Album: Loco (2001)
Charted: 50
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is about Bump, the name of a gay night at the New York City nightclub Club USA. It went down on Sunday nights and was wildly popular in the '90s.

    Bump was the brainchild of Marc Berkley, a club promoter who staged extravagant nightclub experiences targeted to the gay crowd. He often worked with Peter Gatien, who owned many clubs in the area and was happy to see them packed on off nights. Bump was a particularly lavish production, with a three-story slide.

    The Fun Lovin' Criminals formed when singer/guitarist Huey Morgan and multi-instrumentalist Brian "Fast" Leiser met in 1993 when both were working at The Limelight, one of Peter Gatien's clubs. They got to know the scene very well and started performing at The Limelight, which is how they got their record deal. They often found themselves working Gatien's other clubs as well, including Club USA. When they experienced Bump, they decided to write a song about it (none of the band members are gay).

    "Huey and I were always working there and they were just the nicest people," Leiser said in a Songfacts interview. "Some s--t would go down on, say, Sunday nights at the Tunnel as opposed to Sunday nights at Club USA.

    So that is a direct song about us working in these nightclubs. Peter Gatien and his clubs were a huge inspiration for us with our music. These are clubs where you'd hear all different types of music in one night, something you don't really get nowadays."
  • Despite their New York-centric songs, Fun Lovin' Criminals had little impact in their homeland of America, but did quite well in Europe, especially in the UK where "Bump" charted at #50. Their previous single, "Loco," went to #5 in the UK. By this time, they weren't even releasing singles in America and were spending most of their time in Europe where they could draw crowds.
  • "Bump" was released on Loco, the third Fun Lovin' Criminals album of original music. It would have been their fourth, but when they were sent to Hawaii in 1999 to record, they had a little too much fun and didn't bother writing new songs, so they released an album of lounge-style covers and outtakes called Mimosa.
  • To honor Bump creator Mark Berkley, the band released a remix titled "Mark Berkley's Remix." This version has a house music groove and uses a sample of the song "Lined Up" by the British band Shriekback.

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