Forty For Thirty: Part II

Music That Reminds Me To Dance

Well, it happened. As of today, I am thirty years old. Or if you’re reading this on my blog, it happened two days ago. Regardless, I’m not celebrating until the weekend, as no one really wants to celebrate on a Tuesday. It’s just a hard day to go dancing.

Thus the next section of my Forty for Thirty playlist, aptly titled “Music That Reminds Me to Dance.”

I try to dance most days. Even if it’s just for two minutes. Other times it’s ten. Sometimes it’s a raucous thirty. I dance even if I’m not particularly skilled at the movement I want to try. Because it’s that practice and joie de vivre that matters.

Even when I’m not dancing, I use music for movement. Running, yoga and flow arts specifically. Flow arts is a tricky thing to describe. In broad terms, it’s prop-based performance art incorporating gymnastic and acrobatic physical activity. More essentially, it’s an extension of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological research on the “flow state,” that moment when action becomes instinct.

Most experience a flow state when driving. But, once you know how a flow state looks, you can find it anywhere. A crisp pass in basketball, the rolling notes of a guitar solo, the smooth transition between dance moves.

Moving meditation is another way to understand this phenomenon. A way to clear the mind of everything that’s not the task at hand. I usually find my best ideas during practice with my contact staves. Like the idea that I should have done this one song per week rather than in batches of ten. Pssh, this is the Casual Ramble.¹

When the best of the best are at their best, the experience broaches the surreal. When a flow artist really starts to inhabit their prop, it looks like a dance. When they do so with a fire prop, they move from flow artist to a fire dancer. Cool is an understatement and a misnomer. Better said, it’s a thrill. The full realization of those moments they, you, we and I took to fumble around with a prop.

The same goes for dancing. Sometimes, I do not want to inhabit any prop but my own. Because the rain, cold or dark precludes any outside activity. Because sometimes, I just want to dance. At a club, at the park, in my living room, or anywhere else.

I think that’s why I still feel young.

Music That Reminds Me To Dance

Hi there! This is Ben, writer/editor/manager/whatever of the Casual Ramble. I appreciate you being here. I generally try to avoid marketing myself and I don’t like paywalling content. That’s why most of this website, if not all, is free. However, I always appreciate a helping hand for my Patreon so I can keep doing it. Click the link below to support my writing. If not, enjoy it all the same!

Like my writing? Support me on Patreon!

“Get Up Offa That Thing” by James Brown

There’s no introduction needed for this song or the artist behind it. But I’m gonna give him one anyways, because everyone needs to know the best superlatives bestowed to a popular artist now and forever. He’s “Mr. Dynamite,” “Soul Brother Number One,” the “Godfather of Soul,” the “Godfather of Funk,” “The Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk,” “The Original Rapper,” “The Man With the Cape,” “The Man Who Never Left,” and “the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business.” But to me, he’s just the King. Not of any genre or stage or country or people, no, James Brown is the king of any room he’s standing in. He needs no music, no background, no nothing.

And while there might be more critically astute or interesting songs, there is none that quite sums up the magnetic allure of Soul Brother Number One. To that end, I can thank Nickelodeon’s Harriet the Spy for introducing me to the Man With The Cape via their use of “Get Up Offa That Thing” in the finale of film. It remains the only thing I remember about the film. At every wedding I go to, I keep this masterpiece from the Man Who Never Left on retainer for when the energy goes low. You know that moment, where people start filtering from the dance floor and the song quality is petering, The solution is simple, just ask for The Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk. Even if he can’t bring people to the floor, I assure you, you’re all The Original Rapper needs; shit, he is all you need. When the Energizer Bunny runs out of juice, it listens to Mr. Dynamite for a new charge.

Finally, I keep this song close because when it ends and I take a knee, I hope that someone, anyone, will come to my aid, place a cape over my shoulders and carry me to my table. They’ll have to. I’ll have crossed off the final piece of my bucket list. I’ll have died on the dance floor happy the moment it happens. These points aren’t pertinent to why this song is great. They are critical to the Godfather’s fundamental response to feeling down: “get up offa that thing and dance till you feel better.” The funny thing is we sometimes forget these fundamental responses (hence why I’ve titled each section so). The Hardest Working Man in Show Business lays it out simple; all I have to do is take the floor and count one-two-thee-four. Give me those funky horns, bap–bap!

