Get Get Down - Paul Johnson's Ode To Dance

Coupling a jittery piano line with an insistent chorus, Get Get Down is the dance anthem the sadly departed Paul Johnson will be best remembered for and a track that encapsulated the spirit of the man himself.

      Released in 1999, at a time where disparate forms of dance music - four to the floor, speed garage, big beat - were slowly merging into one, Get Get Down is one of those timeless dance tracks that defies categorisation. 

      Born Paul Leighton Johnson in 1971, a career in a music production beckoned after being inspired by the illustrious line of DJs that came from Chicago to international prominence that included Frankie Knuckles and Farley "Jackmaster" Funk. Born with an innate desire to get on with things, he was self-taught, arranging and playing at his first gig aged just 13. As he told 5Mag in 2006:

“I was breakdancing at the time, that was my thing, then I went to my first party and saw the DJ mixing and wanted to do that. I was listening to everything: freestyle, hip-hop, house. I threw my first party for my eighth grade graduation.”

      However his life would change markedly when he was struck by a stray bullet at 16 and was paralysed from the waist down. Thereafter Johnson became one of the most high-profile disabled DJs in the world, slowly notching up an impressive list of classic house singles, each with their own Johnston stamp, namely a catchy melody and pumping bass.

      Early favourites include the raw Feel My M.F. Bass from 1994 and 1996's Hear The Music, the former a prime example of both his signature four to the floor bass and the 'to the point' message, the latter a wonderful example of early soul-sampling house and a prelude to what Daft Punk would be presenting to the world five years later with One More Time and Discovery. Indeed this wasn't a happy accident, the legendary French dance group looked upto Johnson as a prime influence on them and listed him first on their track Teachers showing Johnson's influence on how house developed in the late Nineties and into the Noughties.

      However it will be for Get Get Down that Johnson will above all be remembered, an effortless track that couldn't be any clearer in it's objective to get you dancing. Arriving in Chicago house, but created in a very different world, I vividly remember shorning it on initial release after, in my dance infancy thinking it was both too much of a pop crossover and too much of a UK Garage cash in; it was neither UK nor Garage...but of course I was wrong, missing the point entirely. Indeed such is it's enduring appeal that it was chosen to join a whole host of contemporary pop songs for the video game Just Dance 2021 over twenty years after it's initial release, it's oh so catchy melody and it's sunny disposition - a glimpse of the fun personality and the good humour of Johnson - being more than enough of a reason to include it despite being two decades old.

      A guaranteed floor filler Get Get Down will be remembered and played long after we all leave the dancefloor.

Requiescat in pace Paul Johnson