Girl, To Be With You Is My Fav'rite Thing Uh Huh And I Can't Wait Til I See You Again Yeah, Yeah

70’s Song of the week

“Boogie Shoes” by K.C. and the Sunshine Band (1975)

Some say Disco was spawned because the Nazi’s banned jazz. The next best thing was to develop clubs where they played records. The first ‘discotheques’ sprung up in WWII and continued after in clubs like the ‘Whisky a Go-Go” in Paris. The ultra chic set did not have exclusivity to this trend for long.

The seedy ‘Peppermint Club’ in New York spawned the short-lived dance craze ‘The Twist”. The culture of this was embedded in the teenagers who would drive the commercial direction of music. The Beatles would swoop in to NA in 1964 and no one cared about their ‘Twist” records anymore which had every variation you can imagine by this point.

There was something slightly Victorian about the new dance crazes though – you danced alone. There was no contact with the other person. Sock-hops and record parties in the sixties were somehow made safer to on-looking adults because of this.

Changes come before we can go. Learn to see them before we're too old. Don't just take me for tryin' to be heavy, understand, it's time to get ready for the storm

Quick Hit

“Couldn’t Stand the Weather”, Stevie Ray Vaughan (1984)

On August 26, 1990 he had just played guitar with Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and Robert Cray. He got in a helicopter that took him up from the ‘Alpine Music Theatre’ in Wisconsin. The helicopter crashed and that was the immediate, stunning death of one of the best blues guitarists ever.

He had only sobered up a few years before from very serious drug and alcohol addiction – he lived through that – but then his card was punched, his time was up.

Sneaking out the back door to hang out with those hoodlum friends of mine

Fact of the Week

“I Wish”, Stevie Wonder, (1976)

When it has been a tough week it is nice to listen to something that lifts you up, takes you back to a happier time. An innocent or not so innocent time as the case may be, but somewhere where you don’t have the pressures of your everyday life...

At the age of 11, “Little” Stevie Wonder was signed to the Motown label and a lifetime later is still there.  Born 6 weeks early, retinal detachment rendered him blind. There was nothing wrong with his ears.