ELECTRO BOOGALOO

There's a Scottish band that I'm quite taken with, they play their own instruments, write their own lyrics and are achingly hip - now me and bands do not normally mix. In the mid 90s, I totally missed the whole Blur vs Oasis pullava and couldn't tell an Inspiral Carpet from a Stone Rose from a Happy Monday if it hit me in the face and called me Jemima. I was far more into what outfit Kylie would be wearing next and yeared for my cheesy pop music which was in short supply as a more Indie sound hit the airwaves. The closest I got to anything remotely seen as 'cool' was when in 1st and 2 year at high school, a girl called Lynsey Cook made me listen to an instanly forgettable band - Veruca Salt - it appealed to me as I loved the character from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory although there was nothing sweet about this bandm they were in the same vein as some very rough metally band with a girl screeching on vocals.

So as you can imagine, I've surprised myself by quite liking the band Franz Ferdinand. They're a bunch of guys from Scotland (Glasgow University I think) who sound like Blondie and have a discoish beat to the majority of their tracks. They are all thin as hell and wear tight balck trousers and shirts with the obligatory monochrome tie and have a bowl cut with an edge to it and there's none of them entirely fortunate looking whatsoever. They first came to my attention over a year ago when rather pissed in the Polo, their debut single, Take Me Out was blasting out and although it was rough guitar music that ordinarily would make my ears bleed and cause me to request Kylie, I loved it. Well I never bothered buying the album and heard a few other tracks that seemed up my alleyway - yesterday I was in the car driving to class and their new track was playing and I loved it - it's like a modern version of Mamma Mia by Abba only with male voices - you can actually sing the lyrics to Mamma Mia prefectly over the Franz track, not that I've tried that much - kind of!

There's a bar I went to with a guy I vaguely saw before Xmas called Mono. The bar was called Mono not the guy but the clientele looked as though they were all auditioning to be part of Franz Ferdinand - it was like a sea of corduroy and tight shirts and bad hair and the palest skin this side of alabaster. Well the guy I was with said that apparently the band used to go to Mono fairly regularly and one of the tracks on their album 'Michael' was named after the cook in the bar who was named Michael - now call me old fashioned but not many cooks have inspired me to pick up a geetar and compose a fabulous filtered disco drum extravaganza, in fact nothing has inspired me to do that. I thought it was a load of bollocks and the guy was trying to impress me to get me in the sack but it turns out it was true when I read an interview with them a few weeks later - and for the record, he did get me into bed but it was nothing to write home about by any stretch of the imagination. I kept on wondering why he needed to impress me with useless information, I'm a bit whorish and would have slept with him anyway but I must say that the fact that he played the piano for me with an impromptu performance one night in his flat certainly sealed the deal - I must be a sucker for a guy who can use their instrument well (tacky innuendo but I couldn't resist)

Besides Franz Ferdinand - I'm going all electro boogaloo with Goldfrapp. Alison Goldfrapp is the singer who looks a cross between Sophie Ellis Bextor, Sophie Dahl and Sophie, Countess of Wessex. She released a new album last week and lead single Ooh La La is a stormer. TV producers used her other big electro clash stomper 'Strict Machine' in a fashion show in Footballers Wives which made it an instant gem in my eyes. Whenever Goldfrapp's playing on my iPod, I strut a bit as the beat is dirty and tough and makes me want to pout like a wannabe out of America's Next Top Model whilst wearing a killer outfit pretending to look disinterested and aloof.