Let’s not ruin a good thing. Patrick said it best about our #1 track on last year’s Fatback Jams Countdown:

You light my fire, I feel alive with you, baby, You blow my mind, I’m satisfied

Four years ago Fatback was launched in a little Eritrean restaurant on U St. With a capacity crowd totaling 30 people, you still had to wait 20 minutes to get a drink.

On our third or fourth night, at 2am, one of the faucets behind the bar exploded and flooded the whole place with about an inch of water. So the manager freaked out, turned on the lights and started apologizing for ruining the night.

And that’s when we first realized what kind of crowd we were blessed with. Y’all just kept dancing. No shit. All the lights were on and everyone was splashing around and clapping to the rhythm in a huge pool of water.

So at the very end of the night, we threw on “Outstanding” by the Gap Band as a tribute to the soldiers that wouldn’t let hell nor high water ruin a perfectly good dance night. And it was magic.

You can’t just go from a tambourine slapping riot to full stop at the end of a night…you gotta ease people out of it and send them out into the night with a joyful mid-tempo jam that lets ‘em know that the night’s winding down.

Ever since the great flood of 2008, we’ve played “Outstanding” at end of every Fatback.

Stick around til 3am this Saturday and belt it out with us. We’ll be singing our hearts out.

-P White

Written at the height of Fela Kuti’s clash with the authoritarian government of Nigerian in 1977, “Zombie” is just as much a dance floor scorcher as it is a critique of political oppression. “Zombie” is the term Kuti uses to describe the mindless Nigerian soldiers taking orders from an authoritarian government and military. The song came with consequence as it stirred unrest, fueling protests among a rambunctious Nigerian public. After Zombie was released, the Nigerian military unleashed its most violent attack on Kuti’s increasingly isolated compound, the Kalakuta Republic. This was the same attack that ultimately fatally wounded his mother, which spawned the title to another album scathing the military’s rule, Coffin for Head of State.

Needless to say, this track is a very rich and powerful symbol of a turbulent era in Nigeria’s history. For the last four years, Fatback DJs have played “Zombie” at our parties. We get lost in its call and response of the “ZOMBIE” refrain. There’s that beat, which is undeniably funky. And then that guitar – damn that guitar. Knowing it’s origins as a protest song only gives us more appreciation for how it captured the minds of a restless public AND continues to capture the imagination of the Fatback dance floors four years going.