LFO

LFO

This is not LFO as in the Lyte Funkie Ones, so if that’s dashed your hopes, sorry. Picture the scene. It’s the summer of 1990 and all is right with the world. The sun’s out, the beaches are crowded, the red-top papers are helpfully screaming yesterday’s temperature at you from the front page (not only is the information out of date, they also always use Fahrenheit because it’s the only way to shout out 100° without the readers jumping into refridgerators in panic), the England football team have nipped off to Italy for the World Cup after nipping into a recording studio and having a singalong with New Order. On a personal note, it was also the time my schooldays finally came to an end, so all in all I don’t know about you but I had a great time. And then there’s the music of the day. The Soup Dragons, Blue Pearl, MC Hammer, Deee-Lite, Inspiral Carpets… quality stuff. There were also songs going around that seemed to consist of little more than bleeps and drum loops. Should’ve been rubbish, really. I mean, if you add a singing smurf you’d probably end up with a prototype Scooter single. The two that immediately spring to mind here are Tricky Disco and (luckily for this review) LFO. It’s very simple, really. You have a drum loop that hardly changes for the duration of the song except to cut out briefly here and there, you bung a bass line on the top, using two notes at the most and then you lob in some bleeps – the higher the pitch, the better. You need one more thing. Seems a waste of time, but you hire a bloke (who probably normally wouldn’t get out of bed for less than a grand a day – those advert voiceovers help pay for the house) to say the name of the song and then stick that in the song and all, in this case the entire lyrics consist of three letters, guess which ones. Doesn’t sound too hopeful, but in a strange twist of fate it’s turned out to be something of a classic tune, at least as far as I’m concerned. So why would I review something that came out thirteen years ago? That’s nothing, I once reviewed Long Haired Lover From Liverpool, but anyway, the reason is that this has been sneaked out again on 12” (available on import from all good record shops and probably some really dire ones too) complete with three new remixes and the original version. The remixes are surprisingly good in general, but they can’t quite match the original. All we need now is for someone to get their hands on Turtle Power.

WHERE IS THE LOVE?

Black Eyed Peas featuring Justin Timberlake

Sometimes your best intentions can have an undesired effect. Many years ago, if people went around saying how it’d be nice if we were all polite to each other, they’d probably find themselves swiftly nailed to bits of wood by the Romans. Not so long ago, Michael Jackson himself suggested healing the world and making it a better place, not just for you and for me, oh no, but for the entire human race. He’d have probably gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling Jarvis Cocker. See, it’s a big job, effectively changing the mindset of an entire planet and you’ve guessed it, this song has the same idea as Heal The World, albeit on a much simpler scale. Luckily, this song puts its message across without you wanting to cut your ears off with a breadknife to avoid ever hearing it again. Terrorism gets a mention, as does dropping bombs, chemical warfare, racism, down to things like people simply not having respect for each other, no stone left unturned, really. It’s not a song that I’d want to listen to over and over, but its heart’s in the right place and it doesn’t ram its message down your throat. Which is nice.