Dance Music – Anecdotes and Antidotes in Burgundy

A little bit of France in Odessa, Duc De Richlieu getting some cover

Well, that went from crappy to ‘end of days’ whatthefuckery very quickly!

It’s tough not to have a sense of everything just got very trivial compared to what is unfolding less than 2500 kms to the east. I have experienced a mix of emotions.

Mostly dark, accepting the full despotic nature of not just what Putin has done but the complete propagandist twist of every evil action into something for the ordinary Russian to cheer on. The lower levels of disgust experienced in looking at the British government’s spinning of their decision not to enable Ukrainians to come into the UK in any numbers or at the Republicans and their facilitators at Fox News glibly parroting Putin’s line while using the situation to take shots at Biden. The pride in the constant, unrelenting, unperturbed resistance that the Ukrainian nation has shown. The immense balls of Zelensky, the immense balls; contrast his behavior with the puffy little guy in the jacket and tie at the end of the 50′ table in a bunker? The smile when Anonymous does the type of hybrid technical hacks that we expect to get from Russian. The amazing response of people all across Europe; nearly every town in France has collection points for support and aid for Ukraine. Towns like La Rochelle, donating 55 hospital beds and delivering them to Ukraine, towns organizing to rent buses and providing drivers and support to go and pick up a bus load of women and children to welcome them to their homes.

I hope that somehow we take something good out of this carnage and destruction, maybe Putin is done at some point in the near future and his regime crashes down with him and then all the other tinpot despots, propped up by Russia, in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkmenistan tumble over too. It would also be timely if the oil and gas price spike encouraged a quicker transition to sustainable energy rather than a rush to start fracking everywhere again and augur a commitment to address the climate crisis.

In the meantime I have been distracting myself with this playlist of music. It’s a selection from the various albums old and new that I have been playing this grey and cold March. Let’s listen to it while doing something to help Ukraine!

Jarvis Cocker – Save The Whale – Mister Deltoid Remix – Sheffield’s favorite son in groovy deep remix of one of his confinement classics on the 2020 ‘Jarv Is’ album

Animal Collective – Prester John – the three strangely named guys from the Collective back with new toons and familiar fey electo-pop. Rachel and I saw Panda Bear play at a barn behind a winery in Napa. We rented an AirBnb that the hostess tried to pretend the place was ours in privacy, only to find she had snuck in during the night to sleep in the other bedroom…..

Black Country, New Road – Concorde – uniquely English noisy jazz poprock. The angsty sounding lead singer managed to screw the collective pooch by announcing he was leaving the 7-piece band on the eve of the new album’s release; his voice is a big part of their sound so how they transition will be interesting.

Cate le Bon – Running Away – the one time I managed to fly Concorde Simon and Jasmin Le Bon were the only celebs on the same flight, or at least the only ones I recognized.

Chudahye Chagis – Binasoo+ – Holly’s friend Suzie introduced us to the rabbit-hole that is Korean Folk music. So this, to stretch the allegory, is as Fairport Convention is to Dolly Collins, as these new Korean artists are to the 16th-17th century folk songs. The singer Chudahye Chagis is part of the SsingSsing band whose visuals are fabulous.

Talking Heads – The Overload – as this downbeat song overlooked on the superb Remain In Light album describes today’s terrible days – “The gentle collapsing of every surface’

Ian Sweet – Sing Til I Cry – Jill Medford’s songs are always double sided and this is that slow building, take down that is classic Sweet. Her best recent song is of course F*ckthat but this flows rhythmically better.

Eno – Fat Lady of Limburg – I was introduced a couple of weeks ago to the live 801 album from 1976 which I had probably written off at the time as being ridiculous, old school Prog, on my drive for the new wave at the time. It is a fabulous window into a time when some very clever musicians came together for a very short period of time and luckily, for posterity, they were recorded live on a real soundboard. They did a super version of this song but Spotify of course does not have it so I went back to the original, to share.

