Some shops just sell everything you could possibly want don't they? Skulls, £1 crystals, clocks and vases, fridge magnets and lingerie.
Funrama Theme was Fun Boy Three and Bananarama having, yes, fun back in 1982. More groups should write their own theme songs I think. The drum machine, loopy bassline and wonky pianos and horns are a joy in themselves and that's even before Keren, Sara and Siobhan start singing. This came out as the B-side to T'ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It). There was an extended version on the 12" and a remixed one on the album (retitled Funrama 2) but this is the one I have on my hard drive.
Today's song is Youth and Thrash in 1990 taking Bananarama onto the dancefloor and under the spell of Sympathy For The Devil (everyone was into Sympathy For The Devil and those woo-woo backing vocals in 1990). The bassline's a killer too. Yes, you could probably mix it straight into Loaded. There's only one thing for it- it's Friday, get down.
Who wouldn't want a Face magazine t-shirt as modelled by Siobhan Fahey from Bananarama? I'm half tempted to print out the cut out slip and send it off to the address and see what happens (I'd have to put a postal order in I think).
Bananarama have reformed recently. They kept appearing on the Top Of The Pops reruns (not the 1985 ones showing at the moment but last year's 1983 repeats). Cruel Summer sounded very good all these years later, a slightly off kilter pop song about love in oppressive summer heat in the city. The home-made dancing is refreshing too, a time when female pop stars weren't drilled to within an inch of their lives. And maybe some of us were suddenly reminded why Bananarama being on Top Of The Pops week in, week out when we were 13 years old was something of a visual treat...
They first hit the chart due to their backing vocals on the Fun Boy Three's 1982 hit single, It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It), which came about because Terry Hall saw an article on them in The Face and liked their look. They switched around for Bananarama's next single Really Saying Something with Terry, Lynval and Neville singing backing for Siobhan, Sara and Keren. It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)
The song was originally written in 1939 by jazz musicians Melvin 'Sy' Oliver and James 'Trummy' Young. It says something about the Fun Boy Three's talents that they took an old jazz tune and turned it into a pop ska song, and then to number 4 in the charts (probably selling hundreds of thousands of copies).
