I Like My Sugar With Coffee And Cream

There used to be a Bank Holiday festival in Manchester called D Percussion, largely free, based around bars and other venues in the Castlefield and Deansgate area. I remember seeing A Certain Ratio in the Castlefield basin and maybe 808 State too. A different year we saw Vini Reilly playing in Atlas. But mainly it was dj sets and hanging around outside bars (on the occasions we got some sunshine). D Percussion started in 1997 as a response to the IRA bomb that blew the city centre apart the previous summer and ran through to 2007. It folded largely because it was, for the first eight years, free. One year, mid-afternoon, a large-ish number of people milling around and whoever it was playing records stuck on Intergalactic- the effect was a bit like one of those viral flash mob videos you see on the internet. Almost everyone started bobbing a bit, mouthing the words, singing/rapping along. The Beastie Boys made a real impact with people and by the time of Intergalactic and Hello Nasty (1998) they were for a while pretty much in charge of left of centre pop culture. Paul's Boutique, Check Your Head and Ill Communication may all have stronger claims to be their best album but their threeway wordplay was never better or funnier than on this song. And the video is a hoot.