Loungin'

I remember at the age of eighteen after my A-Levels, the year before I went to live in Tenerife for a while, going to Leeds with two of my best friends and staying at one of the guys' sisters' place. Every Sunday we went there we ended up in a cool bar called The Faversham. At the time it was one of the coolest (and one of the first) lounge bars in Leeds. I had recently started working in a club at weekends and had really started getting in to my music; my time in Tenerife taking me further on my music trip. We would go there for 'just a couple of beers', but once we had got in that bar it always turned out to be for the rest of the night.

The thing was, as soon as I had put the bottle of Sol or Michelob (my preferred tipple at the time) to my lips and sat down in one of the sofas, I was lounging. I mean once my feet started tapping to the laid-back tunes the resident DJ was spinning, I was not getting out of that sofa...well unless it was to the bar for the next round or the toilet. We would roll out at about one in the morning, a little tipsy yeah, but nothing the walk home didn't sort out. A good night enjoyed by all. A belly full of beer and a head full of tunes. Smiles all round. And like I said in last week's post (Keep on movin' 21/3/10), it strangely set me in the right frame of mind as I go to work on a Monday morning with a skip in my stride.

Working in a club and having Sunday night off and lounging became a kind of culture, a religious mecca-like process for me. It has never left me. That's what Sundays are for. If Saturday nights are manic and I manage to recharge for Sunday evenings, I love a Sunday Lounging session. The beer just goes down easily, nothing heavy and mission-like, just sipping and chatting and nodding and shoulder-shuffling and toe-tapping to some cool tunes; a sexy smooth Sunday session.

Sitting writing this very line right now I have Itunes playing me back my Sunday theme tune 'Loungin'' by G.u.r.u., with - as he says - his 'maaan' Donald Byrne on the horn. And Donald's cool voice speaks in the back ground - graty and sounding like he needs to wet his throat with a beer or a whisky on the rocks before he puts the brass horn to his lips, perching on the arm of the sofa next to me and joining in with our chat between riffs. I would have to introduce him to my hockey team-mate who also plays bass and smiles and shimmies his shoulders like every day was Sunday when he plays and plucks the strings.

The Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai are present. Lucy Pearl, Jose Padilla and half of Ibiza are in there. DJ Jad from Italy makes an appearance. Bossa Nova beats from Brazil. Mr.Scruff can take it up a notch and The Gotan Project can bring it down again. Beers, vino and mojitos all round. And so the session goes on.

So many tunes keep me swaying in the sofa. Stephane Pompougnac is a Sunday guy with his Hotel Costes sessions. He could be at the same table as me, Donald and my team-mate - if he wasn't spinning in the console that is. For me there is something destinctively French about Sunday night sessions and their music. Smooth and sexy. And always on the same sofa as me are the guys I have grown up with. Between the tunes and the sipping of beers a heavy discussion about football might just creep in, but nothing to change the mood of the evening.

Like I said, that Sunday night session has never really left me. Whether I'm sat in any cool bar that has the beer and the tunes flowing, or sat in the twilight of the weekend at an Italian piazza table with the warming sun seeping away, or a restaurant, or sat right here on my own with my lap top and Itunes, in one form another my Sunday evenings will be forever for loungin'.

'Carneval de Sao Vicente' by Cesaria Evoria has just kicked in. Cool.