Have you ever been stalked by a song? Been quietly sitting at home, watching a terrible TV channel and suddenly a little bit of gold crops up, then before you know it, the damn thing is following you around everywhere. It’s on the radio when you get in at night, in your new housemates record collection and even playing in the shops when you go and get a pint of milk. And you think to yourself, this can’t be coincidence, the bloody thing’s at least ten years old! It’s then that you realise that you are being stalked by some mad genius’s creation and the only way to get rid of it is to invite it into your heart and home? No? Well maybe it just me but that’s what happened when I heard Dub Be Good To Me.

I first heard the thing in 2000 and it was released in 1990, so yeah I was very out of date at the time, but I swear that thing used to follow me around, I would hear it in clubs, pubs, record stores and anywhere you could think of. To be honest I was in love with it by the time the first few notes of the bass intro had played. At this time I didn’t know that it was written and released by Norman Cook and that the ex-Grange Hill actress Lindy Layton was the singer and, stranger still, I didn’t know that Cook had been in the House Martins and the bass line was taken from Guns of Brixton by The Clash. Apparently this is not the only song it took from, it also stole from the S.O.S Band’s Just Be Good To Me but I don’t have a clue what that song sounds like so I couldn’t vouch for it. For once it seems that the rest of the nation decided to raise there collective taste and put the record at number one. Possibly one of the most inspired choices ever made by the Great British Public although I’m still convinced that it was a slow week that week and nobody else released anything. How else could it be explained?

As everyone knows old Norm (strangely he was christened Quentin but choose to get of one bad name for another) went on to be Fatboy Slim and marry Zoe Ball, have kids and have the misses have an affair, play some huge gigs and get back with the misses… oh and he produced some alright records. But what I never knew was that between Beats and Slim he was also in two other projects called Freak Power and Pizzaman. The second one there is another example of his complete ineptitude for naming things. He might as well called himself ‘Some DJ Bloke Called Dave’, it would have added up to the same thing.

Anyway I should be finishing this now, so as a word of warning I’ll say don’t buy the Beats International album because after a couple of listens it gets a bit cheesy but by all means get hold of the single Dub Be Good To Me. You can probably get on the net. It was on the GO! Disc! Label. Please buy it.