Dancing Through the Crates
Crate Diving in Modern America
That was a tease and an untruth. I’m not oblivious to the cult of worship around us, permeating us. Even if the adored one does something right, it’s hard to tell or admit it because whatever might be right is engulfed in the so many awful things he creates.
Once upon a time in a representative democracy far, far away, I wondered what music our home-grown ayatollah might prefer. That got answered by the pseudo-disco ball he threw for himself just before the 2024 election.
You know: the one where he “moved’ to the dulcet tones of “YMCA,” that cheerful anthem of a day when it might really have been fun to hang out there. I wouldn’t know, for in my salad days, the local Y smelled like chlorine, liniment, and something I would understand much later was the sweet aroma of stale urine.
I don’t know if it was ever fun to stay at the Bessemer, AL, YMCA, but at least it was pleasant to think that once, someone thought so. I'm not sure if DJT has ever entered a Y, and if he did, what on earth would he have been doing there? Taking a turn on the massage table? Basking in the sweat room? Having a meal with the other boys?
So much to consider; so much to ponder before the expected nausea sets in.
Today I was reading a chapter on electronic music in Darryl W. Bullock’s David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music (Overlook Press 2017). My copy of this book once belonged to the Dallas, Texas, Public Library in Grauwyler Park, a place I have never been or sweated in. Now, this might surprise you, and I don’t mean that in a former world this book was on the shelves in a Texas library.
No, I mean:
Who on earth is surprised that it was pulled from those shelves at some point between now and then?
My copy is a hardback and it cost $13. It’s a pretty cool book, but the passage I read today was especially, exceptionally exciting:
You might know that the synthetic instrument known as the vocoder was used by 70s bands like Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd, The Alan Parsons Project, and ELO, among others. One of those others was electronic/disco genius, Giorgio Moroder, who then
“…linked his Moog to an analogue sequencer to create the bubbling synthesiser lines that dominate Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love.’”
And at that point, according to Bullock, “a whole new genre was born.” And dig this:
“[David] Bowie, living and working in Berlin at the time, recalled that collaborator Brian Eno (whose work with Roxy Music had been influenced by Wendy [Carlos’] pioneering experiments) came running in and said ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ He puts on “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer and said ‘this is it, look no further, this single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years,’ which was more or less right” (136–7).
I can attest. As a loyal Disco-goer in the 70s, when I first heard “I Feel Love,” it was a sea change from the “I Love the Night Life’s” and “Instant Replays,” “Boogie-Oogie-Oogie’s,” and yes, the “YMCA’s” that had previously dominated the dance floor. I watched people dance in a way they hadn’t been — a seemingly coded performance signifying how much love the leader might want.
Try it yourself:
This is a far cry from that Repub rally and from any video like this:
Tape shows Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein discussing women at 1992 party
The November 1992 tape in the NBC archives shows Trump with Epstein more than a decade before Epstein pleaded guilty to…
Watch at your own risk — not that your life will be endangered, but maybe your sanity, your taste, and your love for all things danceable will.
So I hope this proves that I’m not out-to-lunch on the world around me; it’s just that I appreciate music to an extent that causes me to want to snub and erase(ure) our fearless dictator from my mind as he imagines that whatever moves he once had were smooth. Sure, he scored on that dance floor, but we all know it wasn’t his hip gyrations that did it.
But enough about him.
Want to know what I dug up in my several record stores treasure hunts recently?
First, at Cabin Floor Records last week, I found Reflections, by Diana Ross and the Supremes (Motown 665, 1968), for only $5. My DR & The S collection is building.
Next, I discovered at Horizon Records, Rodney Crowell’s But What Will the Neighbors Think (1980) for $5, too. And then, Rita Coolidge’s third album, The Lady’s Not For Sale (1972), for the same price.
Moving into the higher tax brackets, still at Horizon, I completed my early Bowie-years collection by acquiring Pinups (RCA 1973) for $20, and Emmylou Harris’ 1981 Warner release Evangeline for $10.
Finally, at Pharmacy Records, I found The Kinks’ Preservation Act I for $14, and at 2nd and Charles, I got Glen Campbell’s Too Late to Worry, Too Blue to Cry (Capitol 1963) for $9.95.
In this first world that so often feels like first over the cliffs into the swirling Kharybdis of our choosing or capitulation, I think the range of music, the eras and genres, out there for us to enjoy sometimes — at least in the outer reaches of my consciousness — offsets the insistent news cycle that keeps wanting me/us to react to yet another absurdity that we never considered long enough before to know that we truly didn’t and couldn’t want.
I still feel lucky enough, even though I understand that luck tends to run out, and for some, it evaporated years or a lifetime ago.