Here's the press release for our John Peel Day contribution.....
The Cuban Boys "Play It For Peelie" - we will get every single person in the country to play the same song simultaneously at 12 noon on John Peel Day (13th October, 2005).
If you want to learn how to be a part of this ambitious event, skip the tedious biography bit we wrote to point out we were players once, and jump a couple of paragraphs down.
CUBAN BOYS: A brief recap
One of the oddest success stories to come out of John Peel's Radio 1 show in the late 1990s was that of sampling boffins the Cuban Boys. Their mental, lo-fi cut-ups of film samples, 70s disco and happy hardcore were a permanent fixture of the Peel Show from 1998 to 2001. They recorded several Peel Sessions, and their song 'Oh My God! They Killed Kenny' made number 6 on the Festive 50 before any copies had reached the shops.
In the Spring of 1999, Peelie played 'The Hamsterdance Song', a bootleg mash-up that the band sent to John to amuse him. He predicted it would be "the most irritating hit of the year", and true to form at Christmas the song was released by EMI and took mainstream radio and the singles chart by storm. It outperformed Steps and S Club 7 to sell nearly a million copies and reach number 4 on the charts during Christmas week. More importantly, it was number 1 on the 1999 Festive 50, and became the last record John Peel played in the 20th Century. Most of the tabloid coverage at the time delighted in telling the readers that this absurd novelty record was all thanks to the most idiosyncratic DJ on Radio 1.
The Cuban Boys enigmatically drifted into the ether after this, but reformed this summer to specifically pay tribute to John with the song 'The Nation Needs You'. A mix of famous samples of Peelie, melded to Status Quo's 'Down Down' (a favourite of John's whenever he gigged), it's been downloaded and played almost daily ever since on Phill Jupitus' 6Music breakfast show. Andy Kershaw, John Kennedy, Rob da Bank and many, many others have also endorsed the song with airplay.
PEEL DAY: AN IDEA TO BRING THE NATION TOGETHER
On John Peel Day, the Cuban Boys will not be gigging, or even appearing anywhere in public. They would like to pay tribute to John by leading the nation in a blast of pop.
They want every single person in the country to play 'The Nation Needs You' at 12 noon on the 13th October.
Every iPod, every PC, every car stereo, every sub woofer will be playing the song, loudly and slightly out of synch, and this will hopefully give the cacophonous riot of noise that the Cuban Boys crave.
Would you like to Play It For Peelie?? Here are your instructions:
Go to www.cubanboys.co.uk and download 'The Nation Needs You'.
Burn it.
Store it.
Enjoy it, even.
Then, at 12 noon precisely on the 13th October, play it.
Hopefully, everybody else will too.
And it'll be magic.