Mustang Sally – The Commitments

Don't know how many times I've watched this film now, it never fails to make me laugh out loud, tap my feet and sing along. It's just fun, the whole story of manager Jimmy Rabbitte creating a Soul band out of a butch of scruffy teenagers and a fruity trumpet player is so cool. He pretends to be interviewed by the legend Terry Wogan throughout the film, it's just what we all did growing up, thinking the world would be that easy to concur. With Dublin as their playgroup and all the characters that turn up it's a great snapshot of what life was like then.

The music in the film is wall to wall class, I listen to the soundtrack a lot, many a Saturday night or family party has had it's Mustang moment. Andrew Strong's vocal is immense, why he never became a superstar I will never know. The original Wilson Pickett version grooves away as you'd expect but hasn't got that rawness about it. The rest of the cast take on different songs, if they really did just find them for the film, Alan Parker and co did an amazing job.

Learnt a lot about soul music from this film, it was definitely part of my musical education. Seen the stage show since and that to was brilliant. The music is the main character and it's great that films like this exist to get great tunes out into the mainstream.

Favourite lyric : You'd been running all over town / Oh! Guess I gotta put your flat feet on the ground

R.I.P. Alan Parker