Is there a difference?
My love of sixties music is well documented, well, at least on these pages. I hear the music, my feet start tapping, and I want to sing along (depending on whether anyone is in hearing range), and dance.
And so it was that an impromptu suggestion to hold a Dance Night in the Retirement Village I live in, ended up being a monthly event.
Dance Night #3
On Saturday night our third event will unfold. The process is simple.
Residents and guests turn up at 5pm. We order pizza’s for anyone who wants to partake of sustenance (without bringing their own), the Bar is open (to keep us hydrated), and I’m the DJ (because I want to choose the music).
Yep, I know, it’s kind of like cheating, but that’s how it is. I have a Spotify account, the one without advertisements, and I load up a different playlist for each dance night. Saturday’s list is done, all eight hours of it, and I’ve tested it heaps of times to make sure every song is my favourite. And every song passed the pub test, well, my pub test, not necessarily anyone else’s.
I make no apologies.
We won’t get through eight hours of music (more likely three), but randomly playing the songs ensures a relatively unbiased mixture. However, I may will override some songs in favour of my absolute favourites, and claim it as DJ privilege.
The Searchers will set the scene with WhenYou Walk in the Room, and in case you’ve forgotten who will take you home, The Drifters will remind you if you Save the Last Dance for them.
The Righteous Brother’s Unchained Melody is for Maddy and Jan, because they dance so beautifully together, and for the rest of us incurable romantics, because we love the song.
Helen Reddy will remind us of our girl-power with I Am Woman, but I’ll save that for the end of the night.
Somewhere in the middle we’ll get a bit of pelvic-thrust happening with the Time Warp, and I’m sure Elvis will inspire some hip-swivelling when he tells us about his Good Luck Charm.
If you happen to tread on your dancing-partners toes, Frankie Valli reckons Big Girls Don’t Cry, but Eden Kane will tell you that Boys Cry When No One Can Hear Them. We’ll see.
Dusty Springfield Only Wants to be With You, while Cilla Black argues that Anyone Who Had a Heart would love her too.
Is there no end to the love?
The Everly Brothers will be Crying in the Rain and Gene Pitney knows It Hurts to be in Love, so maybe Skeeter Davis was right, and it is The End of the World without your love.
The magic songs of the sixties (and other decades) will boom through the speakers and go straight to the heart of those of us who remember when each song was released, and who sang it. Trust me, we know all the words.
We were teenagers then, and we’ll feel like teenagers again, when those songs touch our hearts on Saturday night.
Image from Pixabay
Post Script: Spotify is no substitute for having a singer or band at our Dance Night. When we were teenagers, we didn’t have Spotify. But now we have singers, like local entertainer, Chris Harvie. Chris knows our favourite songs and sings them beautifully. We are working hard to get some funding so we can pay Chris to sing at our dance nights, when he is available. When he isn’t, we’ll have Spotify.
