My 3 best mates and I shared a Young Ones-style house when we were at college.

To get ourselves in the mood to go out of an evening we liked nothing better than to jump up on down on the sofa and easy chairs and take it in turn to play exciting songs to arouse the inner party animals in us. A particularly good song would lead to us jumping around the room from chair to sofa to chair whooping & hollering.

If somebody felt the music wasn't sufficently uplifting, however, it would be immediately yanked off the record player & (avert your eyes vinyl freaks) thrown across the room (to our great delight) and then replaced by the next choice.

In one corner of the room there was a sad mountain of records, scratched to high heaven and mixed in with remnants of kebab and fag ash and which clearly housed families of anxious looking rodents.

Particular jumping favourites (that never reached this slag heap of songs)included:

Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache - Dexy's

Banana Splits - The Dickies

Wings of A Dove - Madness

and even (with less bouncing but more community singing)
Every day I write the book - Elvis costello

These songs and this bouncing would put us in the right state of mind to go drink 12 pints of snakebite, be sick, have a kebab, maybe a pernod & black or two, pull chick, suck face, cop feel and sometimes even more! So although this tradition played havoc with my record collection (which, pre-college, had been alphabetisised) it was worth it!!

NEW FAVOURITE GETTING READY TO GO OUT MUSIC IS EITHER
1) RECORDS FROM WHEN I WAS ABOUT 18 - SEE ABOVE!!
2) I'M USUALLY SOAKING IN THE BATH LISTENING TO C&W ON A SATURDAY NIGHT BEFORE GOING OUT.
3) I RECENTLY LISTENED TO MAX BOYCE - LIVE AT TREORCHY BEFORE GOING OUT & IT PUT ME RIGHT IN THE MOOD

I know, I know, it's cheesy, but the Saturday Night Fever OST is a great place to start. Strut that stuff and get dancin'!

almost anything uptempo recorded in the mid-late 1950s. Gets me going.

Prevents any wild over enthusiasm. And can be listened too again as you cry yourself to sleep.........
(Only kidding, haven't been out for ages, didn't you know, staying in is the new going out. Thankfully the kids still do the old going out, so it's a good night. So, it's cleearly big Barry White, that sort of stuff, the Walrus of luurve.)

You Get What You Give - New Radicals
Got To Give It Up - Marvin
Sexy MF - Prince
Don't Stop Moving - S Club 7
Ace of Spades - Motorhead

Good for final touches, hair, lippy, posing and making sure the back door is locked with final chord of Ace of Spades, gets Mrs D and I ready to rock every time.

You want Shalamar, the Friends album. Still sounds as great as it did in '82 and as good as its contemporary, Thriller.

Don't work at IPC by any chance do you robram? They've got an awards do tonight and my lovely wife will be there in a gold spangly dress.

Spearmint,"We're going out.Does what it says on the tin.
I've had this conversation with a mate and he prefers "Feel so good" by Richard Thompson which I find quite disturbing.

.... Sing SIng Sing by the Benny Goodman Orchestra is a party in itself, condensed down to 8 minutes. Unfortunately the nights out never live up to that beginning. So more often than not I stay in. Walked through a university campus the other week, and heard one young student greet a pal with the question 'you out last night?' and realised no one has asked me that question for years.

"Going out" is a bit of a rarity these days but back in the day my "getting ready" music was often Pet Shop Boys or Springsteen (depending where I was going I suppose) and, further back, the Specials and (cough) Adam & the Ants. For a brief period, Wagner was my "going out" music, for reasons which are now unfathomable.

Then : Rage Against the Machine

Now: Salsa Celtica

I Feel Good - James Brown always hits the spot

Jump Around - House of Pain
Like a Prayer & Hung Up - Madonna
Don't Feel like Dancing & Take your Mama Out - Scissor Sisters
and, yes, Stayin Alive/Night Fever.