Table of Contents

“He’s the Greatest Dancer” by Sister Sledge

I really wanted to fit Chic in here somewhere. I really did. But finding a place of “Good Times” or “Everybody Dance” felt too redundant, while “Le Freak” and “Strike Up the Band” felt too on on the nose. Moreover, a Daft Punk featured just seemed wrong seeing as it would only include the latter half of the Bernard Edwards and Niles Rodgers combination (as much as one can love Rodgers, it was Edwards who taught Rodgers how to play chuck rhythm).

So, what to do? Play Queen? Nah.² Play Sister Sledge. It’s a Chic album in all but name. Per Rodgers, “Pound for pound, I think We Are Family is our best album hands down.” I’m inclined to agree or else this boxset of Chic records was good for nothing.³ But where my family might boogie down to the title track, it’s all me on the opener “He’s the Greatest Dancer.”

I will not pretend that I am the stylish subject of the song, but I will one-hundred percent take control of the parquet and set it alight to this song like you would not believe. It all happens for the simple fact: I do not go to clubs to flirt. I do not go to the disco to chat. I do not visit the dance hall for prattle. Call it self-centered, call it myopia en ritmo, call it what you want. But if the goal is to dance, then I will dance and there will be no exceptions. There will be no square of the floor left untouched. There will only be the music and me.

Small wonder, then, that I have been removed for dancing too hard.

Table of Contents

“Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel

The piano is probably the first musical instrument that I can listen to with vivid recollection. Car rides to and from daycare were not complete without the stylings of Elton John or the greatest hits of Billy Joel. As a matter of principle then, I had to include one of either. However, the pun-ridden yet straightforward “Bennie and the Jets” is not quite danceable as desired. “Honky Cat” swings with a swanky rhythm but never had the same beloved connection as other cuts. And the chorus of the childhood classic “Crocodile Rock” shaded too familiar to the next song on this playlist.

Contrast that with “Only the Good Die Young,” which, despite being more of a thoroughbred karaoke cut, begs you to twist while you shout. That miracle of a tempo clap saved it for this playlist, accenting the shuffle beat to make a terrific tune for partner dancing. Joel’s best imagery (“stained-glass curtain”), lyrical tricks (“you didn’t count on me/ when you were countin’ on your rosary”), and a final chorus that revs up like a fifties hot rod all make for a record that runs roughshod over my haunting ex-Catholicism with naughty school boy abandon.

Forget “Footloose” this is the song that would make me throw off all chaste sense of propriety or myopic living to ask the girl for a dance. Come out, come out, come out, Virginia and we’ll lindy hop and swing to this thing.

Table of Contents

“Brown-Eyed Women – 5/21/74” by the Grateful Dead

*Pacific Northwest ’73-’74: Believe It If You Need It* by the Grateful Dead

Robert Christgau once said the Dead understood the jam as a road; a means to transport listeners from one listening experience to the next. So it seems weird to select “Brown Eyed Women” by the Grateful Dead when it comes to dancing. To be honest, it might seem weird to select something other than a jam. It’s one of the few self-contained choruses that doesn’t segue elsewhere.

But that was the key factor for this selection over a more expansive “Playin’ in the Band” or “Dancin’ in the Street.” Oftentimes these were on-ramps to the boogie expressway. And while I love the Grateful Dead, they are the anti-playlist band; most artists curate a listening experience based on records, some on albums, the Grateful Dead are one of the few based on live show recordings. Those live recordings are the playlists.

Put quite simply “Brown-Eyed Women” constitutes the best Grateful Dead track never cut for record and because there is no preordained partner for this song, it’s perfect for a playlist. No need to wring hands over the ethical dilemma of splitting up a “Scarlet > Fire,” “China > Rider” or, Garcia forbid, “Help > Slip > Frank.” This ditty goes the opposite direction, traveling and grooving through time.

It’s a clear example of what makes the allure of the Dead and their long-time lyricist and collaborator, Robert Hunter, so palpable to this day, exploring the concept of America vis-à-vis the stories of people who inhabit it.⁴ Hunter‘s chosen narrator is the son of a rural couple in mythical Bigfoot County,⁵ a survivor of the Great Depression distilling backwoods whiskey with his alcoholic father. Hunter never asks what it means to be American. He poses a vision and leaves you to interpret it. Who said music that makes you dance can’t also make you think?

