Clapping on the 1 and the 3 with that “stand in one place dance”. The one where you bring your right heel in to meet your left heel on the 1 and put your foot back where it was on the two. Repeat this same move on the 3 and 4 with the left heel coming into the right and then back out. Your shoulders naturally sway with the movement of the feet but not too much. This is the grade 8 boy dance of the seventies. It can be played with no emotion or be exaggerated to indicate “being into it”. It is not a dance for risk takers. It is not a dance for dancers. Frequently this dance is performed by those who know not where the beat is. The music may be making you move but the cause does not produce a related effect. Its like a fire hydrant opening onto a hot summer street inspiring a child to do pushups. Frolic and abandon don’t enter into the equation. Music is on. Find a way to show that you can participate. No one needs to teach you this dance. It is the “doing up seat belt instructions on the plane” dance.
The greasers had those big Dayton boots in grade 8. The grade 8 boy dance was perfect for economy of movement. What was paramount for those boys was to avoid looking “gay” in the process of “dancing” but at the same time make the dumb and beautiful girls think they were open minded. The very dumb and very beautiful actually fell for the grease balls who stood outside the gym calling all the other boys fags, spitting and smoking. The grade 8 dance also worked for any particularly shy and/or insecure types. The girl would pretend to never look at you and be dancing “just because you asked” and you could feel good that your inexperience went undetected. Inexperience disguised by the grade 8 two step. Sure there were the humpers, helicopters, karate men and legs akimbo floppers but the wind up toy vibe pretty much ruled. Some had bootlegged jungle juice that fueled terpsichorean experimentation. Others hoped that someone would buy into their unique program. In those days that’s what it took to be labeled a good dancer. There was no video to learn the moves from. There was a vacuum over the spread of dance culture into the suburbs. Generations before had built their sense of cool around dance. Early seventies rock came with no real guide to movement.
Our children now have it made. Its all pretty slick and awesome. I mean…people really know how to shake it now. The best and most athletic elements of dance are all back and the tempo is up. A boy doesn’t even have to wait for a slow dance to “grind” his teen boner relentlessly against a girl’s undulating pelvis or ass. Copping a feel to the power of ten. “I was just dancing with him mom!”. Greasy middle aged guys are paying for tamer lap dances because they still don’t have any more than their grade 8 70?s chops.
I was right up front tonight at the Doug & the Slugs 25th anniversary show at the Commodore Ballroom. They were the R&B influenced, swinger chic & smart ass “Tubes” of Canada. Truly original. It was a hippie art school street rat collision. A fat joint and a stiff bourbon. Boogie satire, insult comedy, urban cleverness and a steamroller of a party. I got my first break in the biz working follow spot at a Slugs/Brandon Wolf New Years Eve show at the Holiday Inn Harbourside in Vancouver — thanks be to my brother Colin Nairne. My first $20 as a roadie. There I was, tonight, standing in the crowd as the reel of standard grossly overplayed 70’s and 80’s bar rock set the peeps up perfectly for a Slugfest. You see there can be no vintage Slugs without a crowd to tear into and build up again in their image. The crowd must first be placed in a generic, “crowd enjoying a pleasant night out” state. The Slugs, Doug Bennett in particular, always needed mediocrity and boredom to work against.
The moment that, for me, defined the Slugs came quick and with typical Bennett “flying mallet” subtlety — he in his “Danforth” black suit. I had made note of the grade 8 two step happening all around me up until this point. All in their comfort zones. Receded domes, wire rimmed glasses and compensatory facial hair rocked from foot to foot through “Roadhouse Blues” and “Switchin’ to Glide”. Commercial Drive mean green smoke snaked its way under noses and above pleasant smiles. An air of genuine pre-Christmas good will pervaded the all-star nightclubbers reunion ball. The next generation of grown kids was there to see what their dads and moms had done with their wild years. This complacency would not be allowed. Feeling good required so much more. After Richard Baker locked into the perfect boogie riff that anchors “Chinatown Calculation” the crowd roared and the band dove in after him. Doug stopped them cold and told the crowd that he’d have none of this “shuffling from foot to foot or pleasantly rocking back and forth”. He instructed the quintessential 40 something grade 8 in the front row to “find a fucking real woman and dance with her!”. “Spin around!” “Do something! This is a great swingin’ riff!”. It was time to have fun redefining one”s comfort zone. I guess the Slugs were all about that. No pretension. Low art and great heart. Not THE cutting edge but definitely A cutting edge. It was all a joke. All fun at their expense and your expense. They were their own fashion culture. I loved “the Tubes” for all the same reasons. Tonight Johnny Burton sported the cheesy shiny smoking jacket and large medallion. Simon mercilessly wielded the silver Roland handheld KX5 synthesizer (with breath controller) while wearing a beret, yellow sport jacket and clam diggers. The lion tamer in a Thomas Dolby BetaMax video. The sound coming out of that thing was scary. It was once a staple of bland radio pop but I think Simon has now understood the true musical evil lurking inside that 80″s synth. He played it as if he was living back when it was almost cool and he played with the idea of what it was now — worth $30 on ebay. The Strap-On keyboard was cool for the first and last time in that one instant. It was the instant I couldn’t understand why it was there at all. The Buddha had been punched in the face. This was a moment that was not happening anywhere else. A unique person was making a movement that was not in the script of standard cool moves. The grade 8 dance was busted.
Bless these Slugs.
Waves of hits kept rolling out and with each one those hippie barons of business (in the audience) redefined their personal boundaries and took a few steps outside the matrix of the old grade 8 two step — the dance that was a symptom demonstrating that a gray wool had grown over their inner engine. They’ll remember tonight. . . when doing something stupid, strange and fun was what was asked of them. In 70’s rock n’ roll terms they were all great dancers by the end of the night. No clapping on the 1 & 3.