Don?t dance, pogo

Mustapha Dance by rock band The Clash is a number that will make the most unwilling person get onto the dance floor.

I don’t dance. If that has anything to do with the fact that I can’t dance, let me just put it on record that I don’t wish to dance. But, last heard, I am a human and the rhythm does, on occasions, ‘get to me’. If the music is really seductive, I move one step beyond the foot-tapping stage after some generous amounts of ‘fuel’ have entered my bloodstream and pogo my night away. (For the uninitiated, to ‘pogo’ is to indulge in the very solitary exercise of jumping up and down vigorously, preferably with wild gesticulations.)

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I give you that brief lowdown on my ‘dancing’ habits as this week I review a dance album. (Shocked? Horrified? Sit down and pay attention.) When this double-CD collection StyleSoundz (EMI) landed on my lap, I groaned at its pink cover, and readied myself to make the difficult series of movements that involves throwing an object into the dustbin. “What could StyleSoundz have,” I asked myself. “Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy if it’s a retro collection. Aqua’s Barbie if it’s slightly more contemporary. And a DJ Plastic remix of Aqua’s Barbie if it’s supposed to be hip and happening.”

But then I flipped the album around and arching up one brow uttered the word, “Oh!” The rest, as they say, is the history of prancing about in the living room wearing undies and beer-induced sweat till the wee hours of the morning.

So what does StyleSoundz have that makes me feel like headbutting the air? For one, it has The Clash’s Mustapha Dance – the band’s rejigged version of the revolution-meets-the-dance-floor classic Rock the Casbah. It also has the Herbie Hancock-looped sunshine fandanco, Groove Is In The Heart by K-Line (with the camp-looking Sardarji strutting about in the video). The Cure makes a guest appearance with their eerie pop-goth classic A Forest, and the overarching bassline makes the head nod in time while you wander around Blair Witch Project-style on the floor. Debbie Harry does the disco with Atomic and Human League’s Love Action (I Believe In Love) convinces me all over again that love songs are to be danced to only when they’re delivered with robotic punk-pop grace.

The second CD of StyleSoundz is even better. It starts with the ICU patient’s heartbeat riff in Iggy Pop’s Nightclubbing, immediately shuffling into David Bowie’s not-gloomy-at-all Ashes To Ashes. Erasure’s Oh L’Amour sounds less dorky than it used to in the Eighties, but that’s probably because it’s the ‘August mix’ version which is on this album. Kraftwerk’s The Model got me playing moronic-but-cool slamdancer again after years. David Byrne hyperventilates in his wonderful style on the Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime. I was more than happy to bop to Heaven 17’s Seventies cult dance classic (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang and Blur’s lager-anthem Girls & Boys (‘Fists up! Fists up!’ with the chorus boys!).

So did I miss anything on this rather scintillating (haven’t used that word for a long time!) double-album? Well, I would have loved to hear Men Without Hats’ Safety Dance to do a morris-dance-twirl to. But how could the album producers forget to include Mickey — not the stupid Be-Witched version but the 1982 original by Toni Basil? But just as well. Would have burnt up the dance floor if I had heard “Oh, Mickey, you’re so fine/ You’re so fine, you blow my mind/ Hey, Mickey, hey, Mickey….”