12 TUNES OF CHRISTMAS: Incredible Intros. #12: Royal House – Can You Party (Club Mix) [1988]

It wouldn’t be Christmas without some sort of a festive countdown, and while other blogs and websites may use this opportunity to cast their eye back over the year just gone, here at 909originals we like to cast our net far wider than that.

Between now and Christmas Eve we will be looking at the tunes that ‘grab you by the balls’ straight from the off; those seminal tracks that have you hooked within seconds. The 909originals team has pored through the vaults to determine the most incredible intros and outstanding openers, as we count down our inaugural 12 Tunes of Christmas…

And you won’t find any ‘maids a milking’ or ‘lords a leaping’ either… well, maybe one or two.

To kick off, we head back to 1988, the formative years of dance music, and to New York, where a young Todd Terry was experimenting with samplers and Roland synthesisers in a bid to tap into this new ‘house’ sound, particualrly in the UK. “I never got a break in New York, but England happened right away, so I catered to them,” Terry once said of his early career.

Released on Idlers Records, from Brooklyn (a record label that moved from releasing mainly hip hop records to house music), Royal House’s Can You Party would be the launchpad for Terry’s career, and a whole musical movement.

Among the many samples featured are Afrika Bambaataa’s Planet Rock, The Jackson 5’s Can You Feel It and of course and excerpt from Malcolm X’s ‘Fire and Fury’ speech, but the most striking thing about the track is undoubtedly the first ten seconds, with sirens caterwauling over a simple 4/4, before the magic happens…

12 TUNES OF CHRISTMAS: The Story So Far

#12: Royal House – Can You Party
#11: ???

[Kudos to Leroy Skibone for the YouTube upload]