Happiness in a Compact Disc

"Do Your Thing" -- Basement Jaxx

A friend had this song on his MP3 boombox while we were playing disc a few weeks ago. It totally had me grooving and I had to ask who it was. When I got home that afternoon, I told the SOOTTAD about it, but I'm not sure whether it registered -- we were heading over to a BBQ and she was also a bit distracted getting ready for dance camp in a few days. The following week when she came back from dance camp, she tells me she heard this amazing Basement Jaxx song...yep, same song. Confirmed after doing a search online. (And yes, I know. The album was released in 2001.)

I don't need no TV, I don't need no news
All I need is a bumpin' beat to bump away my blues
I don't give a damn what the people say
I'm gonna do it my way, gonna do it my way
Gonna let it all out an do my thing
Boom boom boom and a bang bang bang
Boom bang boom bang bang boom bang boom bang bang
Oooh -- do your thing
Do your thing, make my body sing...

It's a gray and dreary overcast day as I drive to work this morning, scattered showers. I'm feeling a little more than the normal morning cranky, so I put the CD in the player and end up going straight to track 12. As soon as the beat kicks in, I'm feeling much better. I probably listened to it three or four times on the drive up.

We bring it over to LittleLee's where we're having dinner with her and Spleen so they can experience it. We are four cynical and generally curmudgeony people, and when we put the CD into the player, we're dancing around like hyperactive seven-year-olds as we prepare dinner, and all is right in the world. It's happy drugs digitized into 4 minutes and 38 seconds of modern audio technology.

It swings. It's got its gospel on. It unsa-unsas and boom-booms, a crazy driving beat and kickin' horns that I defy you to NOT tap, nod and bounce to.

And the way it starts -- I see a gray and dreary day (a different one from this morning, but the same kind of feeling). People are sitting, meandering around a park or town square, the life and vitality drained out of them by the daily grind. But off in the distance, a faint light, something coming over the horizon. It's the feeling you get when you first hear the jingle from the ice cream truck. It's the first few bars from the Disneyland Main Street electric parade just after the lights cut out. And as it comes closer, you can start to hear it, the light growing, filling the sky, and it's suddenly sunny and warm, and you're surrounded by the energy of ... this music. It's like a scene out of the Blues Brothers or one of a plethora of movie musicals or music videos and everybody is dancing, including the trees and park benches. It makes you (us) want to put the top down and crank it to 11.

And it's just...this song.

Sometimes it just takes a little thing to pick you up. And these days, I'll take what I can get.