This is when I learned to dance:
OK, it's not the opening chord to "A Hard Day's Night." That chord is probably the most recognized chord in the history of music and it practically demands that you sing along with the first line while you wait to make a left turn in traffic.
(There are links below the squiggle; I'll wait.)
No, it's the opening chord to "All Right Now," by Free. I really don't need to hear the rest of the song. I can turn the radio off and hear the rest of the song in my head. I travel back in time to when I was a slightly-pimply seventh grader. I became an unfortunately-pimply eighth grader. Thank God Retin-A was invented and marketed at about the same time so that my doctor tried it out on me. My face was cleared-up in time for high school. Anyway, one guitar chord and I'm twelve years old at a Coke Dance after school. Why they called it a Coke Dance is beyond me. Coca Cola didn't sponsor it and I remember a dance or two where you couldn't even get a coke because somebody went cheap and bought some godawful swill supermarket cola.
OK, one chord and I'm twelve years old and I'm inventing my rock moves at the same time as I'm learning how to waltz, fox trot, cha-cha and swing through something called "Junior Dance." I like it so much that I follow it with four years of high school Cotillion where I learned to rumba, samba, tango...and tie my own tie.
About the opening chord of "A Hard Day's Night:"
http://www.beatlesbible.com/...
Scroll down. Listen to the Randy Bachman description of listening to the opening chord from the master tapes.
"All Right Now," by Free. Be ready for the opening chord.
Look at those kids dancing in front of the band. When I was young, I made it a rule never to dance again with a girl who chose to look like she wanted to be somewhere else while on the dance floor. I admit my preference for this:
Forget the lip-sinc, how you thought this song was done by The Beatles and how chubby Buddy Rendell was, for heaven's sake. Look at those girls. When I was twelve and all the way to today, I knew the difference between a girl who was having fun on the dance floor and one who was worried about how she looked. Oh, the smiley, full-performance one in the front is very nice but the ones in the back (at about 0.25 and 1.25)...ah...mmm...my type.
Anyway, Paul Rogers didn't perform at my intermediate school. The song was always covered by some we're-in-a-band-this-week high school group. It wasn't like today, where schools hire a dj. In those days, you needed a band to play and somebody always had an older brother who had gathered some friends into the family garage to jam. Inevitably, at the end of completing a two-and-a-half minute song, somebody would say, "Let's start a band!" and the next half hour would be spent deciding the group name.
What I discovered at school dances during those rushes of hormones was that I liked to dance, I liked to watch the girls who danced with me and, whew, this was a big one: I liked when a girl liked to dance with me. I did not, then or now, do the white man's overbite dance. My style was much more Vincent Vega and if the girl with me did a Mia Wallace, oh sweet Jesus.
Anyway, I danced with a lot of girls during seventh grade but the absolute winner was Jodi Feiner, first of a long stream of crushes on and/or "things" with Jewish girls (I grew up in white bread suburbia, but you could probably tell that when I mentioned Cotillion) that led up to my wife of almost twenty-six years. Jodi was a tiny girl, pre-puberty pretty and she danced a damn-sight better than the "popular" girls. I can't describe how sad I was when she told me that her family was going to move all the way across the country to Rockville, Maryland, the day after school let out.
Now let me ask you, how do you teach a twelve year old boy how to dance with a girl? Nowadays, it seems guys who can dance copy something they've seen somewhere and they're not even dancing with the girl. For that matter, I see girls dance for about fifteen seconds and then they look all embarrassed. They do this in cycles through a song; they dance fifteen seconds on, then fifteen seconds off. I find it weird to watch. The guy is showing off for his friends and the girl seems embarrassed by how her body moves, or maybe she's worried that her friends might think she's enjoying herself because Lord knows, you can't be an adolescent and look like you're having fun.
Well, nobody told me how to dance with a girl, rock-style. I had to figure that out for myself. The main job for a guy in my time was to keep the beat and don't do anything that made you look like an idiot. If you were a white guy and knew how to dance below your waist, all the better. And it was ok to look into a girl's eyes for a couple of seconds at a time and not ok to look away from her for very long. I watched girls' feet a lot so that if she put on a good move, I could look up right away, smile and let her know I apprieciated it. If I was really in-sinc with a girl, we could play this look-at-each-other, don't-look-at-each-other game through a whole song and, often, the next song as well. That was the best.
Now, about dancing and sex: I grew up with the lesson that you could tell how someone was in bed by how they danced. Forget me, geez, for a second. I'm thinking about my best friend in high school. Despite his musical background, he was arguably the worst dancer- and he said he didn't like to dance- but he was very popular. He had one of those baby-faces and aw-shucks personalities that made girls want to lie down. Supposedly, he had something in common with Bruce Springsteen and if you don't know about that, I'm not going to explain it. Throughout high school, I can't tell you how many times I had to run interference for him while some girl was looking for him and he was with another. On the other hand, I didn't notice a lot of girls going back for seconds. Uh...oh, shit...I think I just figured something out.
Anyway, one chord. Dancing. Seventh grade. I know I didn't write about learning ballroom dancing but maybe that's for another diary. There's lots to be said for being twelve years old and told that you have to put your hand on the small of a girl's back. I didn't have to be told twice. I mean...damn.
Next dancing diary.