I got that bit closer to fifty over the weekend, as I turned forty-eight. It was a relatively low-key birthday this year, which rather suited me fine: but in past years, there have been some pretty epic parties to celebrate.

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/amodelofcontrol.com now has a Patreon page, at this stage purely as a potential way of helping to cover the running costs of the site. There is absolutely no compulsion to do so: if you feel you can chuck a small amount to the site each month, that would be appreciated.

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Indeed, my wife and I have long been enthusiastic party hosts, throwing a number of notable parties either at our home or in other locations, which have resulted in sparking long-term relationships (one of which became a civil partnership last year), many new friendships and some admittedly sketchy memories. But they were always fun.

So this week is songs about or featuring parties, and it turns out there are a lot of them about. But first, here’s a scene from our beloved radio/TV show/book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where a party in Islington is a vitally important plot point…

“Arthur, this is my semi…”
“We’ve met”
“WHAT?”
“Oh, er, have we?”
“What do you mean ‘we’ve met’, this is Zaphod Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five, you know, not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon”
“I don’t care, we’ve met, haven’t we, Zaphod. Or should I say Phil.”
“WHAT?”
“You’ll have to remind me, I have a terrible memory for species”
“It was at a party”
“I rather doubt it”
“Cool it will you Arthur…”
“A party, six months ago. On Earth. England. London. Islington.”
“Oh, huh, that party.”
“Zaphod, you don’t mean you’ve been on that miserable little planet as well…”
“Of course not. Well, I may have just dropped in, briefly, on my way somewhere…”
“What is all this, Arthur?”
“At this party, there was this girl, I’d had my eye on her for weeks. Beautiful, charming, devastatingly intelligent, everything I’d been saving myself up for. And just when I’d finally managed to get her to myself for a few tender moments, this friend of yours barges up and says ‘Hey doll, is this guy boring you, come and talk to me, I’m from a different planet.’ I never saw her again.”
“Zaphod?”
“Yes, he only had the two arms, and the one head, and called himself Phil, but…”
“But, you have to admit, he did actually turn out to be from a different planet.”

Anyway, get on your glad rags, let’s go party.

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A quick explanation for new readers (hi there!): my Tuesday Ten series has been running since March 2007, and each month features at least ten new songs you should hear – and in between those monthly posts, I feature songs on a variety of subjects, with some of the songs featured coming from suggestion threads on Facebook.

Feel free to get involved with these – the more the merrier, and the breadth of suggestions that I get continues to astound me. Otherwise, as usual, if you’ve got something you want me to hear, something I should be writing about, or even a gig I should be attending, e-mail me or drop me a line on Facebook (details above).

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/Vengaboys
/We Like To Party!
/Up & Down – The Party Album!

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Stick your arm out, the Vengabus is coming. The anthem of Doof events: be that the Doof Wagon at Infest, or the Chaos Emergency Doof Broadcast Network livestreams, the intro to this track normally heralds some kind of lunacy in our corner of the scene. The song itself is oh-so-late-90s Eurodance that screams long summer nights as the sun goes down, and is a song that absolutely forgets any troubles to have a joyous time.

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/Beastie Boys
/(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)
/Licensed to Ill

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The breakthrough song for the Beastie Boys was released forty years ago, and remarkably has a close association with Slayer. Both bands at the time were on Def Jam, Rick Rubin was producing both of them, and so Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, while recording Reign in Blood, provided guitar work on both this track and No Sleep Till Brooklyn.

It couldn’t be more different to Slayer’s subject matter, though, as the Beastie Boys at this point were young men in their twenties who couldn’t give a fuck about anything other than having a good time, and (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) is one of the ultimate odes to doing exactly that. Flipping off your parents and authority figures to go and do whatever the fuck you want, and to hell with the consequences.

The Beastie Boys swiftly grew up, mind, and by the mid-90s, were intelligent, measured artists that got involved with political and social activism, actively making a difference with their work.

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/Electric Callboy
/We Got The Moves
/Tekkno

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Another band partying in the summer, and indeed one that have swiftly become one of the big festival draws thanks to their ability, somehow, to mash-up slamming metal and cheesy Eurodance and make it work. We Got The Moves is another anthem to having a great time in the summer sun, making happy memories and sipping on a cold drink as they kick back and forget whatever else is going on. There’s the techno pulse, the mighty riffs, the huge breakdown, big singalong moments and a general sense that Electric Callboy are having as much fun doing this as their fans are singing along.

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/Shack
/Natalie’s Party
/H.M.S. Fable

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Michael Head, the lead singer of Shack, is often mythologised as one of the greatest indie songwriters never to have the kind of success his talent perhaps deserved, and certainly, with some of what happened to his career – the untimely death of his bandmate Chris McCaffrey in the Pale Fountains, the disastrous studio fire that nearly lost all of the work on Shack album Waterpistol, as well as critical and popular indifference to most of his work – those stories perhaps have a point.

