I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write this book

If no one can understand why I need to listen to this song over and over and over and over, they are living in the middle of the ocean.

I chase my vinyl dreams to Boogie Wonderland

Thank you for reminding us of "universal love and harmony." It wasn;t just in the words, it was in the joyous, joyous sounds. I've heard this song thousands of times and EVERY TIME my heart rises.

A holistic practitioner of sorts--New Age-y, if you will--once explained to me that when one dances, one's spirit literally rises up above the physical self. Or something like that.

That is exactly what happens when I hear EWF. And likely what Maurice was going for.

ALL THE RECORDS ARE PLAYING AND MY HEART KEEPS SAYING

No more standing beside the walls

I enjoyed last Wednesday's show very much, but, holy hell, if these guys had unfurled this cover over all the white, college-English-major folk in that arena--well, I'd have made this post a week earlier.



This is one of my favorite songs, not to mention a top-two get-ass-on-dancefloor-NOW winner. Gaye's reluctant disco effort is lovingly detailed for posterity, and even if the party outside the song's perimeter was manufactured, hell, it was a good one. Plus--banging on bottles.

Of course, Gaye's easy-sound but fastidiously-made groove spawned some controversy some 36 years later, though I think nothing came of it (at least prior to Thicke's, erm, aided VMA rendition), and rightly so. I don't think a "groove" is an exclusive artistic form, and neither does this guy.

Maybe it's number one get-ass for me, come to think of it. I remember sprinting from the front door of the Artful Dodger to the postage-stamp dancefloor in back in record-crushing speed, and then letting this wash over me, surrounded by friends.

So if I have to experience this in a red box onscreen in order to relive that memory in my brain box, and to re-love this song, so be it.

Today's Shuffle: It's only right that you should play the way you feel it

Funny, I just bought a vinyl copy of Rumours on Saturday. The best riding-in-the-back-of-the-car-as-a-kid song ever.

Fleetwood Mac, Dreams Rumours
Sting, Desert Rose Brand New Day
Cash Audio, Hide Away The Orange Sessions
Duran Duran, Planet Earth - Night Version Singles Box Set 1981-1985
Sade, Long Hard Road Soldier of Love
Van McCoy, The Hustle Hustle and the Best of Van McCly
Erykah Badu, Drama Baduizm
The Jam, The Planner's Dream Goes Wrong The Gift
Groove Armada, Lazy Moon Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub)
The Police, Masoko Tanga Outlandos d'Amour
Neil Young, When You Dance, After the Goldrush
George Michael, Flawless (Go To the City) Patience

Here I thought The Hustle was simply a line dance--au con-bellbottomed-traire!



I miss actual social dancing. Of course, how can I miss it, I was a small child when this last vestige of it was happening (and in addition I thought this was a line dance)? I'm only exposed to it at wedding receptions, in which my situation (no dance partner currently on hand) and interest level in social dancing (zero) can dictate that I beat tracks to the bar, or when in the company of my brother-in-law's family, who are all from Colombia, where everyone not only dances, but does it with carefree zest, having been introduced to it around the age that I was longingly hearing disco songs and watching people get in lines and shimmy sort-of-together (or Saturday Night Fever).

Social, or couple, dancing is pretty much a joke these days, in every sense of the word. People are indentured into it, whether it's the one and only time they have to dance presentably and without a shield of jokey self-deprecation, their "first dance" as a married couple (for which it's now a thing, I've heard, to get lessons for that single flop-sweat-inducing span of four minutes), or it's the end of a long night full of many emptied bottles, resulting in a sort of handsy, sloppily provocative lean into another body in hopes of leaning into that body even more later.

Social dancing--not dancing-dancing, whereby you dance alone but in a group and you are wearing a cute top and jeans and don't care how sweaty you get or where your coat is because you're in a cool place without dancefloor stalkers or thieves and the drinks are cheap--because GOD this is the best time ever--is about getting action, then. Color me cynical, but that's what I believe it has become. Less about process and more about the end--like many, many, many things in this hustle of life.

What happened to dancing just to dance?

That's where my Colombian in-law-in-laws come in, and, maybe, Latin culture in general (bear with me, I will probably generalize next). A few years ago we (my sister, brother-in-law) and I went to a Latin club to check out the dancing while I was out east for a visit. They'd either been there once, or heard it was a good time. We grabbed some beers and a table by the dance floor. Once a particularly beguiling song began, they took to the floor, and I watched. I was fine watching. Except for that tapping foot. See, because the problem is when I actually do hear music I want to dance to, that is beguiling, well, I want to dance to it. But we weren't at Neo or Liars Club or (let's take it back now) the Artful Dodger or Mad Planet, so I couldn't simply fling my drink onto the table and shimmy across the floor like I was hearing "Got To Give It Up (Parts 1 and 2)" or "Mirror in the Bathroom" or "Atomic Dog" or I could go on... So I sat. No problem, I am used to not having the dance partner on hand (see above), either because of distance or partner's (if indeed one is present) lack of interest in dancing.

Then a guy came over and gestured to the floor, and to me, asking, "do you want to dance?" My immediate reaction: WHAT THE HELL DOES HE WANT, DOES HE THINK I WILL SPEND THE REST OF THE EVENING WITH HIM? Then...pause...okay, what the hell. We danced a rhumba (that's what either he or my bro-in-law or both told me later). He showed me the steps. And I had a wonderful time--just dancing. He was a lovely and friendly man and he just wanted to dance because we were in a place for dancing and I wasn't and the point is, for him, for the Colombians whom I've partied with and for (maybe) Latin culture in general, everyone should dance.

EVERYONE SHOULD DANCE.

Paquita que ballero

[flute solo crushes it]



So yeah, they're back...

Every Day I Look at the World from My Window

Oh, my goodness. There's not much better than this song, which I've been listening to daily since I heard it two weeks ago.



But does anyone else think the primary guitar chords and melody sound like the verse in "Laughter in the Rain" by Neil Sedaka? I mean, I admit it: that is the first thing I thought when I first heard "Waterloo Sunset"--which was, I admit, two weeks ago. Although maybe it grazed my ears before when I wasn't paying attention. To me, the Kinks were always the smart old guys playing New Wave with "Back Where You Started" or "Come Dancing," which I also connected somehow with Tracey Ullman. Her "They Don't Know" was a bouffant-haired throwback in a similar way that "Come Dancing" echoed a gentler, poppy era, but Ray Davies' nostalgic return to his childhood is actually a bittersweet ode: the sister, eighteen years his senior, who "always did" come dancing at the local Palais suffered at the hands of an abusive husband and collapsed and died--no shit--while dancing.

Where was I? Oh, and "Lola."

Anyway: I really need to pay more attention to what I am hearing. That's where the good stuff is -- whether it's a seminal Kinks record I didn't know about and that I'm now also playing non-stop, or a transcendent song's similarity to subsequent schmaltz. Or, in other words, a boundlessly pleasurable discovery versus an ironic footnote to my parents' stereo turntable circa 1975. 

And by the way, it seems like when I find a heretofore unknown or long-ago gem of a song lately, I also stumble across a cover of it by Elliott Smith.

More on that later. I don't want to wander...