Time again for this song, stolen off one of the kid’s I-Pods a few years back.  Laugh if you must, especially if you live anywhere near a Six Flags, but it happens to be a track from the best selling music album of all time in the UK, where enough copies have been sold for each household in the land to have six of them.

First released in the Netherlands as “Up & Down – The Party Album!” in 1997, “The Party Album” was the Vengaboys’ debut release.  A  Eurodance group, based in Amsterdam, “Vengaboys” was originally the nickname of a couple of young “party animal” Dutch producers (“Venga” is Spanish for “come on”) who had an old school bus.  The “boys” enjoyed a great deal of success in the mid-90s, cruising around to various Spanish beaches with their DJ gear and holding illegal beach parties, which usually ended when the Civil Guard showed up.

In the summer of ’96 they’d just been discussing ways to expand their parties, world-wide if possible, when they met soon to be front-woman, Kim Sasabone (from Salvador, Brazil) at one of their beach parties and she introduced them to some of her friends.  Within months Kim and her friends were touring in the “Vengabus” as “The Vengaboys” and by the following spring “The Party Album” was beginning its worldwide spin.

Known in the UK for their Number One singles, “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!” and “We’re Going to Ibiza” the “Eurohouse” group (with an estimated 15 million records sold worldwide) is best known in the U.S. for “We Like to Party” which peaked at Number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. …Damn right I can still dance to it!

So there really was a Vengabus and today is my birthday, and here I’ll freely admit that when I blow out those candles my wish will be (along with health and happiness for my friends and family) that, if ever those “wheels of steel” churn this way…they allow me to sit in for that driver.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 23 June

 We Like to Party

 I’ve got somethin’ to tell ya,

I’ve got news for you,

Gonna’ put some wheels in motion,

Get ready cause we’re comin’ through.

Hey now Hey now Hear what I say now

Happiness is just around the corner

Hey now Hey now Hear what I say now

We’ll be there for you

The Venga bus is comin’ & everybody’s jumpin’,

New York through San Francisco,

An Interstate free disco,

The wheels of steel are turnin’ & traffic lights are burnin’,

So if you like to party,

Get on and move your body

 We like to party

We like we like to party

We like to party

We like we like to party

Hey now hey now hear what I say now

Happiness is just around the corner

Hey now hey now hear what I say now

We’ll be there for you

The Venga bus is comin’ & everybody’s jumpin’,

New York through San Francisco,

An Interstate free disco,

The wheels of steel are turnin’ & traffic lights are burnin’,

So if you like to party,

Get on and move your body