Party

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Forgot to mention this morning that it was Kam's birthday today. Yay!

She and Kat (not to be confused with Cat or the other Cat or any of the other people I know who have short names that begin with /k/) hosted their monthly "Full Moon Boogie" dance party tonight. I expected it to be mostly people I didn't know, so I figured I'd come for the potluck dinner beforehand and then leave when the dancing got underway; instead it turned out to be almost all people I know, including some I haven't seen in years. (And two who were at that Beltane-on-the-beach gathering I mentioned a few days back. One of whom reminded me that that gathering was just after the verdict in the trial of the cops accused of beating Rodney King, which does indeed pin down the date as Beltane '92.) And there was a lot of talking, and not a lot of dancing, so I stayed longer than I'd originally intended. Was fun. But now, is time to do some reading and editing and stuff.

One note about dance music first, though: we discovered that one way to get a bunch of 30something geeks and quasi-geeks out on the dance floor is to play '80s pop music. (I'm guessing that generalizes: play the popular music from when the attendees were in high school, and even people who wouldn't have danced to it when they were 16 may head for the dance floor.) For example, when Kam put on "Stand" by R.E.M., even a pregnant friend of mine got up to do a face-in-each-direction dance. I was impressed. Made me wish I'd gotten around to downloading some of the other '80s music I've been considering, like stuff by the Police and Talking Heads and Genesis and Wang Chung and, oh, all sorts of stuff. Maybe next time.

(Sadly, the iTunes automatic-by-year playlists (like "'80s Music") aren't any use when your copy of the song comes from a 2002 best-of retrospective reissue.)

6 Responses to “Party”

  1. Will Quale

    I try to recode the date field for each song in my library to year-of-release. This yields a nice variety of dates, given that much of my library is pre-1900, and makes for interesting by-date playlist possibilities (though I haven’t played with that much yet).

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  2. Melissa Binde

    Yes — this “play 80’s music to make Melissa dance” technique has been noted and employed (with far too much glee, may I note), by several of my friends.

    And thank you for reminding me that I want to buy “Stand” from iTunes…

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  3. Arthur Evans

    I believe this is a well known principle of DJing. A broader corollary is that if you play a tune people recognize (and especially, a tune that they’re used to dancing to), they’re more likely to get up and dance.

    I think this explains why songs like “I Will Survive” tend to fill the dance floor with people who would never voluntarily listen to “I Will Survive.”

    It also explains why the highly recognizable “Psycho Killer” usually gets people dancing, despite the fact that it’s not an easy song to dance to. It’s a matter of making that conditioned response work for you.

    On the other hand, play a song with a really great groove that no one recognizes–say, something by Les Negresses Vertes, or a Wynonie Harris side, and no one’s likely to dance unless they’re already up and moving. Feed folks a steady diet of obscure but brilliant tunes and likely as not everyone’s going to sit down. Which is why DJs play “I Will Survive.”

    Of course, as you note, it depends on the audience. “Blister In the Sun” usually gets people moving at the parties I frequent. But at company parties, with their slightly older demographic, it seems to be the old disco standards that really do the job.
    “YMCA,” anyone?

    OK
    -Arthur

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  4. Arthur (again)

    Eep. Your comment-input-form makes for very ugly formatting.

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  5. Jed

    I’ve now reformatted the previous comment. Basically, the idea is that every time you press return it counts as a new paragraph. This is a compromise to increase flexibility, ’cause it’s hard to know how people are going to enter comments, but sometimes it causes problems. Best approach is to not press return at ends of lines within a paragraph.

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  6. Arthur

    The comment about recording dates reminds me of an interesting CD from my collection. It’s sort of a one-minute-mystery. It’s a disc of piano music by stride piano master James P. Johnson. The tracks were all released between 1917 and 1925, yet the CD recording code is “DDD”–digitally recorded, mixed, and mastered. How can this be?

    The answer is that Johnson didn’t record the tracks on disc or tape–he cut piano rolls. 60-odd years later, a record company ran the rolls through a vintage player piano & recorded them digitally. Direct from Johnson’s fingers to digital tape–more or less.

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