RTP-area local music and culture

[Chris Calloway <ifoufo AT yahoo.com>]

--- clo AT nc.rr.com wrote:
> Am I crazy or has
> anyone else heard
> this criticism?

dear mr/s clo, sir or ma'am:

from what i know of just ordinary laid back folks who
go to shows around here, i think your "rant" spoke for
the overwhelming majority. in fact, i think it was the
best stated view of the whole "chapel hill doesn't
dance" meme/troll i have ever heard. and there have
been plenty to hear for over a decade.

no, you are not crazy.

first, i have been to enough out of town shows to also
say, it's the same elsewhere and not confined to
chapel hill. at least at greensboro, charlotte,
winston-salem, roanoke, and richmond shows i've been
to, it's been pretty non-dancey. occasional shows
farther afield have been no different. where it
doesn't go on, or rather, where people do dance, it's
in places where the norms are much more pedestrian
styles of music. i suppose if one goes to the cherry
poppin daddies (geez, was there ever a more annoying
band name) show, you might see some "dancing." of a
sort.

second, not dancing is for most of us, like you said,
a form of enjoyment. i like to watch a good band. a
good band will keep you from dancing by being fun to
watch.

third, there was once a time here, on the cusp between
punky/new wavey to post-punky/mathy/indie-rocky
sensibilties, when people did sort of half-heartedly
try to pogo to celebrate the new dark age. it didn't
work so well. and most people were intelligent enough
to figure that out on their own. i am most thankful
for that. because it sure was irritating to try to
watch the band while there was the one really drunk
guy up front trying to "dance." oh, you egged him on
and spoke well of his exuberance to other people in a
sort of good natured attempt to make entertainment out
of him. but when he eventually calmed down after a
couple of years, you were secretly glad. he was
usually from fayetteville, anyway, so he got shipped
out to somewhere else.

jamie mclendon gets a bye on this. he is still
permitted to pogo solo up front because he *is*
entertaining at it. and not drunk.

fourth, like grady, we do get moved to move on
occasion. we just aren't so vain as to call it
"dancing." our head bobbing is like physical therapy
to us. just enough movement to be body aware. not too
much to qualify as manic. it came to us from our metal
roots. we used to head bob a lot harder as our
recognized form of "dancing." but it didn't take long
to realize we'd all end up like muhammad ali if we
kept at it.

well, some of us did end up like muhammad ali, but
that's another story.

fifth, that last mob organized incarnation of dancing
most of us remember was moshing. and we are most
thankful that day is gone. except for the few
adolescents to whom it is totally new. and one is
inclined to believe they'd just as easily sucked in by
the grateful dead if they'd discovered that first.
there's always a segment of every generation totally
incapable of coming up with their own youth culture,
and who thus adopt some former youth culture posture.
not that coming up with your own youth culture is a
good thing. it's just an evolutionary step above being
incapable.

sixth, a long long time ago, a sure mark of being a
hipster, the annoying variety, was dancing at shows.
people had every doggammed kind of dancing under the
sun until it just became a tower of dance babel which
became the dreaded dead dance. people competed to see
who could be the most annoying hipster dancer and
dancing was more of a mob mentality. those who did not
dance were "square" and "uptight." this regime was
strictly enforced. if a hippy was far enough away from
a farm without electricity to be at a show where
dancing was going on, she was likely a hippy in dress,
slang, and drug usage only. she was a hippy fascist.
she was deranged and to be avoided at all costs. real
hippies grew vegetables all day, worked hard
composting human manure, were too damn tired to dance
after a long day of living off land nobody else could
farm, and spent their off hours contemplatively
reading chairman mao and the poetry of ho chi minh.
popular music was a madison avenue method for keeping
the kids under control. it was faux rebellion. it has
taken over forty years to get over dancing to this
shit. it was powerful propaganda. it has left a mark.
a puss oozing purple mark.

dancing to fad-ish popular music in large public
settings i believe started in vienna. it was the last
gasp of holy roman empire. strauss was one of the
first rock stars. women screamed when he appeared in
public and fought over locks of his hair. cocaine use
was rampant. powerful hallucinogens were served as
aperitifs at any corner cafe. rich hippies spent days
drinking the precursor to boone's farm and writing bad
poetry in the vienna woods at communes with hot tubs
called "mineral spas," smoking opium and hasish, and
having orgies all night which sometimes ended up in
ritualistic mass suicide/murders. basically, dancing
to popular urban music and stupid privileged white
people have gone together for over a century. it was
not appropriated from black people during the jazz
age.

seventh, have you heard what passes for dance music
these days? good dog, i'd rather have my nuts crushed.
no, you are not crazy.

but eighth, you really hit the nail on the head when
you proclaimed that bands who just weren't happy when
their audiences aren't dancing are practicing a pretty
annoying form of egotism. if a band's music inspires
dancing, no one will need prompting. please dance to
my shitty dance music. oh, you're not dancing. you
must be a snob.

no, we're just not *that* crazy.

so i, and i expect others, thank you for so
unequivocally setting the record straight on that
little piece of drivel what passes for lore. not bad
for somebody who just got here in '98. :)

luv, yr fan,

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