From outside the box: Welcome to the Jungle

Another Top 5 for you. I was inspired to write this one while watching Underbelly on TV last night. The theme song included a sample line of "It's a jungle out there", which I particularly noticed because it reminded me of an old 90s song that used that exact same sample.

So I thought: Top 5 songs with the word "Jungle" in the title or lyrics.

Now I could have gone for the obvious – Guns n Roses or Kool and the Gang – or even gone Disney. But I decided to let that lion sleep tonight. Instead I did some research and came up with these:

5. The song that inspired it all. From their album Broadcast, Strawpeople's track – allegedly inspired by a certain amateur surgery performed by Lorena Bobbitt – Trick With a Knife.

4. The Vines came up with this offering. OK, so the opening guitar riff rips off Blue Oyster Cult and they have this belief that changing tempos three or four times a song and screaming into the mic somehow gives your music credibility. Nonetheless, quite a good track.

3. Probably the most commercially-recognised on the list, Steve Miller's Jungle Love, from the 1977 album Book of Dreams (and you'll never guess how I knew that!). This would have ranked higher if it wasn't for the "Hey, I've got a synthesizer and this is what I can do with it" wank at the start.

2. Alphabeat offers this cool rock/pop track. There's even a bit of jungle drumming in the mix.

1. I tend more towards punk than jazz, but this is a neat track by the Cafe Soul All Stars featuring Kenny Garrett and Roy Ayers. It's called Urban Jungle and has a nice long "sounds of the big city" intro before running into a modern jazz groove. Listening to this you can convince yourself you're in a Shaft movie. I even rated this ahead of contenders Kool & The Gang's Jungle Boogie, the Meters' Jungle Man and even Bob Marley's Concrete Jungle.