Dancing in the Streets

[rhythmaning]

For some reason, I felt like dancing this weekend; repeatedly.




It started on Saturday: I took in the second of two orders from Amazon. The first had arrived on Friday: two books – Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist, and and Tim Parks’ Italian Neighbours – and three jazz CDs: Ellington’s Money Jungle (a trio set where he shows where Monk really was coming from – though the key player is Charles Mingus), Manu Katche’s Neighbourhood, featuring Jan Garbarek and Tomasz Stanko, and so cool it is positively glacial (but beautiful with it; like a glacier) and the quirky East/West, by Bill Frisell, a rather beautiful, understated guitar trio – well, two guitar trios.

The second parcel from Amazon, which arrived on Saturday, was rather more direct: three CDs from the Simple Minds back catalogue. I actually bought one of these a year or so ago – Sons & Fascination/Sister Feelings Call, but somehow it was spirited away; and I had meant to go back to Fopp to replace it, and pick up a coupe of other old Simps CDs. With Fopp’s demise, I looked at the prices on Amazon, and I seemed to have bought Sons & Fascination, New Gold Dream and Sparkle in the Rain for about a fiver each.

As I took the package from the postman – for once the last mile thing actually worked here – I knew what I was going to do.

So I did.

I opened the package and put on Sparkle in the Rain, track four. Three times.

I have written about this before – sometime back in November, staying in my brother’s flat in London, rifling through his iTunes catalogue, and hitting Waterfront. But it is good; and it is compulsive; and it makes me move.

The LP version (because I also have a vinyl 12 inch, more drum heavy – yay! – opening with a complex drum riff for four bars) – the LP version starts with simplicity itself, just the bass doing a one note shuffle, and then wham! in come the drums and the band.

And I just have to move. So I was moving around my flat, walking, rockin’ in rhythm – it isn’t a fast tune.

Three times. Loud. My neighbours, I’m sure, got into the groove.

Then on Sunday morning, someone on my flist mentioned dancing barefoot. So I sought out Patti Smith’s Dancing Barefoot. Track one of the compilation Land, this is another walking beat – fuck it, dancing is just walkin’ in rhythm (and anyone can do that. Can’t they?), not fast, slightly languorous. I was doing the washing up, moving in time.

But it was track four again, not usually a lucky number, but another groove. Gloria. There is no as I can stand still for Gloria (Marie! Ruth!) and when Patti was singing Ding Dong Ding Dong Ding Dong Ding Dong I was actually pogoing.

Not something I often do on a Sunday morning.

But as she chants those beats, it was the only thing to do.

Up and down. Up and down.

Later, I was out on the street, walking down the hill, with my iPod on. I had been listening to the Freak Zone on 6Music, prompted by abrinsky, and it was followed by a dance show.

The first track was a remix of Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy. This was a bit strange, because Massive Attack’s records are basically remixes themselves; so this was remix squared, and God, it was leaden: the wonderful sorrowful lightness was replaced by a heavy dance beat. But it reminded me that I hadn’t heard Massive Attack’s Blue Lines in a long time.

(I think I might believe in karma. I have just put the radio on, and they’re playing New Order’s Temptation. Ha! Although I am not dancing.)

But I needed to pop out: so I put on my iPod, and listened to Unfinished Sympathy, and then Safe From Harm – the two essential tracks off Blue Lines – as I walked down the hill. And as I walked, I was dancing: my steps matched the beat, and as the strings came in on Unfinished Sympathy my heart soared.