This year’s fancy dress theme for Bestival (4-7 September) is “Desert Island Disco”. To get in the mood, we’re indulging our inner – if slightly glitter tinged – Radio 4 and getting a host of the act’s Desert Island Disco Discs. Kicking things off this week it’s organiser and DJ Rob da Bank.
Rob da Bank’s Desert Island Disco
Chic – I Want Your Love
Yes ok so I’m biased as they’re playing Bestival ..again..but I seriously think Nile Rodgers is the hippest man on Mother Earth and if you don’t love this record and need to listen to it again and again you have no soul.
Todd Terje – Inspector Norse
It’s definitely not all about the classic and vintage disco in the house of da Bank. New disco, cosmic, whatever you call it quite a few disco dudes are young pups from Scandinavia making disco likes it 1979 all over again. I worship at the altar of Mr Terje and this never leaves my record box.
Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes – Don’t Leave Me This Way
Big up to my mate Frank who used to play this at old Basement Jaxx parties when we were hanging off the ceiling covered in each others sweat and he gave me one of his spare seven inches (behave at the back!). Old school but will get everyone on the dancefloor and begging for more. Beautiful brass, too.
Nature Zone – Porcupine
One of the first commercial disco records on the London Disco label and definitely not your typical sounding disco tune. This is one of my all time favourite records and me and my mate Crackers used to drive very fast down my road making whooshing sounds to this when I was 18. So there
Diana Ross – Love Hangover
A monster. Starts all slow and silky and slides into bed with you then gets the funk up, rips off the sheets and pounds your gyrating disco hips into dust. Diana Ross recorded this in the booth with a strobe light to get her in the mood. Job done.
His luxury Item…
A shiny black grand piano. I flirted with the piano as a young lad under duress from my mum and dad who frog marched me to see a slightly smelly old lady piano teacher which maybe put me off a bit. i watch people effortlessly playing the piano with envy and if i had a few free days and nights on a desert island id love to figure out how to tinkle the ivories
…and his book
Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea. I’ve read all of Hemingways books at least twice and this one about 5 or 6 times. its a deep meditation on what it means to be alive and would either uplift me or thoroughly depress me as i sat watching the waves and the sharks circling my sandy prison
NB Porcupine is currently unavailable
For more, including the full line-up and latest ticket news, head to Bestival.net.