Table of Contents

“Heartbeat” by Taana Gardener

Now this is a deep cut extracted very recently. I first heard Taana Gardener’s “Heartbeat” watching the Netflix dramatization of Barack Obama’s graduate school years at Columbia University. It rose above a middling, standard-fare flick to highlight a soundtrack flush with deep cuts.⁶ But Kit Benton and Taana Gardener stand head-and-shoulders above them all with their monumental classic.

When first released, “Heartbeat” developed a reputation as a floor-clearing cut. The 86 BPM pace (glacial for any club), perplexed audiences. But it soon became a classic across New York’s various clubs. None more so than the Paradise Garage near the West Village. House DJ Larry Levan loved it so much he remixed a version that is now considered the standard.

That sweats like a Studio 54 raver at 3:50 AM Saturday, which is odd considering I wrote that line and then later discovered Willie Dancer’s comments mirroring this presupposition.⁷ The first six minutes are a sweltering foray on the floor. Then the break hits, transforming from a fun and fancy free connection into an eye-locked rap delivered from the rapacious lips of Taana Gardener to your ravenous soul. She’s mad, you’re bad and all there is left to do is dance until you wear out your shoes. So dance, fool, dance. It’s your only chance to get her back.

Table of Contents

“Digital Love” by Daft Punk

Well, I mean, come on.

We were already on the post-disco and dance music soul train. The real question is how could it not end up on Daft Punk? There’s a certain sense that I’m cheating with most, if not all, of these picks thus far by placing them on my dance playlist. By all accounts, these are suggestions to the DJ for the wedding. I don’t know if it will ever happen for me and another person. I refuse to expect it for the sake of my sanity. But if I every marry, they will have to drag me from that dance floor, sweating and completely enamored with the one I love. Moreover, I still can’t help but dream of the songs I want to share with that imaginary person.

Thus “Digital Love,” with its devotional, vow-ridden lyrics and straightforward rock solo. The signature hook is sampled from George Duke’s 1979 record, “I Love You More,” using what is perhaps one of the greatest riffs of all time for all of ten seconds before moving on. It’s not like the rest of that record is a misery, but Daft Punk clearly had better intentions for that misplaced introduction. They extrapolate and set the standard for every disc jockey trying to make electronic euphoria: a pulsating central thump-beat, a light, springy funk sample, lyrics put through the vocoder like a digital blender, a gloaming keyboard break and a riotous guitar solo.

All I’m saying is that this song gives me ideas, a true creative sugar high, the moment it comes on. If the dream of happiness could be encapsulated on wax, this is it. If the world could stop for one moment, I would wish for this song and only this song to play across the globe as it stood still. And if I felt it any harder, I would project Interstella 5555 across an entire wall of my wedding reception Ah fuck, you caught me dreaming again.

Table of Contents

“On Hold – Jamie xx Remix” by The xx, Jamie xx

Behold, the start of the crash. Music, while an incredible conduit for effusive joy, splendor and affection, is doubly efficient for expressions of melancholia, chagrin and lust. Terrible as I am with quotes, I have read or heard or am otherwise stuck with the echo of a thought that love songs as devotionals comprises only half the reading. The other half interprets the love song as the song of a parasite. In other words: people who write love songs poison themselves with the addiction of hope.

There’s only one way to purge this addiction: dance ‘til you cry. Once again, the dance floor has been and always will be my safe place to excise these emotions upon identifying and accepting them. This path to acceptance has consistently featured one set of artists among many, the xx. The trio of Romy Madley-Croft, Oliver Sims and Jamie Smith (dit⁸ Jamie xx) have been the major artists in that sacred space.

Smith, the man behind the mixer, serves as the prime master of ceremonies. Has been since 2015, when his debut record, In Colour, set my world on fire, blazing a path into the electronic dance music world through the underbrush of interests since adolescent days. I have seen Jamie xx live twice, once as a member of the xx, once as just Jamie xx, both times comprising core memories of my life, both times dancing as hard as I possibly could.

His edition of “On Hold” (a remix of the original piece from the xx’s third record, I See You), represents a convergence of my favorite aspects of his group and solo work. The ambient introduction, the sprinting rhythm section, the fragmentary samples of Hall and Oates “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” interlaced with Oliver Sims’ hypnotic monotone and that melody, that gorgeous melody. I can’t tell if it’s a sugared phone dial tone, induced from an ambulance siren or served by cavernous marimbas, but it calls to me. Like Morse code clicks in the dark, I am never deaf to the message.