Big Thief – Time Escaping – these folks are the archetypal new hippies in many ways. They ‘woodshed’ most albums, even before Covid times; they include former lovers amongst the line-up yet are insanely productive, so no spats but the energy is working for sure. This is from the latest double album and well, yes….

Lana Del Ray – Dealer – this is a throw away track on Blue Bannisters, its from aborted sessions with Alex Turner and Miles Kane’s side project the Last Shadow Puppets. As most of you know I am a massive Lana fan and try not to miss an opportunity to preach the gospel of Norman Fucking Rockwell.

Findlay – Strange One – trailer for the new album, “The Last of the 20th Century Girls”, which is a title that could be applied to Putin.

Soul Coughing – Screenwriter Blues, another old song but as you might have spotted from a prior blog the line about its “5.00am and you are listening to Los Angeles” is from this on the money take down of Glitter Town.

Leenalchi – Tiger is Coming – yes, its Korean folk again and if you do not listen to this and start dancing you need to drink more. Here is an essential video.

Butcher Boy – Carve a Pattern. I heard this first on the excellent The Culture Bunker podcast, chosen by Stuart Murdoch of the much loved institution that is Belle & Sebastian, they are a fellow Glaswegian band.

Joy Orbison – swag w/ kav. Some gorgeous grungy UK dance from a superb album: Still Slipping Vol 1. which is on Bandcamp here

Ural Thomas – Dancing Dimensions. As war is about to break out over the Urals an 80 year old soul singer from Portland OR is getting us to dance, what more can you want?

Squid – G.S.K. – a song about drugs in a name check that I am sure Pharma giant Glaxo Smith Kline would rather do without, just keep channeling nice Lucazade thoughts…

Yard Act – The Overload – another overload in the same playlist, how lazy is that! The hottest thing out of Yorkshire since Bielsa has been thrown to the curb. More angry young British lads speak/singing; but if you had to endure their government you would be driven to protest in any way possible. Yet again I am so embarrassed about my fucking generation and how we have destroyed a nationstate in the pursuit of personal self gratification. ” What does tomorrow’s world have for me?” what indeed?

Mannequin Pussy – Drunk II – if you have not been drinking more in the past two years it can only be because you have taken the pledge. This song demonstrates why we probably should drink less.

Jarvis Cocker/Hot Chip – House Music All Night Long – To finish up, dance away with two acts from an earlier more dishonest time when we celebrated English exceptionalism as if that was something to be proud of rather than serially embarrassed about. Another remix but the original album is so good if it nudges you to check it out, my mission is complete.

“Who the hell would live in a house like this?
Head deep in the basement, one foot on the pedal bin
This ain’t easy listenin'”

If you missed the link to the tunes bove go here: sorry Pete, still only Sportified…https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7b6rLOZ2QRpdCgfmzyFLg7?si=820495e1c08547c1

To dance or not to dance? This was an active decision many young men were forced to take at some point between the age of 14 and 18. For most boys of my generation dancing just got in the way of their newly acquired drinking habit. The nightlife of most of England was centered around pubs and enduring the struggles to get taken seriously and allowed to buy beer while the girls never seemed to have any problems. It was partially a question of how you dressed, partially your own development physically – were you tall, did you have facial hair other than ‘bum fluff’? Were you wearing your uncle’s tweed 1950’s great coat over your Levi denim jacket? Smoking helped you look older as long as you didn’t cough or choose Consulate or other menthol brands. Pubs basically split into those who looked the other way and those who took the legal drinking age seriously and in Frome that split was over 60% biased to the former so it was not that difficult.

