every once in awhile, i do a post with this title. dance hall days were incredible. they were the celebration before our collective ship hit that iceberg. 1980-1983. that's when our titanic sliced her belly, started to submerge, and the evacuations began. that's when it all changed. that's when we saw the panic, the lifeboats, the heroism, the cowardice, and all the rest of the tales of mice and men. that's when history moved. i do remember the joy. i remember the colors. i remember the joie de vivre. i remember the laughter.
so i go back to those days now and again, because i loved so much of my life then. and because i need to remember. i took them for granted. i thought those glory days would last forever. and i know since i have foolishly done many unattractive things to try to keep those days alive. but they drifted into the mists like avalon with so many lost in the undertow along with them. and i now know that there is a morning after.
this sounds so somber and it's not my intention. i do hold sadness when i remember these days. but i hold joy along with it. my laugh was lighter then. my stride was gayer, and my heart was much more open.
so i arrived at melancholy place because i was surfing youtube and i came across this vid. omg- sharon redd performed at medusa's in 1983 or 84(can't exactly remember). she was talented. she had been a backup singer for bette midler and had then gone out on her own. she had a few hits. i had a blast with her when she performed with us. i do remember a little drama at the end of the "evening" which i think was actually 8 or 9 am. we did trip the light fantastic back then. i witnessed drug induced paranoia which i had never seen before, but would experience first and second hand in the years to come.
sharon left our world in 1992, i believe. it was aids-related. she earned her place at my table of memories. she was a warrior, just like so many i know. and she left our world a better place with the gifts she shared with us.
i encourage you to look at some of the other clips offered on the menu bar of this vid. "beat the street" was a sound i remember really loving at the time. but i chose this one for it's absolutely quintessential 80's flavor.
i wouldn't trade those days. can't anyway, but wouldn't if i could. i am so thankful i lived in and remember my dance hall days.
4 comments:
OMG—I was just transported to the days just before Techno Pop hit (Petshop Boys, Bronski Beat, etc.) It was a time before drugs for me. Dancing after hours in NYC (after 4 am without chemicals!) in a little bar in the basement of a triangular building on the West Side Highway... the Anvil. It is a sweetly meloncholic nostalgia. Those were the days.
The real party never started much before dawn. All the tourists had left by then, and only the genuine worshipers at the altar of dance remained. It didn't matter who was rich or famous, but only who could DANCE. that was all that mattered. You could even be ugly, as long as you could dance.
Because dance made even a homely guy beautiful.
OMG. Dancing was spiritual in those days; there was something so magical about dancing until the wee hours of dawn and beyond. The late night-early morning music pumped through our veins. The drugs, the poppers, the sweaty men. If lucky, the disco diva performance at 4 am. I feel so lucky to have experienced those days. I danced until I got sober in 1995, when either the music or the drugs went bad :-) There was a brotherhood in those clubs. Find the book "the Holy Spirit Dance Club"...it is amazing (as it takes a journey through the mother ship, the Saint). When I hear these fabulous tunes, my thoughts go to a prettier time in our history. I don't regret the past, nor will I have ever forget it.....sigh...
Boy do I echo these comments. I can't even watch this video again, Rod sent it to me last night and it packed such a wallop I felt like Proust eating madeleines.
Remember "Dancer from the Dance?" He documented all of that so well, I'm so glad Holleran wrote it before AIDS. We only had 12 short years between Stonewall and the first HIV case--thank God I got a slice of that. Its so gratifying to think that if I'd lived anywhere else but NY during that time, right now I would be wishing for the very past I did indeed have.
Yeah, the Anvil was great, but the Mineshaft was better, even though we did a different kind of dancing there...
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