocal samples are taken from is much earlier, 1969 to be precise. 

The vocal samples, which are what make the song so great, are taken from a song called ‘Woman of the Ghetto’ by Marlena Shaw.  It’s a magnificent 9 minute monster full of funk and jazz licks and Marlena’s strong, no nonsense vocal.  It’s a very political record and with a strong feminist message although no less fun for that.  I tracked down a ‘best of’ album (‘Anthology’) sometime after hearing this song and it’s fabulous.  California Soul is the other song from it that you might have heard but her songs are full of funk, soul, jazz and gospel songs.  It’s a real woman’s record too, she’s strong and sexy.  Marlena’s in charge and you’d better listen.

David Millington

9^th April 2011

Nottingham