We had one ‘club’ in town, the Hexagon Suite which was built into the back of the Grand cinema and it was open until 1.00 am on Friday and Saturday so of course you went at least one night a weekend if you were working. Girls danced around their handbags and the boys would stand around the edge of the dance floor letching and talking. The bravehearted would swoop in for a quick dance when the music slowed down, with various pleasantries shouted into each other’s ears. We would occasionally get touring minor acts, usually on their way down and never anything but pop and the odd Radio 1 Roadshow. The only act I remember that actually progressed their careers upwards after playing the Hexagon was The Real Thing who are still touring their one big hit, “You To Me Are Everything” to this day.

It was always going to be difficult dancing in front of people you went to school with or played rugby with so my desire to impress girls with my moves was latent until the anonymity and newness of university life changed all that. There were kindred spirits who not only loved dance music but actually dancing, not just girls but other equally bumbling young men. 1975-1978 was the era when disco, universally ridiculed, became funk, if not loved at least tolerated. The golden years of funk brought not only the dance grooves that later drove much of early hip-hop. It brought with it an exuberance and style that was uniquely African American. Regardless of the terrible demand to Play That Funky Music White Boy the music was solely the domain of musicians from Detroit, New York and once Motown moved its headquarters there, to LA. Funk had a fashion that was equally as flamboyant as the music, the economy was booming, and the flares became bigger, the shoes became platformed and the lapels dived groundward. For some reason the waistband went higher and had 3 belts, the local bouncers in Bradford were un-impressed though. I managed to annoy their sense of what men should or should not wear and my funk inspired choices were an affront. I was refused entry for wearing a red pair of what were an exaggerated version of Chuck Taylors, as the bouncer informed me “You’re here to dance, son, not fuckin run”.

The fact I was a gobby southerner with an earring was probably as offensive as my sartorial choices, although I do remember wearing my mother’s 1950’s box shouldered fur coat one winter over bellbottom jeans and multi hewed jumper, to visible derision by the locals. However, Bradford had a tradition of dance through Northern Soul so if we could get into the clubs they were cool with us dancing. The local girls were luckily more forgiving of my fashion disasters.

This was an era of big dance hits that have since become the fodder of bad movies and wedding playlists: Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, Wild Cherry’s ‘Play That Funky Music’, Isley Brother’s ‘Summer Breeze’, Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You’, The Commodores ‘Brick House’. We also used to do those bizarre dances that involved sitting on the floor in lines, Gap Band’s ‘Oops Upside Your Head’ demanded that for some reason. Being a music nut of course meant that my choices were more esoteric and the cool guy feeling soared when you asked a DJ for something like Lenny Williams’ ‘Choosing You’ and they gave you a big thumbs up and with a beaming smile produced a 12” from their bag. I had been introduced to Lenny Williams when he was lead singer with Tower of Power, whose ne plus ultra horn section was backing Little Feat, Santana, Journey, Aerosmith and Rufus among many others, basically if there was a brass section on a song between 1972 and 1990 it was probably the Tower of Power horns.

There was obviously a lot of white kids listening to this music as became evident over the next 15 years when white synth bands took the classic bass heavy funk rhythms and created a new genre of electronic dance music. Tom Tom Club openly acknowledged the debt owed to James Brown and Bohannan on “Genius of Love”. There is a direct line through James Brown to disco and funk and the electronic dance anthems of New Order, Depeche Mode, Chemical Brothers and onto the sample heavy SoulWax, DJ Shadow and Steinski. Old School Hip Hop was based around disco and funk riffs sampled and chopped up. As much as I loved various different rock genres I was and remain to this day committed to dance music is what you dance to, work out to, or just go a little funky when the mood strikes.

The play list on Spotify is here. You do not need to sit down on the floor in lines to enjoy this celebration of the funky, you do not need to change into bell bottoms, but you do need to shake your tailfeather. It is in chronological order and transitions from the originals to the synth driven versions around 1980. The actual playlist starts with George Clinton’s insanely good One Nation and appropriately ends with Deelite’s Groove in the Heart with a cameo by Bootsy Collins, James Brown’s former flamboyant bassist and court jester of funk.