For sheer joy and exuberance in the pleasure of making uptempo music with new technology that allows non- musicians to experience the same creativity as musicians Bassheads 1991 single Is There Anybody Out There? is hard to beat. Built around a bunch of samples , the song started life with Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, The Osmonds and Afrika Bambaataa at its centre- not surprisingly some of these had to be interpolated or replayed following legal shenanigans before it was officially released on Deconstruction.
The rap is a particular joy-
'What's this for a ceremony, hanging around?
We got to get down, rock it off on this shaky ground
Come on and spit it out your hearty-party moon everywhere
Let's see you people laugh at people punching out in the air
Get down to the hiphop be-bop-a-lula
You get a sound that is all coming to ya
I wanna get ya, I wanna teach ya
I'm gonna get this beat to hit ya!'
Is There Anybody Out There? (Extended)
In November 1991 the duo, brothers Nick and Desa Murphy from Neston on the Wirral, rounded up some mates and performed the song on Top Of The Pops when it went top ten- in another edition of Top Of The Pops that was rave heaven Bassheads appeared alongside Bizarre Inc. and Love Decade (and the previous week the video was played on an episode with Rozalla and the mighty Altern- 8.
I couldn't let this one go without a mention. I love this song. Since moving onto iTunes/Apple Music and having my every skip and play logged, I've noticed that I've played the radio edit of this song three times more than Once In A Lifetime and infinitely more times than Afrika Bambaataa's Just Get Up And Dance as I've realised that I don't actually own a copy. That last one was a surprise as I was sure I did!
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