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I'm tweaking this entry ever so slightly because, again, this is going to be more fun for me, and my Fun Quotient has to stay high if I'm going to keep this up! - Original request: A Song That Makes You Dance.
I briefly took dance lessons as a kid as an activity to get moving. But I was always all about the interpretive. In my room, I could dance around to my music and would sometimes get to an almost meditative state during particular songs. Then, I started making mixtapes and that kind of changed everything. Being able to just pop a cassette with the songs I wanted when I wanted them to play... that was amazing. And then, I even had a cassette player that you could program to fast forward and reverse to mix the order of songs, and even played the tape backwards to let you select from both sides of the tape without needing to eject it! SUPER AMAZING TECHNOLOGY!!!
Of course there were lots of record albums, many of which i still own. I don't have my own DJ rig currently (most NYC clubs had their own set up and I could rent a setup for private parties) but I do have one turntable. Problem is I don't have a connector to line in it to start digitizing the vinyl tracks to mp3. I think I've found a lot of the songs from my LPs through Amazon or iTunes, or back in the day when we were trading music on the sly.
And it's from my time as a DJ that I drew this song.
When I was working at "Polly-Esthers," a 70s and 80s themed club, I created "The Polly-Esther Ten," a Casey Casem style countdown of the ten most requested songs that week, which I played each Friday and Saturday at Midnight. Invariably, there were some songs that were never off the countdown for many weeks.
The two that battled it out most frequently for the most requested song, I'm pleased to say, were two Feminist Anthems:
Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive"
and
ABBA's "Dancing Queen"
Both of these songs tell the story of women standing on their own, making their own choices based on what THEY want and are unapologetic in their stance of what is wrong, what it right and what is acceptable to those females.
It doesn't hurt that they both are easy to dance to in addition to their messages, disco classics that have stood and will continue to stand the test of time. But the elements of what these songs say carry them to that highest of pinnacles.
BTW: Currently "I Will Survive" is being used as a QUIT SMOKING campaign, apparently worldwide!
But I wanted to go with something a little less obvious and something that never failed to surprise me. Very much like Skate Anthems, which I talked a bit about on Day 3, there is a song that almost always made everyone crowd the dance floor.
I would say this song was a bit obscure, in that I don't know that everyone would recognize the name of the artist or maybe even the song, without hearing the tune. But the fact is, when you hear that opening brass flourish and that burnning bassline kicks in immediately, you absolutely know it.
My choice for Day 9 - Cheryl Lynn - "Got To Be Real"
I briefly took dance lessons as a kid as an activity to get moving. But I was always all about the interpretive. In my room, I could dance around to my music and would sometimes get to an almost meditative state during particular songs. Then, I started making mixtapes and that kind of changed everything. Being able to just pop a cassette with the songs I wanted when I wanted them to play... that was amazing. And then, I even had a cassette player that you could program to fast forward and reverse to mix the order of songs, and even played the tape backwards to let you select from both sides of the tape without needing to eject it! SUPER AMAZING TECHNOLOGY!!!
Of course there were lots of record albums, many of which i still own. I don't have my own DJ rig currently (most NYC clubs had their own set up and I could rent a setup for private parties) but I do have one turntable. Problem is I don't have a connector to line in it to start digitizing the vinyl tracks to mp3. I think I've found a lot of the songs from my LPs through Amazon or iTunes, or back in the day when we were trading music on the sly.
And it's from my time as a DJ that I drew this song.
When I was working at "Polly-Esthers," a 70s and 80s themed club, I created "The Polly-Esther Ten," a Casey Casem style countdown of the ten most requested songs that week, which I played each Friday and Saturday at Midnight. Invariably, there were some songs that were never off the countdown for many weeks.
The two that battled it out most frequently for the most requested song, I'm pleased to say, were two Feminist Anthems:
Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive"
and
ABBA's "Dancing Queen"
Both of these songs tell the story of women standing on their own, making their own choices based on what THEY want and are unapologetic in their stance of what is wrong, what it right and what is acceptable to those females.
It doesn't hurt that they both are easy to dance to in addition to their messages, disco classics that have stood and will continue to stand the test of time. But the elements of what these songs say carry them to that highest of pinnacles.
BTW: Currently "I Will Survive" is being used as a QUIT SMOKING campaign, apparently worldwide!
But I wanted to go with something a little less obvious and something that never failed to surprise me. Very much like Skate Anthems, which I talked a bit about on Day 3, there is a song that almost always made everyone crowd the dance floor.
I would say this song was a bit obscure, in that I don't know that everyone would recognize the name of the artist or maybe even the song, without hearing the tune. But the fact is, when you hear that opening brass flourish and that burnning bassline kicks in immediately, you absolutely know it.
My choice for Day 9 - Cheryl Lynn - "Got To Be Real"