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Wednesday 19 January 2022

This Is Your Life

A rewind to 1991 today and to a song I posted back in 2010 when this blog was still in its first year. Banderas were a duo- Sally Herbert and Caroline Buckley- who were part of Jimmy Somerville's Communards band. They formed Banderas as a side project, signed to London Records and put this song out as a single. It went top twenty hit in March 1991. Built on one of those chunky early 90s rhythm tracks and containing a sample from Grace Jones' Crack Attack, This Is Your Life also featured guest spots from both Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner on guitar and backing vox, moonlighting from Electronic. Johnny's funky wah wah licks are easy to identify and the swelling strings and keyboards add some drama while Caroline sings, 'This is not a story/ This is not a book/ This is your life'. One of those songs that sounds like a postcard from the past, pinning a sound and a time onto a noticeboard as surely as photograph from 1991 could. 

This Is Not Your Life



4 comments:

Webbie - FootieAndMusic said...

Top song. Not listened to it since back then probably!

JC said...

Wonderful tune. I'm also very fond of She Sells....

Swiss Adam said...

Sean Johnston recommends this version, a proto chug monster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPaty661nNU

The Swede said...

Good grief - this tune rings a very distant bell. Like Webbie I probably haven't heard it in 30 years.