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It's Friday! It's about three o'clock! It's time to Boogie At Your Desk!

Friday afternoons need a little something. I think they need a Top Tune. Something to make you shuffle in your seat and, if possible, Boogie At Your Desk.

I'm not claiming that any track provided to enable At-Desk Boogying is one of the world's best or most profound pieces of music. It will, however, be a tune which makes me smile, and which has at some stage made me surreptitiously Boogie At My Desk.

Desks are not compulsory, of course. Feel free to boogie through your office, in your bedroom, round your lab, across your classroom, on the train - wherever you find yourself on a Friday afternoon.

If you like the track, go out and buy the album it belongs to - I'll try and recommend a suitable CD to purchase for any BAYD track.

The link to the mp3 will expire at some point in the future.

Today you are invited to Boogie At Your Desk to:

Pete and the Pirates - Motorbike [mp3 download, or listen to it on YouTube]

I have a rule - or at least a guideline - for checking out new bands. If you tell me about a band, and say they're good, I'll check them out. But as well as that, I'll investigate any band that I hear about in passing from three separate and at least vaguely-reputable sources.

I think I first heard (or, more probably, read) satyrica talking about Pete and the Pirates. And then someone else (maybe zenithed?). And then Andy von Pip[*] and I thought right, better go and investigate.

Disappointingly, I did it just in time to find that they'd released the excellent One Thousand Pictures and then promptly split up. So I was a bit late to that party.

However, One Thousand Pictures is jolly excellent. It's poppy, but also melancholy and a bit guitary and a bit dark and all-round very listenable. There isn't really a stand-out boogyfest, but there are a few good contenders of which Motorbike is just one. Others are Half Moon Street and Come To The Bar, if you fancy some further listening.

[*] Occasionally, people accuse me of being well-informed about new bands. I realise you're not supposed to show people how the magic works, but actually, I'm not particularly well-informed. I just read The Von Pip Musical Express.