Table of Contents

“Such a Bad Way” by Against All Logic

Delving further in the domain of dancing the depression away, Against All Logic serves as the drill. Within his normal work Nicolas Jaar subverts the work of the disc jockey by deliberately slowing down the beats per minute, infusing spoken word and sampling unique properties.⁹ Listen to his records and you get the sense he would sooner be John Cage than John Summit.¹⁰ Certainly, he could cycle through a neo-Paradise Garage set with ease (perhaps he would even turns the heads of Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckes), but his alter ego explores the conventions of house music with a not so conventional edge that takes the yearning of the xx and its constituent parts and transforms it into something deeper.

Don’t mistake my sentiment, Jaar’s secondary sobriquet still yearns. He still contests with a deep seated desire. However, he defines this contest not by the vanities of love and love lost, but within the work of self-assumption. Such is the case for this choice. Like a thought bomb, the dance of “Such a Bad Way” is how it juxtaposes two ideas at once. Self-reflection turned grandeur of delusion rides a clap beat. A horn melody tuned like a wire slowly rises in volume. It subsides to tubular synthesizers playing off laboratorial whistles. Then it combines them both into one.

When “Such a Bad Way” finally reaches its apex, the song explodes and Kanye West’s declarative “I Am A God” provides a muted counterpoint to the overriding chorus derived from The Lost Generation’s “Talking the Teenage Language.” From there it’s all denouement. Space to ponder what just happened. What comes forth is a thought (not at all conclusive, but still instrumental) on depression:

I have often balked at the hills and valleys view of life when dealing with this mental illness. The struggle with depression is not a case of extreme highs and extreme lows. It is more akin to a series of tunnels, carving through the mountain of life. As I hurtle up and down this mountain in my metal machine, there are times where, looking up, I see the sky and times where I see smoothed stone. The error is in thinking that either will last forever. The mistake is in deluding myself that if I stop, then the tunnels will stop or the sky will end. All I can do is keep going.

Man, how would I have survived living in France without this guy?

Table of Contents

“Saturn” by Clever Girls

One of the greatest pleasures afforded to me by writing for Atwood Magazine has been the discovery of the odd artist or small band. A great deal of them are sent my way via publicists. Usually, I don’t have the time of day to listen to most of them¹¹ and there’s always a risk that I might find the band unpalatable to the point that what I write about them is patently uninteresting. But then there is the odd band that completely lights the fire.

Clever Girls are that small band. In fact, they are more than just interesting or cute; this outfit from Vermont and fronted by Diane Jean charms on skills and selections. Constellations, their second record, is filled with vignettes that saunter and swing across ten tracks of eminent nineties nostalgia. Clever Girls slot right in with your Garbage, Letters to Cleo and Juliana Hatfield records, except with the charm of Sixpence None The Richer. And that’s without even mentioning that Jean’s voice is a delicate thing, like a bumblebee’s wing.

And all of this energy buzzes around on “Saturn.” There may be no innocence in the music business, but this song will still have you believe that you never have to sell your own at a top-dollar rate; that writer’s block is just a passing thing; that Diane Jean’s voice is just as heavenly as honey cheesecake; that the bass is enough to make Jah wobble. It’s precisely that bassline which carries the song’s dancing spirit through the pitfalls of astrological overtures, existential dread put on pause by screentime addictions and, well, I would gladly work in the rule of threes if there had been as many verses!

But this is no terrible thing; where Jamie and Jaar took us to the heights of vertigo, Jean provides the denouement. While there is no “Valerie Effect,¹²” the gravity of this record tugs the feet in elliptical orbit. Like your heart on a swingset, momentum slows at the end just as the Earth pulls you down on the edge of the swing. Give it a second and it will speed right back up again.

Table of Contents

“Dancing in the Moonlight” by Toploader (King Harvest Cover)

Exiting the emotional vortex present on the dancefloor, it felt only appropriate to remind myself why we dance in the first place. Dancing is not just a response to stressors or music, but an invitation to mobilize the inner strength of a social species. In my world, to dance is to live out the physical expressive potential inherent to the human spirit without fear of performance review or movement critique. Rhythm is a learned thing, but dancing is as natural as eating food or drinking water. It whets the soul, embraces the muscles and exfoliates the skin.

