Like it? I (Aga)DO! (Going To A Party - Black Lace)

Member Name: jamesdean1981

Product:	Going To A Party - Black Lace
Date:	07/10/01 (136 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sheer brilliance, Great party tracks

Disadvantages: 'Saturday Night' cover

[Apologies for the sheer awfulness of this review's title.]

Possibly the most misunderstood musical combo of the last few decades, Black Lace’s genius – never more evident than on their seminal ‘Going To A Party’ album – has been shamefully overlooked on the basis that they sing merely ‘novelty’ records.

As a brief glance at the tracklist to the aforementioned album proves, this is obviously not the case. The Lace are perhaps the only group around today – albeit in a changed version – who could cover songs as diverse as Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’, the Pacemakers’ classic ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the Mamas and the Papas ‘Monday Monday’, and Scott McKenzie’s ‘If You’re Going To San Fransisco’, and sound fantastic on almost all of them. I will grant that the cover of Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’, while an improvement on the original, was nearly as ill advised as the recent ‘Moulin Rouge’ version of ‘Lady Marmalade’, but on a 20 track album, there will always be some songs which are less than wonderful.

Also into the ‘less than wonderful’ category, I admit, come a few of the novelty songs such as ‘Superman’. However, we should not look down on ‘Superman’ because it’s a novelty song. We should look down on it because it’s absolutely awful. On the other hand, though, we have songs like ‘I Speaka Da Lingo’, ‘Vino Collapso’, and ‘Wig Wam Bam’, which ridicule the idea that novelty records can’t be great to listen to. Still not convinced? One last word… Aga-doo. For those of you groaning, hands up everybody who’s never danced to this. Those of you with your hands down, I assume that you’ve got muscular cramps all of a sudden. Known by many DJ’s as a life
saver, since it’s been proven the one fail safe way to get people on the dance floor at ANY party, this should be remembered as one of the 20th century’s true classics.

Still not convinced? Then you never will be. Those of you who are, I leave you with an invitation…

‘To the left, to the right,
Jump up and down and shake your knees,
Come and dance every night,
To my hula melodies.’

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