On our ride up to Maine via Boston, where my oldest son and I caught an awesome pitching performance by the Tigers’ Justin Verlander over the Red Sox at Fenway, last Thursday, my wife told me some details of a dance party that neighbor friends had hosted a few nights earlier and that I had missed. My wife had a great time, even if the music selection was a bit more like a typical wedding mix than she would have hoped. She loves to dance. I feel incredibly self-conscious in my rare efforts at dancing (badly), but the party did sound cool: good company, a rented dance floor on the couple’s back yard on a beautiful night, etc. My wife reported that the dance party reached its peak during a run of B-52s songs. Then she unintentionally warmed the cockles of my heart with this report on the dance party’s low point:
“Man,” she said, shifting gears, “you really can’t dance to R.E.M.!” The dance floor, she said, cleared out as soon as an R.E.M. song came on.
This reminds me of one of very best friend’s wedding in Miami. They did the music mix and wedding guests danced the entire night away with an array of stuff (I’m positive R.E.M. made this mix. I’m almost totally positive that the last dance was “End of the World.”). One of the highlights was during the actual dinner when a slow Daniel Johnston number came up. One of the smaller guests just started rolling around all over the dance floor. The Groom noted that this was really the only way to dance to this song. I agreed and a couple of us proceeded to just roll around all over the floor…Good times.
TB
I don’t know, I saw REM play in a small club in front of about 40 people when they only had a single out, and everybody danced unselfconscioulsy, even me. It’s one of my favorite gig memories. On those early records Bill Berry was one of the pioneers of a new four on the floor drum style that led to a brief heyday of ‘new wave discos.’
I seem to recall people dancing to Radio Free Europe. Different times.
The kid in the video pulled it off with an avante garde flair.
Didn’t “Radio Free Europe” get on teh Rate-A-Record on Bandstand? Lemme check…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvdEZ9cxJr8
Isn’t YouTube great?
TB