This isn’t true of everyone; some may not like to dance or feel they dance too awkwardly. And that’s fair, it’s respectable. I cringe anytime I hear someone criticize or admonish someone else for dancing. If a friend told me they don’t dance, I wouldn’t be disappointed in them, I wouldn’t remind them that I’m not going to judge (if anything, reminding them of such would probably just be insulting), I would just let them know that if they feel like dancing, I’m ready at the drop of a hat.

I will kiss the floor with my feet and bless the night with an abundance of spirit. If I seem crazy under the moonlight to strangers, it’s only because they cannot hear the music. Pity, for they would probably be dancing too if they knew it was “Dancing In The Moonlight.” While King Harvest is the classic, Toploader is just more fun. Nostalgia might surround the original, but pleasure infuses the cover. It sums up the basic premise of this section of the playlist, that a joy reminded is a joy rekindled.

Table of Contents

Like my writing? Support me on Patreon!

Patrons get early access to all columns and reviews, as well as exclusive one-month early access to my short stories and poems, a private discord server and other benefits!

1 Seriously, what was I thinking? Midway through practice, I was tempted to walk to my PC and shift into a once-per-week mode. As a matter of principle—this is the Casual Ramble after all—and obsessive compulsive traits, I couldn’t make that change and jackknife into an ever more interminable task. If I can’t throw just over 4,000 words at this topic, then what the hell am I even doing here?

2 “Another One Bites the Dust” doesn’t quit, but it’s a derivative lift of the baseline from “Good Times.”

3 I had to completely change my turntable and stereo setup because of those records; they caused a starter Audio-Technica LP60 to skip because the bass guitar was just that powerful.

4 No one in England could pose this same vision question about country or its inhabitants. That’s not my assertion by the way, it’s Sam Cutler’s from the Long Strange Trip documentary. I just echo it as much as Hunter echoes the Great Depression, backwoods whiskey and the roaring twenties.

5 There’s an interesting assertion sent by email to David Dodd, a research associate of UC Santa Cruz and compiler of annotated Grateful Dead lyrics, that posits “Bigfoot County” as a nickname for the forested border regions of Oregon and California. Well, maybe it’s just interesting to this Oregonian Deadhead, but I’m titillated by any show, lyric or other artifact points to my home state. My favorite show is Veneta 8/27/72. My favorite line of dialogue from any movie ever comes in the companion film, Sunshine Daydream (“we got a lot of confidence in these men, these Oregon hippies are strong fellas”). And the whole show itself took place on my favorite patch of soil in this entire world. Now if only my second favorite song appeared on the tracklist. Alas, the ley lines can only converge so much.

6 The movie scores big for any music historian. From Bob Dylan covers by Bobby Womack (“All Along the Watchtower”) and Nina Simon (“I Shall Be Released”) to the ska developments of Jackie Mittoo and Lord Tanamo to a plethora of the early New York hip-hop and dance scenes.

7 Per Dancer: “You went there to dance, and we didn’t dance like the regular people who were dancing in discos. I used to get dressed up to go to a disco, I’d do the Hustle for a couple hours till 4 o’clock in the morning, then I’d say, “Oh shit, lemme go to the Garage.” I had my bag with me and go to the Garage and change into my sweatpants and my sneakers.” (I feel like the two of us would get on very well.)

8 The French translation for “also known as” or AKA. Yeah, it seems pretentious, but I have to put that bachelor’s degree in French Studies to work somehow. On y va!

9 Seriously, whether it’s “My Window” by the Residents for “Être” or mashing together the piano on “Calcutta Blues” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet with the percussion of “Enfant Tambours” by Ricardo Villalobos on “Mini Calcutta,” Nicolas Jaar is something else. Doesn’t hurt that he also remixed the Grateful Dead’s “Shakedown Street” to such a degree that I might love his remix even more than the original.

10 This is not a dig against John Summit; I would rave to the guy, I just needed a DJ with the name John.

11 There was a time I did weekly roundups and if there ever were a quicker route to full blown burn out, I have yet to find it. If you have any recommendations please don’t send them to me, I will try them.

12 So named for Steve Winwood’s “Valerie,” a song that can be played on repeat interminably because it picks up immediately where it left off.

Forty For Thirty: Part II

Music That Reminds Me To Dance