But for one short time, Michael Head did break through, and that was with the marvellous H.M.S. Fable in 1999, the comeback for Shack and, frankly, a brilliant victory lap. It opens with the buzzing excitement of Natalie’s Party, as the protagonist and his friends get out of the city to a party in the country somewhere near the seaside, and the joy and release of a weekend of fun is palpable through every second – particularly the glorious, sweeping chorus that reminds just how brilliant a songwriter Michael Head is.

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/Lady Gaga
/Just Dance
/The Fame

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Lady Gaga has been such a ubiquitous artist in the 21st Century that it is easy to forget that her debut single Just Dance was only released in April 2008: and that it took months before it hit Number One in the US, and went on to sell over 17 million copies worldwide. But then, as the world went to shit in 2008, maybe a song about getting wasted and having an apparently phenomenal time at a party – the kind of event where it takes a few people the next day to piece together what the fuck happened – and shrugging your shoulders in that everything will be ok regardless, was exactly the kind of song everyone needed.

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/Clipping.
/Tipsy
/Tipsy b/w Midnight

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Amid their dark, industrial hip-hop – the exceptional latest album Dead Channel Sky was the best cyberpunk album in an age – Clipping. do have moments where they kick back and have fun, and their rework of J-Kwon’s mighty party anthem Tipsy is probably the best example of it.

The party is grittier and darker than Gaga’s, though (there’s even a moshpit in there somewhere!), things spiral out of control quickly, and the thundering beat is augmented by screeches of noise and samples from, of all places, Basil Rathbone’s 1939 Hound of the Baskervilles and Lorelei by the Cocteau Twins!

Live it looks like a world of fun too, and probably as much fun as the party described: we’ve had a couple of parties near running out of control in the past, but somehow, aside from a couple of small damaged things, nothing has ever gone too wrong…

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/Party Cannon
/Tactical Chunder
/Volumes of Vomit

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Who hasn’t, when they’ve been drinking and partying, had the kind of night that is extended by being ill at some point – but clearing the system and allowing the partying to continue. The kind of stupid thing that you do when you’re younger, when everything is a good idea and there are no bad choices – at least until the next morning. Nowadays, we’re older and wiser, right? I certainly don’t drink as much as I used to, and that’s probably a good thing.

If you’ve not come across Party Cannon before, you’ve probably seen their bright logo – which doesn’t half stand out on mostly unreadable festival lineups – and this past weekend at Bloodstock, attempted a niche world record: for the largest banana costume circle-pit. I hope these Scottish loons succeeded.

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/Pulp
/Party Hard
/This is Hardcore

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Volumes have been written about how, after fifteen years or so of slogging away without a great deal of reward, suddenly the time was right for Pulp and they became superstars almost overnight. And it quickly became clear that for all that Jarvis Cocker in particular had wanted that fame, handling the reality was actually pretty difficult, and when This Is Hardcore crawled out of the seedy underbelly, it was clear that their mindset was very different to the underdog-takes-on-the-world-and-wins nature of Different Class.

The grimy, slimy feel to Party Hard is very much a cautionary tale: all those parties that they can now attend are full of hangers on, of temptation and failure and bitter regret. Certainly, nothing described in this song sounds like fun, instead the kind of event to endure. The song itself is a glam-esque stomp that’s rather brighter than what’s inside.

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/Jona Lewie
/You’ll Always Find Me In the Kitchen at Parties
/On The Other Hand There’s A Fist

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Why do parties so often end up gravitating to the kitchen? I mean, obviously, the likelihood is that the drinks and any food might be there, but at every single party we’ve ever thrown, there’ll be a group that spends a good proportion of the night in the kitchen, and it will never be the same people, either.

Jona Lewie, mind, is mainly stuck in the kitchen moping around, trying to escape the glum feeling of being dumped, although by the end of the song, Lewie has found a new French girlfriend who appears to be way cooler than he is…

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/Courtney Barnett
/Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party
/Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit

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Courtney Barnett often spent their earlier songs bemoaning parts of their existence – from the expense of living, to overly-clingy friends, to self-image and much more. The marvellous Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party is a song about how you and your friends/partners can be diametrically opposed but still get on. The other in the song wants to go out and have a great time at another party, coming back at fuck knows what time, but Barnett would rather curl up on the sofa and have a quiet night in, not talking to anyone at all. At times, that’s been our relationship, I can tell you…

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/Promenade Cinema
/After The Party, It’s Over
/Exit Guides

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We finish, appropriately, with the end of the party. This lush, gorgeous ballad from Promenade Cinema sees Emma becoming a character seeing the end of something, the end of the party – and perhaps the good times – a sign and a cut-off point to allow whatever it was before to end. Particularly epic parties do have the comedown to deal with afterward, the following day often being quiet and empty as if it can’t possibly reach the heights of what had come before, so it doesn’t even try.

Maybe it is time for us to plan our next one…